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Welcome to Uphill Village, Somerset Noticeboard: News |
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Scarecrows Enjoy A Good Book!
As the Uphill Village Society announces the theme for the 2011 Great Scarecreow festval residents start reading in earnest. Refreshing memorials of books long enjoyed from childhood favourites to adult thrillers, Shakespeare to Rowling, Blyton to Femming! "A GOOD READ" prodvides the theme for the fourth Great Uphill Scarecrow Festival being held in the village over the weekend of 24th and 25th September 2011. Once again hundreds of scarecrows can be expected to be seen across the village from the Tower on the hill to the Donkey Field. Special events will also take place during the weekend with the ever popoular Family Barn Dance returning on the Saturday evening and the Church sure to be providing cream teas on the Sunday. So the message to every on is - JOIN IN. BE PART OF THE FUN.
Donkey Field Update
I write this article as the Site Manager of the Woodland Trust property at Uphill. I would like to take this opportunity to update you on the changes that have occurred recently at the site. We have changed the grazing pattern for the site to one of winter grazing. Theory suggests that as the vegetation is grazed until the snowdrops and bluebells first start to show they will have much less competition as they emerge and will be more visible through the spring. However the long periods of snow over both of the last two winters has effectively lost a month of potential grazing each winter. Therefore the spring starts off with longer grass which by the end of the summer does look quite overgrown. To address this problem I had the meadow cut in late autumn last year. Hopefully the display of snowdrops was pleasing to everyone and the great promise already to judge by the number of bluebells leaves already showing vindicates this change in management practise. I have decided to stop using chemical weed control on the site. My predecessor used some aggressive herbicide to tackle the brambles. I prefer to use mechanical means and thanks to the assistance of some volunteers from the school this will be done by hand. I do intend to leave some patches of scrub to provide improved habitat across the field, but these will limited to the back of the area, further from public view. I know the trees within the field have caused some comment locally as the large beech tree fell over in early 2010 as I predicted it might in a previous article. It had been struggling against a fungal attack for the last 10 years. I am going to leave the tree in place to decay; this will provide wonderful habitat opportunities for a vast range of saprophytic insects and plants. The Horse Chestnuts are suffering from an insect which is ravaging all trees of this species across the country. It is unsightly but will not kill the tree as only a percentage of each leaf is destroyed. All of this is against the background of petty vandalism, littering and arson that is sadly a common occurrence at the site. Last year alone I have had to deal with the camper and his overly vocal dog and call the Fire Brigade to extinguish a burning tree within the wood, amongst other things. Jon Burgess, Site Manager, Woodland Trust. Somerset & W. Dorset Dysart Road, Grantham, Lincolnshire, NG31 6LL Tel: 0845 293 5754
Uphillviews - Summer edition out 1 August - FREE to members of Uphill Village Society. 32 pages including full colour.
The Wonders of Weston in Uphill
Wonders of Weston is a programme of remarkable and memorable artworks, part of the national Sea Change initiative, which seeks to support the revitalisation of British seaside towns. Launching on 29 October 2010, Wonders of Weston features new artworks by artists Ruth Claxton, Tim Etchells, Lara Favaretto, Tania Kovats in association with landscape architects Grant Associates, architects raumlaborberlin and artist collective Wrights & Sites. Included in the programme a collection of signs - “Everything you need to build a town is here was not conceived in an artist’s studio,” suggest the artists, “but only really emerged after several months of reconnaissance walking – not only in the obvious places, like the seafront and the town centre – but also in the industrial, post-industrial, residential and edgelands of Weston.” Through this extensive site research, Wrights & Sites have developed a constellation of 41 signs that each engage with their immediate vicinity and are dispersed across Weston-super-Mare. Each of the signs refers to aspects of architecture in Weston-super-Mare – whether grand, municipal, amateur, accidental, forgotten, part-demolished or imagined – and contains a carefully worded instruction, observation or comment, designed to encourage the reader to think again about its specific location, to conduct an action or thought experiment. The signs have been organised into eight interconnecting layers – The Panoptic, Foundations, The Great Architect, The Amateur Builder, The Botanical, Light, Time, Ands – each of which is indicated by a symbol incorporated into the signs. The locations are widely scattered from public gardens, to the museum, car parks, restaurants and allotments. The design of the signs has been influenced by an existing sign found in Uphill village, at the southern edge of Weston-super-Mare, and almost all will appear in a location without interpretation or explanation.
Uphill Village Society - Membership fees now due
Uphill Walks
The second revised edition of the Uphill Walks book containing 10 healthy walks around and about Uphill is now avaiable from the Uphill Village Society or the Tourist Information Office on the sea front Weston-super-Mare. Copies of the individual walks can also be downloaded to print from this web site - follow the link.
Prefect Uphill Gifts - Available from Uphill News, Weston Museum or by request via Contact page
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