The National Trust @ Kinver Edge

The National Trust @ Kinver Edge

Welcome

This is the new web site of The National Trust Volunteers at Kinver Edge. The site will be updated regularly with all of the news of the Edge as it happens. Once the site is up and running, a guest book will be available for your comments on the Edge and the Rock Houses, but until such a time please feel free to E-Mail the web-master. Also if you have any questions for the Warden E-mail me and I will pass on any questions or comments

Refresh

Please note that these pages will be updated almost constantly, and therefore please remember to refresh the page every time you visit to ensure that you are looking at the most current version of the site. Enjoy.

Please read the Disclaimer if you are unsure about this site's role and relationship with The National Trust.

News

I got told off for not updating my site for ages, so here you go, an update.....

Sorry everyone (not that this place gets any visitors) for no updates for ages, work kinda got in the way. Anyway, what have us volunteers been getting up to recently? Well if you are a visitor to the edge, you will have noticed that a LOT of the trees have gone. Due to a new management plan (and some nice guys from the waterways helping us out a LOT), we have started on the restoration of the rare lowland heath that the edge is a SSSI (site of special scientific interest).

Now some people may have a problem with what we are doing, but please remember 2 things, the government in the form of english heritage, approved the plan and praised us for our work in restoration, and the fact that the edge was largely treeless for 2500+ years due mainly to the iron age fort and farming that had gone one, thus creating this habitat, the trees around the edge grew up due to lack of farming and management for 50 years. But now we are reversing that and taking the edge back to the way it always has been.

Please fee free to stop any of the volunteers or the warden if you wish to discuss the edge and what work we are doing to preserve this ancient and special place (or if you want to help us out, theres always space for more volunteers!)

Now to the pics!

Click here for some new pics

Another Chipper work party, this time its so big...it needs tracks!!!!

Again the good people at British Waterways lent us the use of a chipper, this time so big its self powered. Pics can be seen here....LINK

Chipper Work Party!

At the last work party, we managed to get the loan of a wood chipper from the local British Waterways department. Its a very noisy machine, and got us all working very hard (good job there was another 20+ group that week!). We got lots of work done, and that side of the edge is looking very good, getting back to what it was for 2000 years. Anyway, pics and video of us using the chipper can be found here LINK

Many thanks to the guys at British Waterways for the loan of the chipper, we appreciate it very much.

More New Pictures!

Got some more new pictures for all you kinver sick people around the world. The pictures are of the edge in the snow a few months back (yeah i know....took me ages to get round to getting them off the camera). But anyway, lots of pictures of the edge looking nice in the snow, and some attempts by me at arty black and white shots! Enjoy LINK

Wardens Day

This week we had a gathering of Wardens working for the National Trust in this region (midlands), there was 12 of us working away above the pine wood on the edge, clearing an area or trees that would have taken the volunteers some time (like most of this year). At one point there were 8 chainsaws on the go!! we got a huge amount of work done, and you can see the difference. Due to the fact that there were loads of trees felled, and not a lot of people stoking the fire, most of what was felled, is still lying around, but it will be cleared in due course. Pictures of the day can be found here LINK

Latest Working Party

Some more pictures of another very good work session, with yet more shoddy camera work from me! enjoy LINK

Loads of Volunteers

For one session only (and i have no idea why) we had loads of new volunteers, all counted, 22 of us, and on of them had a chainsaw (plus all the gear and the correct licence to use it) So anyway, i took loads of pictures (112! I love digital cameras!) but i have culled them down the the ones appearing here. As usually, the sky cleared up for us (we haven't been stopped by weather in well over 5 years!) and we all got down to work. Because of the large number of volunteers (largest we've had) we got loads of work done, and you can tell the difference in the area we were in. Anyway, the pictures i thought were any good, are listed here. LINK

Enjoy

Newest Volunteer (Its 1.5 Ton and called Olly)

Our newest recrewt turned up this weekend, shes a 1.5 Ton horse called Olly. The plan is to use olly to to drag cut trees around the heather areas instead of the tractor as the horse will be less damaging to the heather. For a first try, it went well, but in the end she got in a mood because of the method we were using to pull wood with her, so back to the drawing board, some more training, and we should have it sorted. Shes a very quiet horse, not scared of strangers and is almost prefect for the job, if we can get her to do some work!!

Pictures can be found here and

Round 2

This time it worked! She pulled wood about for well over an hour until she finally had enough, we had problems getting her back in to the horse box (involving the owner chasing the horse all over the edge), but thanks to a passer by stopping olly from wandering off, we got her back in the box.

Pics of our second attempt can be found here Video can be found here

David Bills MBE

Founder member of the Volunteers, chemist, miracle worker and local historian and all round genius David Bills has been honored by the Queen with an MBE for his services to the National Trust and the Village of Kinver. Well done David, we don't know what we would do without you (have a quiet life!!!) Picture of David Bills and his MBE