SUMMER 2016
NEWS FROM
Ickwell Field Study Centre
Summer News 2016 Another great few months with much taking place on site involving the boys and staff. We have planted a few new trees, laid some older hedge, gapped up others and made a compound to keep the deer at bay. We are trying to establish bluebells and increase the range and diversity of natural habitats on site. We continue to assess the site for better use by the school and other potential users, so we have published a new guide for outside users and improved our Health & Safety regime and booking procedure. Snakes Report The reserve is a haven for grass snakes (Natrix natrix) and recent counts have identified up to six, including large females and young progeny. The boys are very proud of them and recently have been constructing some new habitat using tin sheets. As poikilotherms, grass snakes love to lie under these sheets and absorb the warmth of the ambient temperature. What we hope to find are slow worms - a kind of legless lizard - and even adders, as we have an area of suitable greensand habitat. 2
Above: Spring Team 2016 / Winter Team 2016 Below: Planting the new Sweet Chestnut plantation
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Top: Ickwell watercress Left: The bridge before reconstruction and being ‘opened’ Below: The Compton Verney watercress bed and an example of sweet chestnut coppice
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Ickwell Field Study Centre
Hop Pole Plantation Traditionally (at least I mean in Kent) sweet chestnut coppice provided poles for the brewing industry as they grow long and straight for hops to grow up. Sweet chestnut grows well on acid soils such as we have on part of our site. We have planted up a patch of these using stock of local provenance and hope it eventually will look like the picture opposite. We hope they will provide long straight poles that you do not get with hazel or ash coppice.
Miss Bell Opens The Refurbished Bridge The boys like a ceremony and Miss Bell was their choice to declare the new bridge open. Tony Young, who rebuilt it, was able to use most of the timber from the old bridge as well as rubble for the approaches scavenged from piles of material dumped on site from the burnt out house from 1942. Incidentally, while removing rubble for the bridge, Tony stumbled across grass snakes and as these reptiles like to congregate we might have a good site for their wintering hibernation. So he covered them up and moved elsewhere. The bridge crosses a ditch which was probably a moat for whatever property stood on the site before
the Harvey family arrived in the c17 and built their mansion.
Ickwell Watercress It’s now at least 4 years since I started eating this with my lunch and it seems not to have done me any harm. It’s now getting to the end of its season and is at its best in the winter and early spring. The flavour is exceptional and its setting is appropriate to its growth as it is spring fed, which it should be. So eat it when you can and it makes excellent soup too! (Wash it first!) Our bed looks a lot better than the one at Compton Verney, which I came across recently, in the picture opposite.
Water Quality Surveying We are trying to increase our scientific monitoring of the reserve and build up data that can be used at school. The CAS group , BSSC and Sixth Formers spent some time in water courses carrying out “kick sampling” and then identifying invertebrate species. This can then be checked against standard BMWP assessments for biodiversity as well as water quality. The results are very encouraging and the data has been put on the 5
intranet at school. We hope to develop a series of QR codes where data like this can be accessed on site.
testing, tree planting and on the first visit many years ago to make flutes from hollow stems with the late Benni Wright.
Further monitoring will be carried out next half term.
Good luck to all present and former BSSC pupils and staff. Some comments from the delightful group: “We were carpenters for 20minutes” “The swans hissed at us meaning go away, leave my territory, or that Andreas is a city boy” “We lifted up the sweep net after kicking in the water and found the living organisms”
End Piece
Above: Using a shave horse
BSSC Saturday Activities Sadly this will be the last visit from BSSC. Recently they came out as they have done for many years to identify trees, pond dip and learn to turn timber on the shave horse. I have enjoyed meeting them here and in previous years coming out with them to do such things as backwoods cooking, quarterstaffing, charcoal making, water quality 6
The best landscape description of Ickwell is found on the website of the Lottery funded “Parks and Gardens” organisation. Its funding is not being renewed but it might survive by possibly being taken over by The Hestercombe Trust, which is trying to become a centre of excellence for landscape study in the UK. Look for Ickwell on this link: www.parksandgardens.org/placesand-people/site/1830/description
Ickwell Field Study Centre
Top: BSSC pupils wood turning with trainer, Ed Burnett Right: By the Dovecote, Making walking sticks from hazel coppice grown on site and “kick sample� water surveying
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De Parys Avenue Bedford MK40 2TU 01234 362200 info@bedfordschool.org.uk www.bedfordschool.org.uk
Bedford School is part of The Harpur Trust