Breaking News Newsletter for Breaking New Ground Landscape Partnership Scheme
Mar 2017
A newsflash for project partners and participants with news items, project updates, special features and forthcoming events.
Volunteer and In-Kind Targets Smashed!
Watch the Warreners’ Tales with Subtitles
When we were developing the Breaking New Ground project, we worked with our partners and the Heritage Lottery Fund to come up with a set of targets for all aspects of the project. Two of our most important targets are for the value of the volunteer hours spent on the project and for the value of In-Kind (non financial) contribution from our partners.
Our fantastic film (by Ember Films) all about the history of warrening in the Brecks is now available to a wider audience, with subtitles in English, Polish and Portuguese. Find them on our YouTube channel here: goo.gl/eQewv7
We’re delighted to be able to confirm that we achieved both of these targets by the end of 2016 thanks to all the hard work put in by our partners and our wonderful volunteers. And we are not done yet—we’ve still got lots more planned, so we should achieve well over our targets by the end of the project!
Volunteers Get Recording
Students volunteering at IES Breckland
Following their Heritage Recording training in December with the Norfolk Historic Environment Service, volunteers have been braving the cold and putting their news skills to use. They have been going out into the Brecks with their equipment and measuring and recording heathland archaeological earthworks.
Volunteers sorting invertebrates with Norfolk Biodiversity Information Service Photo: James D E Cross
Project Focus A5: Engine House Update Work is progressing well on the Engine House Restoration, and the contractors have now been on site for just over a month. In that time they’ve started connecting up electricity and water services, as well as clearing the site and setting up the scaffolding. The old table saw and other mechanical equipment has been removed for restoration and will be returned once the building is finished. Foundations have been laid for the link building between the main Engine House and Bothy, where the services like toilets and kitchen will be housed.
Inside, the roof beams which are beyond repair are being replaced, but in a distinctively different coloured wood so it will be clear which bits are new (see photo) Excitingly the contractors have also rigged up some temporary lighting so that it’s now possible to see some way into the well that descends 120ft into the chalk below the building. (see photo of the month!)! We hope that we will be able to install some permanent lights so that visitors to the Engine House will be able to take a look down (safely—there is a protective mesh over the top!)
A6/9: Thetford Station (A Platform for Wildlife)
If you visit Thetford station, look out for the five new bird boxes which have been installed by the Friends of Thetford Station. The boxes were installed by volunteers and are part of a wider plan to encourage more wildlife to the station area including insect-friendly plants and habitat piles. Bird feeders will also be installed very soon. We hope to encourage the declining local populations of House Sparrows and Swifts Photos: Friends of Thetford Station
Project Focus C16 Sheep in the Brecks Sheep have always played a vital role in Brecks land management and agriculture, and this projects is about exploring that history. It is managed by Peter Goulding of the Breckland Society and is now well underway. Last week a workshop was held for people interested din finding our more about what bones can reveal about the past—a number of examples of very old sheep bones and artefacts made from bone have been discovered in the Brecks and these can shed light on human habitation in the area. Other workshops are also planned, focusing on hurdle making (9th March) and grazing (23rd March). If you’d like to get involved or attend a workshop, email sheepinthebrecks@gmail.com
Events Coming Up: Wings over the Brecks Talk: 4th March Thetford Library 11:00 Fantastic Finds: 11th March Union House, Gressenhall 10:00—16:00 People’s History of Thetford Forest Celebration 12th March Santon Downham Village Hall. 12pm An Introduction to Historic Building Recording 18th March, West Stow, 10:00-16:00 Find out more and book at http://www.breakingnewground.org.uk/events
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Picture of the Month A look down the Engine House Well
What the Brecks Means to Me... My first encounter with the Brecks must be one which isn’t etched in my memory as it must have been when I was hurtling through on a train to a sodden Norwich in late 2006 to visit the UEA where I subsequently undertook my undergraduate degree in Environmental Sciences. I vaguely recall a visit to Elveden to take some soil samples in my first year, but my memory is quite patchy from those early days on university!
Brown Long-eared bat (photo :WikiCommons)
I returned to what I now knew was the Brecks in 2009 after scouring satellite imagery of Norfolk for patches of forest suitable for my dissertation on bat populations in the fragmented forest landscape of East Anglia. Thetford Forest was by far the largest, albeit not natural patch of woodland I visited. After an initial site visit, I sat in the forest for three nights with my laptop and a bat detector on the end of a very long pole to record the echolocation calls of the bat population near Weeting. I recorded noctules, soprano and common pipistrelles, serotine, barbastrelle, Leisler’s and brown long eared bats in varying numbers on those dark nights, far more than any other forest I visited in Norfolk.
So most of my experience of the Brecks was in darkness until August 2015 when I joined Breaking New Ground as Project Officer. I remember travelling up for my interview from London where I had ended up. My previous job was devoid of nature and I remember it was a glorious sunny day and my senses were overloaded with the smells and sights of the landscape. I felt like I was coming back to a place that I had missed out on and the more time I spend exploring the landscape now through my job, the more secrets I find it has to offer, and the more questions there are to be asked. The Brecks is a hidden gem, one of those explicitly rewarding places that you experience only if you take a wander down the well less trodden path from Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ and I encourage everyone to do so. - Ed Goodall, Breaking New Ground Project Officer
Get your project noticed!: If there is something that you would like included in the next newsletter, please send details to Amy : BNG.Admin@suffolk.gov.uk Breaking New Ground c/o Visitor Centre, Brandon Country Park, Bury Road, Brandon, Suffolk, IP27 0SU 01842 815465 e: bng.admin@suffolk.gov.uk t: @TheBrecksBNG f: TheBrecksBNG. w: www.breakingnewground.org.uk