Profile The Brierleys
You will all be familiar with Maureen and Leslie Brierley from the articles we run on the Mel Restoration Group, but I thought it would be interesting to look beyond the pond, so to speak. Both originally from Essex, they moved to Cambridge when they got married in June 1973. Leslie spent all his working life with the GPO telephone service and Maureen had trained as a nurse at the North Middlesex Hospital. They have one son David, who is married and lives with his wife and two small sons in Royston – he works in Human Resources at Guys & St. Thomas’s Hospital Trust in London. Maureen worked at Addenbrookes as a surgical nurse then transferred to Royston Hospital where she was a Ward Sister. Both spoke passionately about the need to keep Royston Hospital open and support the Save our Hospital campaign. Later she moved into community nursing and became a Health Visitor in Stevenage and then Director of Nursing at Primary Care Trust. In their working years they took part in village life, with their son being educated in the village Maureen was on the PTA and Leslie worked with the cubs and scouts and both helped with the Village Fete. But it was when they retired in 2006 that they got involved with the restoration of the River Mel, which had started in Meldreth the year before. They had both always been interested in rivers, Leslie was a fisherman and in fact they celebrated their Silver Wedding by doing a fly fishing course in Devon. Maureen was the only girl on the course and the only one of the group to fall in the river! She was wearing waders and lost her footing on the rocks, but she gained ‘respect’ by climbing out, stripping off her fleece, emptying her waders and going straight back in! Locally they would fish in the St. Ives area. The constitution of the MRG covers the whole length of the river Mel from its source at The Melbourn Bury to where it joins the Granta near Malton Golf Club – a length of about 5 kilometres. It is a chalk stream, very rare as there are a mere 161 in this country and only 3000 worldwide. It is springfed, running on a clear chalk bottom and is host to a very special kind of wild life and vegetation. Or at least, it should be on a chalk base, but underneath the A10 bridge it had been over-widened and deepened, scouring away the chalk base. In an effort to restore a firm bed to the stream the group have recently deposited some 135 tonnes of gravel in that area. Maureen and Leslie were keen to join the group and to get the scheme working in Melbourn as well. To this end
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they had a stall at a village fete and 40 volunteers turned up at the next meeting! With support and advice from Rob Mungoven, the Ecology Officer at SCDC, they meet every 3 weeks throughout the year, alternating between the two villages. However, during the winter months they do not do river work but concentrate on the banks. This is because they are trying to re-introduce trout into the stream and from mid December to March the fish will hopefully be moving in. After the 1953 floods, all councils were anxious to avoid further crises so many rivers and streams were widened – unnecessarily so in the case of the Mel as it is fed from a spring. Add to this the fact that there were no fewer than 4 watermills (Sheene,Topcliffe, Flambards and a mystery fourth) which further eroded the chalk bed and caused the flow to slow down and deposit silt. If the firm bed can be re-established the Mel will flow freely and will self clean. I asked if there had been any interesting finds, but apart from an unwanted PA system, various footballs and stone bottles, a Cambridge Sodawater Company bottle seems to be the most exciting find so far. However, flora and fauna abound and the Wildlife Trust were very excited when they did a survey on water voles and discovered a very strong colony of them. They are one of the most endangered small mammals. Look East have also visited the Mel to film a report. Very satisfactorily, within 10 minutes of setting up the cameras the cute little creatures appeared on cue and performed beautifully. Maureen commented that Kenneth Graham did water voles a great disservice when he named his riverbank vole ‘Ratty’ Voles have nice little round noses and fat round bodies whilst rats have a pointed nose and are more sort of, well, ratty. They also regularly see kingfishers, goldcrests, wagtails and many other birds. Frogs they have only seen on Stockbridge Meadows, and here I learned that they head up another group of volunteers to manage the wild flower meadow. Wild flowers flourish on poor soil, so when the meadow is cut they go in and clear the hay otherwise it would rot down and make the earth too rich. They have recently sown Yellow Rattle, a parasitic plant which attaches itself to grasses preventing them from spreading and crowding out the wild flowers. We should see a spectacular meadow in a few years time! Maureen and Leslie have always been outdoor types taking camping and walking holidays, they have done the 185 mile Offa’s Dyke walk and walked from Barcelona to the French border. Maureen also swims and does Pilates and Leslie plays golf.
