Profile – The Brierleys

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 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.

As director of the Board of Trustees for Home Start Royston, Maureen is kept busy as there is a great need for this service in the area. Both men and women are accepted for this work and great pains are taken both to train and monitor the volunteers and to match them to the families they are helping. Apart from all these good works, the pair are in high demand as grandparents and thoroughly enjoy and appreciate the fact that the family are only three miles away.

Just as I was about to leave I admired their curtains – ‘made by Leslie’ I was told, I also discovered at the last minute that he paints in watercolours and is mad about music – he described himself as a ‘vinyl freak’. Then I spotted Maureen’s knitting, a project on vintage knitting she is doing for a friend. There seems no end to this couple’s interests, it just confirms the fact that when you retire you wonder how you ever found time to go to work! Mavis Howard

Foster Property Maintenance Ltd (FPM Ltd) was founded in 1976 and provides property maintenance, renewal and refurbishment services.

The majority of their clients are housing associations and social landlords. FPM Ltd also have a wide breadth of experience working with local authorities. This encompasses everything from a minor repair for Cambridgeshire County Council to a £9m three-year contract with Mid-Suffolk District Council to replace kitchens and bathrooms.

FPM Ltd mainly work in the social housing arena but also have a number of commercial and public authority clients. The services FPM Ltd offer are extensive and range from construction projects, alterations and remodelling, to landlord compliance services, new build social housing, planned improvement works and response repairs, maintenance and voids.

But as important as it is for FPM Ltd to grow successfully in the sectors they service, so to is putting something back into the communities that they operate in. This is why FPM Ltd are committed to supporting projects such as the Melbourn Pavillion upgrade, and in 2011 they set up The Community Fund Project, specifically pledging to donate five per cent of their EPC Internals Contract profits to various worthy causes put forward by community organisations.

As a responsible neighbour Borras are committed to local community development and recognise that through the nature of our work we are gifted an opportunity to positively impact on the social, economic and environmental prospects of the communities we operate within.

Part of this commitment is actively searching for, and consulting with community organisations to discover if there is any way we can lend a helping hand.

The Melbourn Pavilion regeneration was chosen as a project whilst working on our Social Housing contract to upgrade kitchens and bathrooms across Cambridgeshire. As well as the Pavilion, Borras engaged in a number of other initiatives last year throughout Cambridgeshire, these included: Refurbishing parts of Wood Green Animal Shelter in Heydon, providing them with a new kitchen, potting shed and chicken coops; Refurbishing the staff area complete with a new kitchen at Sawston Nursery, Sawston.

Examples of other initiatives we have completed in the past include: Donating food, drink and funds to Centre 33, a local dropin centre where homeless and socially or materially disadvantaged people can go to relax and enjoy a meal or shower; Refurbishing the kitchen for Mind UK who have an office in St Albans minutes away from the Borras Head Office; Establishing a relationship with the Willow Foundation for whom we have raised over £50,000 through several activities including our annual staff hike. is chaired by Jose Hales, has been meeting with ‘Groundwork’, a well-established community development charity. Groundwork offers all sorts of support relating to young people, including training in how to find employment, various practical, community activism such as gardening schemes, and running youth clubs where some of these skills are taught. Fingers crossed that by the time you read this we’ll be getting ready to start up again. We’ll post details on the Melbourn Village website as soon as we have them. Community Navigator You may have heard about the Community Navigator service that is being rolled out in Melbourn. This free service is funded by the County Council but is manned by very experienced and well-equipped volunteers. Its aim is to support older people to remain living happily and independently in their own homes by providing a ‘One Stop Shop’ for advice and information. It might be information about activities that you can join in with, or help with transport, cleaning or shopping. Maybe you need advice about benefits to support you as a carer to look after a relative. Whatever you need they will know where to go. Contact them on Community.navigators@care-network.org.uk or ring 01954 212100.

Street Lights: Yes, well over a year since the street light replacement project commenced we’re still battling for improvements. It was good to see one lamp put back into a dark patch at Dickasons but we’d hoped for more. Jose Hales and I have been keeping up our contact with Balfour Beatty and are still hoping that a couple of other neighbourhoods in Melbourn will see a light or two put back. We’ve not given up yet.

Lastly, please don’t hesitate to contact me at any time. My phone number is 261833, or you can reach me at susanvandeven@yahoo.co.uk. Susan van de Ven, susanvandeven@yahoo. co.uk, 261833

Questions for your Councillor?

We hold a drop-in advice surgery at Melbourn Library Access Point on the first Monday of the month2:30-3:30. The Library Access Point has now moved to the new Melbourn Hub in Melbourn High Street, opposite the High Street public car park.

As always please let us know if you’d like to make an appointment to meet at any other time or closer to home. Cllr Susan van de Ven Tel 01763 261833 www.susanvandeven.com Cllr Jose Hales Tel 01763 221058 jose@josehales.me.uk