Society of St Michael's & Kingsbury

St Michael's Village Newsletter

Spring/Summer 2018 no 63

Visit our website: www.stmichaelsvillage.org.uk

Message from your Committee

We hope you have all been enjoying the better weather after that rather prolonged winter. In this issue we look at the problems with the lake and the plans for improvement of the situation. Don't miss our summer visit to the Bishop's garden! Summer Visit – 16th June

Enjoy an exclusive visit to the gardens of Abbey Gate House, home of the Bishop of , on Saturday 16th June. The garden covers just over 2 acres and has been transformed in recent years. It is divided into several sections with different styles of planting. Bishop Alan, who is a . keen gardener, will be on hand to answer questions.

Meet in front of Abbey Gate House, 4 Abbey Mill Lane AL3 4HD at 5.00pm on Saturday 16th June. If you are interested please let Jan know at [email protected] Beach maintenance - Your committee have been out again this spring, cleaning up rotten leaves and tidying up the gravel, so that our beach can look at it's best for the summer months.

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SSMK holds names, addresses and e-mails, plus subscriptions received for paid up members of the society. We use this data to keep a record of the members of the society and administer the collection of subscriptions. This information is not shared with any 3rd party.

If you are happy for your data to be used in this way there is no need to take any action. Please contact our membership secretary [email protected] if you wish to have your name removed from our register.

If you have any comments on this newsletter or would like to contribute articles for future issues please contact the Editor by email – [email protected] Archaeological Open Day 24th March

We have covered plans to improve St Michael’s School in previous editions of the newsletter. Work has now moved to the upper school site where the existing buildings are being extended southwards (towards the church). As with most of St Michael's village, this site lies over the heart of the former Roman – so building work was carefully planned around the need to carefully uncover and record any archaeological remains in the earthworks.

On 24 March the school, together with their architects (Synergy), builder (Claridge & Hall Ltd) and archaeological specialists (Oxford Archaeology) organised an open day to allow the public to look over the works.

This was very well attended; in fact a queuing system had to be set up to allow everyone a chance to view the site. Some of the artefacts uncovered were on display – these included coins, pottery and animal bones, all dating back to the Roman period. The main attraction was a view over the excavation, which is shown on the attached photograph.

The most prominent feature uncovered was a corner of the Portico, which is helpfully indicated by the nearest sign. The Portico was a covered walkway surrounding the Basilica, which would lie to the left side of the photo under the churchyard & church. The Basilica was the principal building in the centre of the Roman town and was the heart of law making and a key meeting point for the citizens. To the right of the Portico you can see large stones compacted together overlying gravel; this was Watling Street – the main road between London & the Northwest (the A5 of its day), which ran through the town.

The site will be covered up by the new building but, in what is a really nice touch, a section of glass flooring will allow pupils to look down on the base of a column – as a constant reminder of the past beneath their feet.

For those who are interested in finding out more, we suggest you look at the website https://locationzero.wixsite.com/stm1 which has been created by the photographer Andrew Rafferty, and has a lot more detail on what has been found. Bill Free

Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Garden

The Wildlife Trust's garden in Verulamium Park has sprung into life thanks to continued volunteer work. Last year major works to extend the garden, thanks to Tesco's 'Bags of Help' scheme, saw weekly work parties dig, plant and grow the garden to double its former size. Now the sun is shining and the garden has had a chance to settle in, it's thriving and blooming beautifully.

If you take a trip to the garden be sure to pop in and get inspiration to make your garden more wildlife friendly! There's a pond, compost heap, insect hotel and of course lots of colourful plants to attract pollinators.

The Trust's annual 30 Days Wild challenge is coming up- can you do something wild every day for the month of June? Start small and eat breakfast outside or take a wild walk through the park. Sign up at wildlifetrusts.org/30dayswild.

Keep an eye on the Trust's website to check for events taking place locally – hertswildlifetrust.org.uk Interesting things about the park

As part of sustainable St. Albans week the park rangers from the sub-contractors John O'Connor ran a couple of interesting guided walks round the park on 25th April, which were well attended.

We found out a number of interesting facts about the park:

* The park covers 165 acres and was bought by the council in 1928 from Lord Verulam for £6,500.

* The grass is cut twice a month but in Seabrook meadow it is only cut twice a year to preserve wildlife and promote biodiversity. The yellow rattle has been planted to encourage wildflower diversity by preventing the domination of grass species that prevent wildflowers from growing.

* In 1950 the park became a scheduled ancient monument, which is great for its protection, but which needs consent from English Heritage for every little thing, such as the location of the rubbish bins. * The mosaic floor in the hypocaust building is cleaned once a year – they were in the process of doing this when we visited, . with a delicate combination of brushing and hoovering. The original floor would have been polished which would have made the colours brighter.

* The sand in the volleyball pitch came from the London Olympics beach volleyball pitch.

* During the war the lake was drained as the Germans used to use its reflection of the moon at night as a waymarker

* The Roman part of Verulamium was excavated in the 1930's by Sir Mortimer Wheeler and the museum was built in 1938 to hold the exhibits found during that excavation. The museum was then extended in 1998. Upcoming events - Gorhambury talks

Due to major refurbishment works at Gorhambury, public Message from St.Michael's access to the 18th century rooms is suspended until further primary school PTA notice. However, there is a schedule of of 'Gorhambury in Focus' talks and activities at the House until October including: St. Michael's primary school PTA would like to thank the *The Countess of Verulam – My life and art at Gorhambury people of St. Michael's who donated or bought items at our * The Viscountess Grimston – The Gorhambury Building jumble sale in February. We Project revealed raised an amazing £800 from your kind donations, from * Mark Todhunter, Head Gardener – Gorhambury Gardens selling some items on ebay and History and Tour a very successful sale on the day. These talks cost £15 and are repeated at various dates until October. If you are interested please contact Heidi Treadwell to We will be planning our next book your place either by email at [email protected] one for autumn so please do or telephone 01727855000. Details of the talks and other have a pre-Christmas clear out activities can be found on the Gorhambury House website at for us! www.gorhamburyestate.co.uk/What's-On Revitalising the

The Environment Agency, Affinity Water, St Albans City and District Council and County Council are working together to develop proposals that will improve the River Ver and the Verulamium Park lakes. The River Ver is a chalk stream, which is a rare type of habitat with only around 200 in the world. However our river is in a very poor condition for a number of reasons and this project aims to return the river to its natural state as part of the Chalk Streams Partnership, a wider programme of projects that aims to protect and restore our rare chalk streams.

As part of this programme Affinity Water has agreed to cease or reduce the amount of water that they abstract from groundwater sources. The project has been split into six sections or 'reaches'. The part of the river that flows through St. Michael's is Reach 1, which covers the River Ver from St. Michael's Street through the upper section of the park down to the Causeway including the lakes. The lakes are artificial and have suffered badly from water quality issues in recent years. .They were constructed between 1929 and 1932 partly to give work to unemployed people during the depression. They are lined with concrete and are only around one metre deep. In the early days they were dredged at regular intervals but this has not happened for a large number of years.

The lakes suffer from a low throughflow of water. When the river level is too low, no water enters the lake. The lake is large and shallow so has a high surface area to volume ratio and hence gets warm in summer allowing algal blooms and oxygen crashes which are bad for wildlife and water quality. The project proposal does not include the dredging of the lake, as it would be too expensive. Instead it proposes that the route of the river be changed at the bottom end so that it comes through the lake at this point and that the fish pass be removed. Part of the plan includes planting soft edges to the lake and increasing the size of the Heron islands so that there is less water surface area. This would create a wetland habitat around the lake that would be accessible by boardwalks.

The SSMK committee has responded in writing to this proposal. We have expressed our support for the plans to improve the river particularly relating to bringing more light to the river bed and the establishment of gravel beds for fish swarming, but question the removal of the fish pass.

We expressed great concern over the proposals for the lake. The current situation is clearly unacceptable but we consider that the silt should be removed from the lake prior to new measures being introduced to prevent further silting

If you would like to read the SSMK response it is posted on our website. If you wish to read the full proposal it can be found on the website www.stalbans.gov.uk/leisure-and-culture/parks- and-green-spaces.