Up! 2011:Layout 1 01/03/2011 23:30 Page 1 DISCOVER the North Wessex Downs – an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty ON THE NORTH WESSEX DOWNS ESSEX W DO TH W | WILTSHIRE | OXFORDSHIRE | HAMPSHIRE | WEST BERKSHIRE R N O WIN: a very special Sony camera S N A R Y 2011 calendar: North Wessex Downs events E T A U O A F E O B U AL TS UR Local products directory: Eat UP! Drink UP! Buy UP! TANDING NAT EXPLORE Up! 2011:Layout 1 01/03/2011 23:30 Page 2 1(:%85< Where the South East meets the South West For where to go, what to do and where to stay visit our new website www.visitnewbury.org.uk www.visitnewbury.org.uk Up! 2011:Layout 1 01/03/2011 23:30 Page 3 CONTENTS 4-5 Sustainable Development Welcome Funding 6-8 Walking with white horses 9 Ancient windows AONB Director Henry Oliver invites 11 Busy beez! 12-13 Helping farmland birds everyone to enjoy the North Wessex Downs 14-15 Literary locations 16-17 The AONB Team WELCOME to the magazine that helps you 18-19 NCN4: Our quiet artery discover the North Wessex Downs Area of 20-21 WIN a Sony NEX camera! Outstanding Natural Beauty. 23 Basketmaker: Christine Brewster What is an ‘Area of Outstanding Natural 24-25 The AONB Calendar Beauty’? Simply some of Britain’s finest 26-27 Avebury views improved countryside officially recognised as being up 28-37 Local Products Directory there with the Cotswolds and the Lake 39 Stonecarver: Joss Nankoo District. 40-41 LEADER Funding 43 Dark skies The North Wessex Downs are a huge swathe 44-46 Alternative energy of stunning countryside right in the heart of Produced for the crowded southern England somewhere with North Wessex Downs AONB on behalf of the Council of Partners space to walk, cycle on or offroad, ride, fish, by canoe, sail on our canal, watch wildlife, ADVANCE PUBLICATIONS 0118 926 9120 explore prehistoric sites, stargaze, eat, drink [email protected] www.advance-publications.co.uk and be merry. screen; and tempt you with our Local Products Directory, the guide to all that’s good in the Let us take you on a tour of our wonderful North Wessex Downs. white horses; show you where you can cycle Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the contents and the publisher or sail your way across country far from noise And remember to enter our competition to cannot accept liability for any error or omissions. Reproduction of any part of this and bustle; introduce you to the people win an amazing Sony NEX camera. Most of all, publication without permission is forbidden. working to encourage farmland birds; lead we hope you’re inspired to go out and enjoy Published 2011 you to places immortalised on page and this beautiful landscape. Front cover: Beacon Hill, Hampshire UP! On The North Wessex Downs | 3 Up! 2011:Layout 1 01/03/2011 23:31 Page 4 Happy 5th birthday SDF ...and thanks a million! THAT’S £1 million in support for local power, Henry II’s hunting lodge, a groups, heritage and wildlife bodies, North Wessex Downs projects over the last mobile observatory, chalk hill figures, businesses and local authorities. five years provided through the stimulus of stonecraft skills, community planning, Contact: Oliver Cripps 01488 680457. the AONB’s Sustainable Development countryside walks, a food festival and During the past year SDF granted Fund SDF. conservation work for bats, owls, Picture: Woodman Peter Since the SDF grant scheme started in bumblebees and trout.” £57,753 to 17 projects. They 2005 almost £350,000 has been “Not only is that diversity stunning but generated £136,687 match distributed to 85 projects in the AONB. all these SDF projects help to advance the funding in cash and in kind. The projects have attracted match aims of our AONB Management Plan. funding of cash, materials, services and That’s a real winwin result for local DISCOVERING THE PAST . people’s time worth more than £725,000, communities today and the future of the ■ Kingsclere Heritage Association, with enabling SDF coordinator Oliver Cripps North Wessex Downs AONB.” the University of Southampton, has carried and colleagues to raise a toast on out historic landscape surveys on the achieving its first million pictured above: FRESH FUNDING NOW AVAILABLE Hampshire Downs, including a Bronze Age “We provide SDF grants up to £10,000, SDF is administered by the North Wessex round barrow, a RomanoBritish and the diversity of the projects proposed Downs AONB and funded by DEFRA settlement, and a 12th century hall built by applicants never ceases to amaze me. through Natural England. Applications for for Plantagenet kings. Excavation open This year alone we’ve been able to innovative, smallscale projects are days enabled school group and wider support schemes involving hydroelectric welcome from community and village public involvement main picture. Pupils field-walking for ancient artefacts. Pupils field-walking 4 | UP! On The North Wessex Downs Up! 2011:Layout 1 01/03/2011 23:31 Page 5 ■ White horses and hill figures ■ Walking around Hamstead Marshall is ■ Burbage Sports Club installed owl and were highlighted in a very more fun thanks to a range of local walking bat boxes on land near its village successful exhibition and guides containing clear route maps, and sportsground. Members got specialist study days staged by the information on land use, history, flora, wildlife advice and built the boxes Wiltshire Heritage Museum fauna, viewpoints and the Country Code. themselves using materials from local in Devizes see pages 68. ■ Dark skies are now being studied by builders. www.wiltshireheritage.org.uk young eyes thanks to SDFfunded building ■ The Goring and Streatley hydro ■ Thousands of Iron Age finds and equipping of a mobile observatory by electricity project has been able to uncovered at Wittenham The Richmond Fellowship article page 43. undertake work on feasibility, design and Clumps, when Channel 4’s Time www.richmondfellowship.org.uk flood risk modelling for renewable energy Team undertook a ‘dig’ assisted by generation at a weir on the River Thames ■ Ashampstead residents have produced a the Northmoor Trust, Oxford Archaeology see pages 4446. book for newcomers to the community to and local volunteers, have now been encourage them to discover, understand, ■ Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife detailed in an SDFfunded book. value and contribute to the parish. An SDF Trust H&IoWWT has developed a wildlife ■ The Friends of the Ridgeway have been grant also assisted production of the mapping toolkit to help local people able to develop their plans for a new path, communityled Ashampstead Parish Plan, a include biodiversity in their communityled The Great Stones Way, linking the ancient fiveyear initiative to protect and improve planning process. The toolkit highlights monuments of Avebury and Stonehenge. beauty and tranquillity. key habitats and local species. North www.ridgewayfriends.org.uk Wessex Downs AONB is seeking ■ Traditional stonecraft is being used to . PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE communities to pilot this toolkit. Contact Oliver Cripps on 01488 680457 help survey, maintain and restore Victorian ■ Redds in the bed? Action for the River or Elizabeth Allinson H&IoWWT on 01256 memorials in local churchyards. Kennet ARK staged a training course to 381186. ■ www.stoneartcrafts.co.uk article page 39 enable volunteers to recognise, survey and record wild brown trout pictured spawning ENJOYING THE PRESENT…. nests redds in the river bed of the upper ■ Hungerford Food Festival is now an Kennet. ARK has mapped the project results annual event thanks to SDF funding and to monitor the relationship between wild the support of local community groups brown trout and nonnative stocked fish. such as the Hungerford Environmental www.riverkennet.org Action Team. ■ The Bumblebee Conservation Trust ■ An interactive wildlife trail, set around produced a leaflet to inform farmers and the Organic Research Centre’s Elm Farm at land managers about managing habitats Hamstead Marshall, now has better signage for the endangered shrill carder bee and publicity to attract visitors. Contact article page 11. Roger Hitchings on 01488 658298 ext 512. www.bumblebeeconservation.org.uk UP! On The North Wessex Downs | 5 Up! 2011:Layout 1 01/03/2011 23:32 Page 6 Walking with white horses THE North Wessex Downs AONB may be White Horse and it is the only one of our 49m long by 180ft 55m high white horse further away from the coast than almost AONB white horses facing eastwards like its can be seen from 22 miles 35km away. Cut anywhere else in England but visitors can ancient cousin at Uffington. in 1812 for Robert Pile from Manor Farm, still enjoy dramatic white horses. Other North Wessex Downs white horses who ended up paying twice when the first Carved into the chalk downland and can be seen at Hackpen Hill and Broad contractor absconded with the money. visible for miles, there are eight huge Town north of Avebury; at Oldbury Castle BROAD TOWN: Circa 1864, 79ft 24m long equine hill figures contained within the near Cherhill; near Alton Barnes and by 59ft 18m high. Accounts suggest it AONB each accessible via a beautiful Pewsey, both southwest of Marlborough, was cut by farmer William Simmonds. panoramic rural walk. which itself has a white horse tucked away Visible from 20 miles 32km away, best The most famous is the prehistoric behind Marlborough College on Grantham viewed from Broad Town village. Uffington White Horse near Wantage Hill at Preshute. CHERHILL: Secondlargest, secondoldest thought to be the oldest hill figure in white horse in Wiltshire. Cut in 1780, 128ft Britain and also the largest at 360ft White horse whereabouts! 39m long by 141ft 43m high, visible 110m from head to tail.