Glimpses of Underground Herefordshire
Although the Conserving Herefordshire Ice-Age Ponds project’s funding is paused whilst we await the outcome of the bid for the second (delivery-stage) from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, four days of coring at pond sites took place in the period September 9th-12th. The effort was ably and energetically led by Dr. Warren Eastwood of the University of Birmingham assisted by several project volunteers.
Beth Andrews undertook all the contacts with landowners and worked on-site and Ian Fairchild recorded it all! David Tubbs, a University technician, provided valuable support on the last two days when peat cores were taken for laboratory analysis probably by the two undergraduate students who each attended a day. The sediment cores were taken using a variety of types of augering device including the ingenious Russian corer.
Samples will be processed to recover pollen to examine the vegetation history over the past few thousand years and some samples will be carbon-dated. Results will be combined with previous coring studies to tell the story of Herefordshire during and since the last ice age.
In the coming months Earth Heritage staff will also be working on our contribution to an exhibition on the Ice Age to be held at Hereford Museum from April to June and we hope to be able to enhance our offering with resources from new Lottery funding – fingers crossed for the funding result in November!
A Huge “Thank you”
We couldn’t have done all this wonderful work without the amazing people who gave their time to survey ponds, let us visit their ponds and helped us find new ponds, research history and connect with landowners.
To say a huge “Thank You” we would like to invite you to our Project Celebration at Weobley Village Hall, Gadbridge Road, HR4 8SN, on Thursday 24th October from 2-4pm. As well as plenty of tea, coffee and cake we will have some displays showing some of the huge amount of data we collected and our plans for the future. Please let Beth know if you are coming (just so we have enough cake) by emailing e.andrews@worc.ac.uk. We look forward to seeing you soon.’
Finally, a little reminder: If you have attended one of our training days but haven’t received your copy of “Kettle hole ponds survey method manual” please can you get in touch with Beth on e.andrews@worc.ac.uk and we can make sure one gets posted out to you.
0 Comments