Friends of Keppel's Field

The Scholes Village Association is pleased to provide details of the Friends of Keppel's Field Group on its website. Please note that content within this page is the responsibility of the Friends of Keppel's Field Group and not the Scholes Village Association.

About us

We are a group of like minded people interested in protecting the natural environments local to Kimberworth Park, Scholes and Thorpe Hesley.

Our aims are to improve, preserve, and conserve Keppel’s Column, Keppel’s Field, Bray Plantation and Scholes Coppice and to promote their safe use as a resource for local people and schools. We also wish to promote activities to enhance their value as part of a local nature reserve and ancient woodland.

In support of these aims, we: support RMBC in its bid to restore Keppel’s Column, which might collapse in the next few years if not restored; monitor use and abuse of the field and woodlands; act as the community advisory board for the Field, Keppel’s Column, and Woodlands with RMBC; and run events, talks and visits to create interest in the field and woodlands.

New Members are always welcome and it costs nothing to join. If you would like to know more about Friends of Keppel’s Field, contact Barry Kaye, Chairman. See When and where we meet for details of meeting times.

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Our latest news

June 2006 Newsletter

Sue Dixon and members of Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust carried out a survey of the area around the heather on Keppel's Field. The survey was in preparation for fencing an enclosure for sheep which will then help to conserve the heather. The Coalfield Heathland Project is financing the work as part of its commitment to conserve the bio diversity of this site of former open cast mining.

The Friends of Keppel's Field are working to establish links with local Primary Schools to encourage the use of the field and neighbouring woods for fieldwork within the National Curriculum. To finance this, an application has been made for a grant from the BBC Breathing Spaces Campaign. We will know whether we have been successful in October 2006.

July 2005 Newsletter

The next meeting of the group will take place on Wednesday 20th July 2005. The meeting will be an active session, in the Field itself, to continue the work of identifying the plants. We will have specialists there to help us identify what is growing and how we should set up and monitor our Audit.

Meet at the Column. Bring a friend!

February 2005 Newsletter

The Annual General Meeting of the Friends took place on January 26th. At the meeting it was agreed that the Constitution be changed to include Scholes Coppice and Bray Plantation within the remit of the group. The amended consitution can be seen here. It was also agreed that meetings, in future, will take place quarterly.

Plans for 2005/06
Mel and Joan Jones have agreed to act as consultants to the Group. They have agreed to write an explanatory leaflet about the Field, the Coppice and the Plantation. The leaflet will be published during the year.

A detailed survey, using transects, will be done of the Field, so that monitoring of the condition of the Field can start to happen. This will include a photographic record.

We will work with RMBC to site way markers in the Coppice and the Plantation.

A clean up day to improve the semi-wetland area in the north east corner of the Coppice will be organised. We will then work with RMBC to improve the footbridge.

Work needs to done to restore the dry stone wall on the north west boundary of the Coppice. The wall has local historical significance as the boundary of the medieval deer park of Kimberworth.

Courses at the Northern College, Wentworth Castle, which may be of interest to members:
- Friday 18th March – 20th March 2005 Local Conservation Action.
- Monday 18th April – 20th April 2005 Ornithology.
- Friday 1st July – 3rd 2005 Local Natural History.
Courses, accommodation and meals are free. For a registration form, apply to: The Registry, Northern College, Wentworth College, Stainborough, Barnsley, S Yorks S75 3ET. Tel. 01226 776010.

Tell your friends about the Group and get them to express an interest. If we have a name and address, we can send them a paper copy of the newsletter.

October 2004 Stop Press

We have just received a small grant that will enable us to develop our 5 year plan further, hopefully to the point where we understand costs and benefits and are in a position to be able to apply for longer term funding to implement the plan.

October 2004 Newsletter

The Friends of Keppel Field has been in existence for a year, a good time to review what we have done and what we intend to do.

First, the meetings; we have met each month at the Thorpe Hesley and Scholes OPC on Brook Hill. The meetings have been well attended and good contributions made by local residents. Officers of the Council's Green Spaces Section have attended and we had a very enjoyable evening when they and Peter Bowler did slide shows on the flora and fauna of the Field. The highlight of our first year of meetings though, was a walk around the Coppice and the Field, accompanied by Mel and Joan Jones. Their fund of knowledge about the development of the landscape and peoples part in it, made it a very enlightening evening; one well worth repeating, perhaps with some younger members of the community.

Then the events; The Friends made an appearance at Scholes Village Fete and at Rotherham Show. We were at both to collect signatures to support our case for the restoration of Keppels Column. In case our position has not been made clear, we support its restoration as an important feature in the landscape, not its renovation to a point where it would be open to the public for them to climb.

When construction of the folly started in 1770, it was called the Navy Column and was to symbolise opposition to the use of the British Navy to subjugate the American Colonists. Whilst it was being built, a failed attempt to have Admiral Keppel convicted of treason, led his friend and political ally, the Marquis of Rockingham to rename and redesign the Column. Time has taken its toll and the spiral staircase, which holds the Column together, is disintegrating. £600,000 is needed to keep it standing.

During the two events at Scholes and Clifton Park, Rotherham, we gathered over 600 signatures from people concerned about the potential loss of such an important landmark.

Membership of the ‘Friends of Keppel Field’ is free. The costs of this newsletter are met by grants from ‘Voluntary Action Rotherham’. To join, contact Colin Barron.

Then there were the bird boxes; the idea being that children would construct the boxes from pre cut timber - all they had to do was nail the things together. In charge at Scholes Fete was Barry Kaye and other helpers; 13 boxes were made, numbered and will go into the Coppice in Spring. Exhaustion set in at about 4pm; things did not fit together as easily as had been suggested.

The remaining 17 boxes will form part of a school project at a local Primary School, which will ensure all boxes are ready for new tenants in the Spring.

What next? During the coming year we intend to monitor the impact of work carried out on the field and work closely with Paul Leonard of Green Spaces, to ensure the biodiversity of the area is maintained. Recently, we received reassurances about current work: no hedge cutting has taken place, just the cutting back of bramble, as advised by DEFRA; no grass cutting has been done, but a machine has been hired in to assist with scrub management and, inevitably, some grass was skimmed off in the process; grazing levels have been increased as appropriate for the time of year and the condition of the grassland, well within limits specified by DEFRA. In order to remove the required amounts of material, grazing levels are currently towards the upper limit for the site (11-12 cattle over 2 years of age). The group has also received an assurance that they will be consulted on the review of the management plan, when it is completed.

Please also see RMBC's Scholes Coppice & Keppel's page.

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Forthcoming events

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When and where we meet

Meetings are held on the last Wednesday of each month in the Old People’s Centre, Brook Hill, Thorpe Hesley at 7.30pm.

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Contact Numbers

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Our Constitution

Name

The name of the group shall be The Friends of Keppel’s Field.

Area

The area of benefit shall be Keppel’s Field and the local environment surrounding the Field, including Scholes Coppice and Bray Plantation.

Aims and Objectives

Membership

Management

Annual General meeting (AGM)

General Meetings

Finance

Changes to the Constitution

Dissolution of the Group

If the Committee decides to dissolve the group then it shall call a SGM which can dissolve the group by a two-thirds majority. In respect of finances any money leftover shall be applied to purposes in keeping with the aims of the group. If the Committee no longer exists, any four members may call a SGM. There must be two weeks notice for a dissolution meeting and, for the purpose of dissolution, the Quorum need not apply. All books and documents of the group shall be placed with such a person or organisation for safe-keeping as the meeting shall decide. After discharge of any outstanding debts or binding commitments, any remaining funds shall be passed to a similar organisation in Rotherham.

This document was adopted as the Constitution of The Friends of Keppel’s Field at a Public Meeting held at the OAP Centre, Brook Hill, Thorpe Hesley on 25.02.2005.

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Our Aims and Objectives

Objective 1 – Keppel’s Column

Aims:

We will support RMBC in its endeavours to raise the necessary funding to restore Keppel’s Column and then to link the monument with others in the area, as part of a tourist trail. The friends wish to ensure that there is no detrimental impact on the environment or local housing and that local input is provided to ensure local issues, like badly way-marked footpaths etc. are taken into account.

The friends also wish the plan for Keppel’s Column to integrate with those for Caesar’s Fort and the Bell Pits.

Objective 2 – Scholes Coppice

Scholes Coppice is an ancient woodland that was last coppiced in 1726 with largely sweet chestnut and beech rather than the natural mix of oak, birch, holly, hazel, witch elm and wild cherry that you would expect to exist. The wood canopy is too dense for the natural chain of flowers, insects, birds, predators to exist. Whilst RMBC has a management plan in place, and have created tree glades by selected tree felling, flower growth has not been stimulated and the glades are overrun with sweet chestnut seedlings.

Aims:

To develop the wood to a more natural state and get the wildlife back in the wood, by ensuring a better mix of trees and flowers and thinning out the tree canopy. To reintroduce the regular coppicing of the wood in order to encourage nightingales, which only nest in 7 year old coppices.

If possible, to gain a useful by-product, charcoal, from the coppicing, without damaging the environment. The creation of new jobs would open up funding sources for other work in the wood. We should influence RMBC’s management plan for 2002-2006.

Notes:

The nearest coppiced wood is Whitwell. A good example of an ancient woodland is Woolly Wood. There are 120 ancient woodlands in Sheffield and 20 in Rotherham. Based on the words in Mel Jones’s book, a grant of £1.5m has been awarded for the upkeep of 11 of these in Rotherham, 22 in Sheffield and 2 in Barnsley.

Objective 3: Caesar’s Camp

The hill fort known as Caesar’s Camp is unusual in its location as it is not built on a hill. An archaeological dig found a post hole that indicated that there would have been a wooden palisade along the top of the earthwork and so it is a defensive structure.
The earthworks were being damaged by bikers. RMBC and others have taken measures to improve the boundaries of the wood to keep the bikers out. The earthworks are covered in sweet chestnut seedlings. The information board has been damaged and there are no way-markers.

Aims:

To improve way-marking and information available to the public about the earthworks, either in the form of the metal information boards at Keppel’s Column or information leaflets in the library, or both. Information leaflets could also include information about the wood, and the ditch that marks the boundary of the deer park.

Objective 4: Bell Pits in Bray Plantation

There were many bell pits in S Yorkshire, but many of them have been flattened and more and more are disappearing. Some still exist at Tankersley and aerial photos of Thorpe Common show where ones previously existed there. The 12 or so bell pits in the plantation are likely to be long surviving, as the land is unlikely to be developed. All the bell pits in Bray Plantation are plotted on the 1:25 OS map. No Bell pit has been excavated in S Yorkshire.

Aims:

To find out more about the bell pits, by enabling one of the bell pits to be excavated, making contact with the experts through the SY Archaeological Society.

To improve visitor access and information by:

Objective 5: Scholes Coppice Semi-dry wetland

To the north of the wood, is an area of semi-dry wetland. The pond in winter dries out in the summer and the friends do not understand why RMBC wish it to remain a semi-dry area rather than a wetland area.

There are areas of improvement needed:

Aim:

To address the areas of improvement and understand why RMBC wishes for this area to be a semi-dry area rather than a wetland.

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Links

Neither the Friends of Keppel's Field Group or the Scholes Village Association are responsible for the content of external internet sites linked to below.

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