Kelston Roundhill and Roundhill Barn

Wilts-based garden and music presenter Verity Sharp made some insightful comments about the Roundhill and landscape on Record Review Sat 8 April – to hear it check out the blog post over at Kelston Records.

Sunrise photo by Tim Graham. He says he’s always up early…beautiful today!

We’ve revised the Kelston Roundhill permissive path agreement with B&NES. This is the contract which allows people to walk on private land from the Cotswold Way and Cullimore’s Lane up to Kelston Clump to admire the views without creating a right of way.

The routes are unchanged. The changes are first that dogs must now be kept on a lead, and second that it is now explicit that organisised events such as fun runs require prior written permission from the owner and notification to the farmers.

The Kelston Roundhill permissive path routes – the green lines – are unchanged.

The revisions have been done in response to two problems. The first is unsatisfactory dealings with commercial running events businesses who charge customers to run on private land and leave farmers to clear up the mess and repair the damage.

The second is the significant percentage of dog owners who behave irresponsibly. We’ve seen children knocked down by dogs and sheep worried. Many people don’t accept this as a serious issue but in living memory three dogs have been shot by farmers locally for worrying farm animals; one case was a generation ago and the people involved are still not on speaking terms.

Everyone is in favour of more fresh air and exercise, and both the owners and farming tenants willingly share the land for suitable recreation. But we require businesses wanting to use the land to behave in a businesslike way, and we’ve had to make this explicit. And the growing numbers of school children visiting take precedence over the industrial needs of professional dog walkers.

Our Doris casualty is a lovely pollarded ash maybe 60-80 years old. The stem isn’t huge but it might make a long bench for the smaller people who will be visiting in increasing numbers thanks to our new schools partnerships. Time to consult Ed of the woods.

Barrow’s Style is a huge field. Formerly a quarry, then used for landfill it now has several plantations coming along well. But the border along the new track laid by our neighbour looks bare, and looks as though it needs a new hedge.

Storm Doris took down the lovely, quirky but flawed ash tree in Quarter Acre field. We’ll see if there are any planks to be had, but it’s more likely firewood.

After the BGS volunteers had left, the apple trees they were going to plant showed up. So we planted them out today. From a weather point of view that turned out well; two days ago we had storm Doris brewing with wind and some lashing rain. Today we could survey the storm damage and plant apples in bright warm February sunshine.

We planted 24 cider apples (Dabinett, Kingston Black, Browns and Sweet Alford) 10 dessert apples and a couple of quince.

New row of cider apple trees all planted thanks (l to r) to Jack, Antonio, & Graham.

Before: the ride needs to be cut, stakes lined out, holes dug, trees put in and tied.

During: Sean takes the topper along the ride.

The eminent composer and Pataphysician Professor Andrew Hugill has started a new blog about musical composition. And he has decided that the inspiration for his next symphony – also the location it will first be performed – is to be our very own Kelston Roundhill!

The inspiration for Prof Andrew Hugill’s forthcoming symphony in four movements.

The Kelston Roundhill project was always intended to have a cultural and educational dimension. But it’s hard to put into words how far this news takes that.

Prof Hugill is a serious esoteric contempory composer whose work is revered in places such as France and China. He combines musical creativity and expertise with expertise in computer science and literature in a multi-disciplinary package of professional creativity. But before anyone gets po-faced about this he is also a member of the Collège de Pataphysique – a wholly ridiculous anti-discipline of absurd hilarity that started in early c20th Paris. He holds the Ordre de la Grande Guidouille and the rank of Commandeur Requis.

So his Kelston Round Hill Symphony promises to be both serious and extraordinary. He plans it in four movements, representing the Roundhill first as a physical object, then its history, its spirit and finally the people and buildings.

Read all about it on his new blog here. Keep an eye on the Kelston Records web site for tickets in summer 2018.

It was a joy to welcome a party of 20 teachers from Bristol Grammar School (BGS) for lunch and the afternoon of Weds 22 Feb. Led by the irrepressible outdoor activities teacher Mrs Kelly Murphy they came for a half term picnic lunch and an afternoon of work volunteering at the Old Barn.

Some of the BGS teachers cleared ground and planted manuka shrubs under the wall to the west of the barn

BGS is one of four schools with new partnership agreements in place for multiple visits to Kelston Roundhill. The teachers who came covered subjects including art, sport, RE & philosophy, design tech, physics and biology.

They came equipped for hard labour. We’d ordered apple trees for them to plant but they failed to show up. So with the farmer Graham Padfield’s help we got them planting a handful of manuka bushes (for possible enhanced honey quality) .They tackled a large pile of unsorted stones and did a litter pick up at the clump.

Meanwhile our other farming neighbour Gerald Robinson cleared scrub and brambles by the barn, uncovering a wrought iron gate as he did so (see below). So the area around the Old Barn is sarting to look much tidied up.

Others got stuck into tackling a pile of stones, stacking resuable Bath stone and filling in a ditch with the smaller rubble.

Now the BGS teachers know their way around the Old Barn they can start to arrange day trips and longer outings pupils to learn, do art and discoer the outdoors.

The other schools with Kelston Roundhill partnership agreements in place are Springfield Academy in Calne, Kingswood Prep in Bath and our closest neighbour Weston Academy.

Jon and Harry Holder in the Kelston Forge.

Answer: you don’t. Kelston’s one industry is the Kelston Forge, where father and son Jon and Harry Holder work as blacksmiths.

We discovered an old gate behind some brambles, but we won’t have to go far to get it repaired. If we’d needed a pint of milk of course that would be a different matter: several miles away.

Kelston Forge will have this wrought iron gate fixed in no time, including putting the traditional oak rail along the top.