The accounts for the year ending 31st August 2017 completed by myself and audited by Philip Sugden showed a surplus of £633.31. The accounts reflect the increase in membership which resulted in a rise of £263 in subscription income. Income from Visitors’ fees also rose by £66. Refreshment income produced a net figure of £157.66. Donations amounted to £154. Fund-raising events raised £627.50 taking into account costs of £94.30. With regards to expenditure, the Speakers’ honoraria rose from £327 to £472.50 as a result of more speakers and an increase in associated costs. A laptop case and display boards were purchased during 2016/2017 incurring expenditure of £140.69. The Society gave a donation to Grassington Devonshire Institute to fund the purchase of one chair in the Octagon Theatre at a cost of £150. To provide improved screen viewing a projector was hired and costs in this respect amounted to £130.

I am pleased to report that Upper Wharfedale Field Society is currently in a strong financial position. Reserves are available to fund a new website during 2018 and to fund the Society’s 70th Anniversary celebrations in 2019.
Ann Shaw

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Is it really a year ago that Ian Clark decided to step down, after seven years of commitment to the Society and I was elected General Secretary for the second time? Thank you Ian for all your hard work. My first task was to ensure that the membership list was up-to-date. We have 89 members of which four have honorary life membership. Sadly this year we had to say goodbye to several long standing members. Jean Reinsch passed away in June 2017. She was a founder member of the Society, a friend of Arthur Raistrick and walks secretary for many years. Brontë Bedford-Payne died in August 2017, having been General Secretary, President, and leader of the local history group. Our former treasurer, Marilyn Lovitt, sadly passed away in March.

Four people have decided to step down from their duties this year. Bryan Pearson has looked after the lighting and sound and has been an excellent fixer of microphones for the speakers. Thanks also go to Val Walker Wilton for starting the refreshment rota which has meant that members and visitors have been encouraged to chat after the lectures. It has also brought in some extra income for the Society.

Patrick and Sally Wiegand are stepping down from editing the Bulletin. They have produced it for the last five years as well as this year’s shorter annual report. Their professionalism has been admired by our members and by other organisations. They also produced the green programme cards, and organised the cover photo competition. We will all miss those splendid Bulletins. The Society’s publications will in future be available online. Before Patrick and Sally took over the editorship, it was Anne Sugden who produced the Bulletin. Sadly, Anne was not well enough to be with us this year and with great regret we learned that she died in June. We send our condolences to Philip as well as our thanks for being honorary auditor.

It has been reassuring to have Ann Shaw as our treasurer and this year she has secured a £900 Roger Stott Community grant for the development of our new website. There has been an increase in visitors this year, in part due to Dave Knight’s publicity. Dave and Chris Alder have been researching the new web site and Chris will become Web Coordinator, aiming to train us in using the new site. Peggy Wright has taken charge of our library. Wally Wilton did a sterling job in obtaining eminent speakers, assisted by Marg Smith. Phyllida Oates, in addition to being walks secretary, has organised a number of fundraising events. Many thanks to all the committee as well as you, the members.
Hanneke Dye

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Hi, Pete Wright here and I will be president of the Field Society from September, 2018. I live at Linton Falls with my wife Peggy who you will know as Society librarian. 2019 will be an interesting year as it marks the 70th anniversary of the Society and we are planning a celebration of what we have achieved in both written and visual form. As you all know, the Society consists of several groups and many of us only attend one or two of these. This year why not try attending new group activity?

Pete Wright. President Upper Wharfedale Field Society

It would be good to have one or two of our celebratory events linked into the June Festival which would benefit from wider publicity. I was also thinking that we should have a social event to mark the anniversary and invite relatives of our founder members to attend. If you have any thoughts on this please let me know. We have already had one outing using the community minibus and it would be good if we were to use this when possible to reduce the use of fuel and environmental pollution. So, please remember, attend more groups and bring a guest who may be encouraged to join. Finally, if you attend a meeting elsewhere with a great speaker please tell us as we may wish to invite them.

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We live a few hundred metres from the river in Upper Wharfedale, by the popular Dales Way walking path. We have often wandered about at dusk, when the mammals, especially rabbits and bats, are more evident. And secretly we wished for a sighting of an otter, Lutra lutra. We have failed to spot them on Scottish lochs. We have missed them at RSPB Leighton Moss and YWT Staveley Reserve.

We know there are sightings on the Wharfe. And there are mysterious heaps of cray fish shells on the banks of the river . . .

August 8th, 8.30pm, and we’ve worked in the garden all day. “I’m off to the river. I won’t bother with a camera, it’s too dark.” We both go. As we stand on the bank in fading light, an unmistakable head looms out of the water and
an otter swims towards our bank. Instinctively we run quietly upstream but we don’t see it again. The next day I do take a camera. We make it down to the river in time to see an otter swim across in exactly the same way. This time,
when we creep upstream we find ourselves looking right into its face. And I get pictures to prove it. We see the large circles of water and the straight bubble stream as it swims below the surface. We cannot believe our good luck.

Otter.
Photo: Ros Lilley.

This event changes our habits for the rest of August. Every evening when we are free, we wander to the river in the early evening. Sometimes we are joined by friends and neighbours. We have regular sightings of otter, between 8.15
and 9.00pm. We learn to watch for it coming, sweeping downstream from the bend in the river where the mallards roost. We often see it disappear under an overhanging willow on the opposite bank. Once we watch it climb out of the water onto a rock. Another time it climbs up the bank, under the willow and then out again and swims much further downstream. We learn to recognise its presence by the water patterns in the river as it swims past, even when
we don’t get a good view of the animal. We learn that we are unlikely to see it in our spot when water levels rise after heavy rain. Even when there is no sighting, there is a pleasure to standing in the drizzle in a warm, wet-smelling field in the company of fellow enthusiasts.

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One recent early September we’d gone for a walk on Grassington Moor and taken our sandwiches with us. Although it was sunny there was a strong breeze blowing so we wanted to sit somewhere sheltered and one of the old lead mining spoil heaps nicely served our purpose. While we were eating there was a rushing sound just behind us and something almost touched Jo’s shoulder before twisting away to one side. The merlin must have been intending to perch on the top of the spoil heap, and been very surprised to find our heads just below it!

Merlin.
Photo: Shravans14.

Experiences like this are infrequent, as merlin numbers on the moor are low and for much of the breeding season their behaviour is elusive. Juveniles in late summer or early autumn, sometimes still with a parent, often offer the
best chance. Without systematic surveying such as Peter Wright from Skipton carried out on Barden Moor and Fell from 1983 to 2002 (with extensions onto Grassington and Threshfield Moors from 1988) the local population is hard to gauge. Probably two pairs attempt to breed on Grassington Moor most years, but only occasionally one on Threshfield Moor. Here the greater density of paths can make noticing them easier, and a pair was seen to fledge at least
one chick in 2014. Either moor burning in that area that winter or the cold spring of 2015 apparently prevented a  repeat the next season. Moor burning is good for red grouse as it maintains a mix of younger heather for eating and denser older heather for shelter and nesting. For birds like merlins however which like large areas of undisturbed older heather for breeding, burning patches or strips to any significant extent can be detrimental. Large scale burning is also increasingly recognised as having environmental disadvantages through CO2 release into the atmosphere and by increasing flooding risks down valley by promoting faster rainfall run-off, which also raises
the costs of treating water downstream to remove the peat.

Another aspect of moorland management, predator control, can also be taken to excess through the illegal persecution of avian raptors, and there are known “sink areas” for kites, peregrines and hen harriers not far outside the Upper Wharfedale boundary. Even within it two peregrines have been found shot in recent years: one on Grassington Moor some five Augusts ago was taken into care and recovered, one in Hebden Gill in October 2016 had suffered a fatal head wound. The legal control of foxes, stoats, weasels and crows is however generally helpful to wild birds. Fewer animals to steal eggs or chicks helps the breeding productivity of golden plover and moorland edge curlews and lapwings as well as the grouse.

Any such help is useful to most wader species, whose local numbers on the moors are at best static (e.g. curlew) or generally declining (e.g. lapwing, golden plover and dunlin). Only oystercatchers are now expanding uphill in some places from the valley floors and can increasingly be seen on the moorland edge. Nationally the breeding population of both curlew and lapwing has declined significantly over the last fifty years, with curlews retreating from most of SW England, Ireland and Wales. The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) recently estimated that over 40% of English inland breeding curlew, lapwing and snipe are now found on the in-bye fields along the moorland edges of Northern England, emphasising the value of those we see in our area. The decline in lapwing is easy to appreciate in some places locally, for example while driving up from Halton Gill to the Wharfedale watershed between Pen-y-Ghent and Fountains Fell, but is not always so obvious elsewhere. Breeding numbers do in any case vary naturally from year to year, and a repeat survey of a two kilometre square between Skirethorns and Bordley last year found over twice as many lapwing as in 2008. Sadly there were also several sightings of stoats and the number of fledged young was low.

Golden plover have never been as plentiful in Upper Wharfedale as they are north of Wensleydale, where the extent of their preferred boggy moorland is much greater. Small numbers do breed annually on Grassington Moor and a restoration of predator control on Threshfield Moor in 2009 brought a couple of pairs back there. Breeding populations of both golden plover and lapwing generally leave our moors in July or August, resumably for lowland pastures or the coast in the first instance. In October and November however it is not unusual to find flocks of either on the limestone pastures fringing Grassington Moor or roosting on the shores of Grimwith Reservoir. Whether these are local birds returning to the area for a while after moulting, or migrant birds from further north, is unclear. One clue might be the regular presence in spring of migrant northern race golden plover at Dale Head on the Wharfedale/ Ribblesdale watershed, at a time when the greater extent of black feathering in their breeding plumage allows them to be distinguished from Pennine birds. Against this background of scarcity and decline it is good to report that our three regular breeding moorland songbirds – meadow pipit, skylark and wheatear – seem from survey results to be generally holding their own. While there can of course be perceptible year to year fluctuations, all three remain easy to see and hear on moorland walks. Pipits are fairly catholic in their choice of upland habitat, skylarks prefer grassy areas and wheatears need stones or walls from which to watch for their insect prey. In consequence the latter two are normally commoner in limestone areas.

Two other noteworthy moorland songbirds, ring ouzel (the “mountain blackbird”) and twite (the “mountain linnet”) are scarce summer visitors here. The former prefer dampish gritstone valleys, and as the national opulation declines (probably due to habitat changes on their wintering grounds in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa) they are retreating from the more marginal breeding grounds on limestone scars which they did occupy twenty to thirty years ago. Birds do still appear on migration in Hebden Gill, and may breed in some years, but the Buttertubs Pass and Swaledale further north are much more reliable places to see them. Twite are birds of the moorland edge, needing heather to nest in and a mix of rough grassland and meadow to feed in, very much a declining habitat in recent years. The last proven local breeding was in 2011, again on the Pen-y-Ghent/Fountains Fell col.

Seeing either of these two species while out walking is a definite treat and, for those who look, late summer and autumn can also bring noteworthy birds of passage. Young marsh harriers for example are fairly regular in August
over Grassington Moor, a black redstart was seen there with late migrant wheatears in early October 2015 and a snow bunting in November 2009. Best of all perhaps was late September/early October 2010, when an unusual
influx of Lapland buntings from the Greenland breeding population appeared in NW Scotland and spread out south-eastwards across much of Britain. One of these apparently spent ten days near the spoil heaps NE of the chimney,
being seen three times in that period, and was a splendid sighting for this area. Winter apart, when red grouse can be the only species to be found, there are more birds on the moorland round here than most people realise.

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Ash dieback, also known as Chalara, is a disease of ash trees which arrived in England from Europe in 2012 and is spreading rapidly. It is already found in more than half the country and has been observed in Lower Grass Wood. To encourage awareness of ash dieback all English parishes have been invited to apply for tags to place on a few trees to help monitor and highlight the progress of the disease. The spread is by windblown spores of the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus and is about 10 miles per year.

Upper Wharfedale and Littondale have some of the most precious native ash woodlands in the country with their unique fauna and flora. The  loss of this habitat will fundamentally change our dales. The disease causes lesions on the trunk, bark and branches. The lesions tend to be centred round a small shoot which has died. The top of the tree may have died first while the lower branches still seem to remain normal. The spores enter the leaves on the crown of the tree and show discolouration and the leaf stalk may be brown. Good pictures of dieback can be seen at
ashtag.org/dieback-identification-guide.

British trees seem to show better resistance than those across much of Europe where up to 90% have died. The Government-funded Living Ash Project is trying to identify trees which show greatest resistance to the disease. A new danger to ash trees is likely to arrive in the form of a beetle, the emerald ash borer. Sadly, the trees most resistant to ash dieback appear to be most susceptible to damage by this beetle. Old ash trees may survive for some time, continuing to give protection to plants and wildlife, although they will finally succumb to other diseases when weakened. Large scale tree planting by the National Trust has seen more than 100 000 trees planted in the last two years on the Malham Tarn Estate and the Yockenthwaite Estate. Already Parish Wildlife Projects have encouraged local communities to plant native trees on Parish land and on land offered by local farmers and other land owners. Perhaps then there will be more woodland to receive the hoped for resistant ash trees of the future. There is no cure for ash dieback but genome research may give cautious optimism that we will have some ash trees remaining in generations to come.

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This year 33 pilgrims from the Field Society made their way to King’s Lynn, appropriately formerly styled Bishop’s Lynn, the nearest we have been to Canterbury in this century. The Best Western hotel was well placed near a ring
road which made for easy access to a variety of places within an hour’s drive.

On the first morning we were taken in two groups on a tour of King’s Lynn by expert guides. We learned how  important King’s Lynn was as a medieval port closely aligned with the Hanseatic League and still revealing evidence of its powerful mercantile culture, witnessed in particular with its superb timber framed warehouse. Broader cultural interests were apparent in the magnificent Guildhall of St George, recognised as the largest surviving fifteenth century guildhall in Britain. Shakespeare may well have strode the boards here. Much older is the recently dedicated twelfth century Minster where in the porch we were shown the high flood markings,floods being a regular feature of this low lying city.

Ely Cathedral

During the rest of the stay members pursued their special interests. Some of us visited Grimes’ Graves and climbed
down a thirty foot ladder to see at first hand where the Neolithic flints were mined with red deer antler tools. Others explored Ely cathedral (right) and, assisted by guides with torches, craned necks to see the bizarre green men on
the ceiling of the vast rectangular Lady Chapel. A few brave pilgrims climbed the 177 steps of the Octagon to the Lantern and experienced at first hand the amazing engineering and views. The same intrepid pilgrims visited a crowded Walsingham, one of its architects being Sir William Milner, who designed Parcevall Hall.

Titchwell Marsh

Almost all of the North Norfolk coast is protected by nature reserves of national and international importance. One of the best-known of these is Titchwell Marsh which has been managed, mainly for birds, by the RSPB to provide a spectrum of fresh-water, brackish and salt-water lagoons, and extensive reedbeds along with salt marsh and a coastal beach of sand and shingle. Breeding marsh harriers and avocets were continuously in view for a group of us including the first avocet chick of the season. The sounds of reed, marsh and Cetti’s warblers were all around the reedbeds, with good views of whitethroats and reed buntings. Many species of waders and ducks were present including a few bar-tailed godwit and dunlin. Some of the group were privileged to see and hear a turtle dove, a migratory species becoming extremely rare in Britain. Another group saw over a dozen grey plovers in beautiful summer plumage along the coastal path from Snettisham.

Houghton Hall

Pre-historic Timber Circle From Holme Beach

Stately homes are everywhere. Houghton Hall is a Palladian mansion built in the 1720s for Sir Robert Walpole to designs by James Gibbs and Colen Campbell, with interior decoration by William Kent. From the car park, the first building to be seen is the rectangular stable block built of brick and the local ochre Snettisham carstone, which houses the reception area, cafe and gift shop. A pleached lime walk leads on to the house itself, faced with a light grey and buff Jurassic sandstone, which was quarried in Yorkshire and shipped from Whitby to King’s Lynn. The house has been restored and the staterooms on the first floor which are open to the public are impressive, containing many of their original furnishings, with mahogany doors and window surrounds picked out in gold. The house and gardens were being used for the exhibition Earth Sky: Richard Long at Houghton. Wood, flint, slate and carstone had been sculpted to form circles and linear features, including a wood ‘henge’ on the lawn, and a flint circle on the floor of the magnificent cubic stone hall.

Oxburgh Hall

A number of us visited Oxburgh Hall. This was built in 1482 and was the home of the Bedingfield family. It houses a remarkable priest hole used successfully by hunted priests and outside is the famous five-acre walled garden. This group ventured on to view the superb remains and the astonishingly well preserved magnificent west front of the Cluniac Priory at Castle Acre.

Possibly the most memorable experience for most of us, and it was to be found right in the centre of King’s Lynn, was a visit to Lynn Museum to see the Seahenge exhibition (right), featuring the remains of a prehistoric timber circle from Holme Beech, originally built on salt marsh. Discovered in 1998, it dates back 4 000 years to the Early Bronze Age.

A very happy time indeed. Many, many thanks Hanneke for all your hard work and thanks to everyone who contributed to this report.

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Do we take our natural environment too much for granted in our relatively remote and less populated part of Yorkshire? The Biodiversity Forum’s Nature in the Dales 2020 Vision is working on your behalf to retain and enhance the diversity and splendour of nature that we enjoy in the National park. I am the UWFS representative on the Biodiversity Forum. We meet three times a year to exchange ideas and knowledge and to update on what is happening in the area of the National Park. The entire National Park now includes the extension area of the Northern Howgills and Orton Fells and land to the north of Kirkby Lonsdale. Members of the forum include a wide  range of people with ecological interests and expertise. The organizations represented are the Yorkshire Dales  National Park Authority, Yorkshire Dales River Trust, Yorkshire Dales Environment Network, Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust, National Trust, Natural England, Parish Wildlife Projects, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Wharfedale  Naturalists’ Society, Upper Wharfedale Field Society and a number of independent individuals. Representation from farmers’ groups is to be added as farmers are a key to much implementation of good biodiversity practice which will change in emphasis as we leave the European Union. We are now more than half way through the Nature in the Dales 2020 Vision with the aim “to promote biodiversity conservation in the Yorkshire Dales National Park and to encourage greater understanding and involvement of people in looking after their natural environment”. Some of the major projects are highlighted below:

Yorkshire Peat Partnership

The Yorkshire Peat Partnership is working closely with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust in a huge project to restore peat bogs all over Yorkshire which were so damaged by the gripping (drainage) promoted in the 1950s and more recently to try and bring the uplands into more production. Large areas at the top of Wharfedale have been worked on to close the grips and encourage less rapid water flow off the bogs so that the sphagnum moss and other plants can regrow and establish the natural peat development again. Monitoring will be carried out over many years to establish how well the bog plants grow and lock carbon in the ground and retain more water in the uplands, helping to prevent severe flooding downstream.

Hay Time Project

The Hay Time Project has been led and funded by the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust and works towards enhancing the flora and fauna to be found in our unique hay meadows. Rich meadow seed is transferred to meadows with less plant variety to upgrade the flora and this is being done and monitored in our local upper dales, especially in fields in Halton Gill and Litton parishes.

National Trust

The National Trust is very conscious of the need for biodiversity in their care. Conifers have been felled above Darnbrook and many native trees planted on the Malham Tarn and the Yockenthwaite estates. Over 100 000 trees have been planted in the last two years. The numbers of grazing animals on both National Trust land and land in other ownership have been reduced and changed from predominantly sheep to include increasing numbers of hardy breeds of cattle, such as Longhorn and Belted Galloway, which graze the land all year in a more sympathetic way than sheep. This is visibly altering the landscape and it is being monitored to see what happens in years to come.

Water Voles

One hundred water voles were released in wetland
around Malham Tarn in May 2017.
Photo: Peter G Trimming

The 2016 reintroduction of water voles into Malham Tarn has so far been a success but only years of careful study will show how they survive in years to come. The habits and migration routes of bats in our local limestone caves are being studied and the knowledge will hopefully enhance their chances of survival. Raptors are a controversial topic, especially the persecution of Hen Harriers and other birds of prey associated with grouse moors.

Parish Wildlife Project

Important smaller projects are promoted by the Parish  Wildlife Project which has over 40 sites where local groups work together. What the future hold depends on nature itself and how it reacts to big changes such as ash dieback. Many organizations can offer both young and older people hands-on experience and advice on enhancing biodiversity in their areas.

natureinthedales.org.uk

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The life and work of James Walton

James Walton (1911-99), OBE, FSA made major contributions to the study of vernacular buildings in Britain and in southern Africa. In both areas his research has been highly regarded, and societies that he established still flourish. He was born near Brighouse in the old West Riding, and educated in London and Leeds. In 1938 he joined the Halifax Antiquarian Society, which published his first paper in their Transactions for the same year. His later contributions were published both nationally (e.g. in Country Life and in Antiquity) and locally, that for which he is best known in his native county being probably Homesteads of the Yorkshire Dales (Dalesman Publishing Co., 1947, reprinted 1979). Like most of his publications, this was extensively illustrated with his own delightfully clear and informative drawings, examples of which are reproduced here.

Summersgill Burnsall

In 1947, Walton went to Basutoland (now Lesotho), where he served as an Education Officer. This was his base for the rest of his professional career; having achieved the rank of Deputy Director of Education, he took early retirement in 1960, moving to Cape Town in neighbouring South Africa. Walton’s interest in vernacular buildings went with him to Africa. He studied and recorded them in Basutoland, South Africa, South-West Africa (now Namibia) and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). He did not break his links with England: in 1952 he was a founder member of the Vernacular Architecture Group, and in the following year on the proposal of Sir Cyril Fox he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Summersgill Burnsall

James Walton’s first major work in his new area, Homesteads and Villages of South Africa (van Schaik, Pretoria, 1952), focused on colonial settlements, but his interests soon expanded to include those of the indigenous peoples and a companion volume, African Village, was issued by the same publisher four years later. Both books relied heavily on Walton’s own illustrations, developing the skill and artistry already displayed in his Yorkshire publications. All these works placed emphasis not just on architecture, but on the technology that was employed and on the functions served by the buildings and by their constituent and surrounding parts. In these studies, he laid a foundation for a fuller understanding of African architecture and settlement, on the basis of which more recent archaeologists and anthropologists have been able to draw important historical conclusions. The innovative quality of his work was widely recognised, not least by the Vernacular Architecture Society of South Africa, of which he was both founder and honorary President. On his death, James Walton’s extensive archive was deposited in the S. Gericke Library of Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Although it contains mainly African materials, Yorkshire is also represented. A detailed catalogue may be consulted on-line at digital.lib.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.2/312.

Zimbabwe (from African Village, 1956)

This note is published so that Yorkshire-based readers may be aware of a potentially important resource, as well as
being reminded of pioneering local work which also made a significant contribution to knowledge in a far-distant
region. In addition to James Walton’s own publications, I have drawn on his notice in the obituary archive of the Society of Antiquaries, and on information kindly communicated by Mr Nigel Amschwand of Cape Town.

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Members of the Geology Group on the
Sedgwick Trail just east of Sedbergh. Photo: Jim Hutchinson

On completion of the Sedgwick Trail, our now very wet group went into Dent to see the Dent Marble tiles on the floor of the church and to get a hot drink before heading homeward.
Jim Hutchinson

Bibliography
The Geology of Carrock Fell Area: A Field Guide, Kabrna P. and Collins L.; C & PGS, 2015.

The Sedgwick Geological Trail.
kgg.org.uk/sedgwick

Long Preston Geotrail.
geologistassociation.org.uk/geotrails
geolancashire.org.uk/long-prestongeotrail

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