September 21st 2025 and 28th December 2025
What3words location: crust.toys.garden
mithills Hall is one of the oldest and best preserved manor houses in the North West of England. The buildings have been built, rebuilt, added to and remodelled over several centuries; the chapel is said to have been originally established in 792 AD and rebuilt in 1520.
BCV’s involvement doesn’t go quiet that far back, but over the last couple of decades we have removed rhododendron and re-surfaced footpaths. Today we were helping the Smithills Hall Nature Trail Volunteers to do both.
The group have been operating since the beginning of 2025 and have been cutting back rhodies ever since, but they were having problems getting rid of the vast amount of brash and cuttings. Luckily BCV have a chipper which we got through the Feeling Chipper fund (Caroline will probably correct me on the details), and with our chipper we made some in roads on the mountains of material. Two groups working together for a common purpose, if only the rest of the world would do the same.
Find out more about the dreaded rhododendron on this link
28th December 2025
We’ve teamed up with the Smithills group, partly because they are such a great team but also to do some work on a long forgotten and neglected pond. We think the pond was created in the 1980s, but that is just a guess. One end has been closed off with a dam to hold water but leaflitter has caused the pond to silt up quite badly. As we can’t get a digger in to dredge out the silt what we are doing instead is to removed some of the vegetation, overhanging trees and deadfalls first, then later in the year make the dam bigger. This should raise the water level.
Read more about ponds on this link.
Photos below are of the task in September and this one in December 2025
