Hawridge and Cholesbury Commons Preservation Society
Grant Funding

Local Heritage Initiative

In March 2001 the Society obtained a grant from the Local Heritage Initiative ("LHI"). The grant covers a two year period to summer 2003 and is in respect of expenditure proposed by the Society of up to £16,400. Obviously the Society does not have resources to consider such a level of spend without help, so the grant is allowing us to implement projects that would otherwise be impossible.

The LHI grant is for 85% of the amounts the Society spends on these projects. The cost to the Society is therefore the balance of 15%, but in addition we are committed to "in-kind contributions", which is primarily time spent by volunteers on the projects and the use of the Society's tractor. We have committed to about 180 man-days of volunteers time over the two year period, which is a lot for a small community such as ours. However, committee members and others have ensured that we will comfortably meet this commitment.

The projects fall into four main categories:

1. A commons heritage survey, with research into the history of the commons. A book will be published in early 2003 about their heritage and amenity importance. See below.
2. Additional management of the commons which we would otherwise been unable to undertake. This will build on the plans developed over the last few years, with the help of various local amenity bodies, to ensure structural and bio-diversity. The main projects are to extend grassland areas, speed up heather regeneration, manage better the undergrowth, scrub, grass and bracken areas, reopen views, improve and re-sign the horse-rides and prevent unwanted vehicle access. Some of this work being is done by contractors, other by volunteers, and it is now well under way.
3. An educational programme with emphasis on activities for local children. A "Commons Club" for older children was formed in summer 2001 and other projects are in the pipeline.
4. Training for local volunteers in the safe use of chainsaws. A formal training course was attended by several society members in early 2003.

Fletcher Nicholson
April 2002

Book - Local Heritage Study on Hawridge and Cholesbury Commons

Editor - Lindsay Griffin

This book was published in May 2003 and is the result of much hard work by Lindsay and her team. You can now read it online here.

As part of the research for the book many local people were interviewed and you can listen to one of these interviews here on-line.

Interview with Ron How. Ron has been a local resident for many years and was involved in the Commons Preservation Society in its early days.

Download the audio file from here: ronhow.wma (860 kbytes) - it takes about 4 minutes to download, and plays for about 12 minutes.

The file will play as it is downloading - once it has played you can use "File -> Save As" to save the file to your PC disk if you want to play it again.

The file is encoded in "Windows Media Format" which can be played by "Windows Media Player" software. This comes as standard with the Internet Explorer web browser, but if you don't have it you can download it for free from Microsoft.

If you don't use Windows then please email me and let me know what audio file format you would prefer.