100 editions of the newsletter – what an achievement! SHARE is proud to be a regular contributor to the Connection since our early days in 2015. We registered as a Community Benefit Society that year, and together with the Parish Council, installed our first solar PV array on the Parish Hall roof. This continues to supply power for the Hall and will do so for years to come.
On Friday March 4th 2022, the amazing Kit Hillbillies played at Calstock Arts, at the Old Chapel, Calstock.
A great time was had by all, and a generous collection for the UK Red Cross Ukraine appeal raised £1500.
How to describe the Kit Hillbillies?
Old-timey, good-timey bluegrass!
With rousing vocal harmonies that smuggle in occasional quirky local references.
Instrumental tasting notes: Banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar. Irresistibly tappy on the toes, with a crisp percussive finish.
Think Betty Stogs, rather than Harvey’s Bristol Cream!
In their words: “We throw in some original bluesy songs with many a knowing nod to the backwoods and badlands of Devon & Cornwall. These *usually* avoid causing offence (happily people don’t always listen to the words!). We always do some 20thC classics by the likes of Johnny Cash & Steve Earle. And like Hayseed Dixie we throw in songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Clash and even Radiohead – all delivered in good-time string band style. In short, it’s the makings of a rousing, stomping night of tunes.”
Regular readers will remember earlier articles describing our initial investigations into the potential of water turbines. For the benefit of newer readers, those investigations involved installing a measurement weir structure, however this unfortunately came to a premature end when the Environment Agency took an active interest. Temporary measurement weirs are permitted, however in this instance the EA considered that expensive licences would be needed, and that special provisions would have to be put in place to enable eels and migrating fish to move upstream unhindered. To our knowledge, eels and migrating fish haven’t been seen in this tributary of the Lynher in living memory, however the possibility that Samantha Salmon might take a wrong turn and find her path obstructed was enough to keep the good folk at the EA awake at night. Also, the required licences were unaffordable, and so the measurement weir had to go. Continue reading
South Hill resident Linda Scott is a photographer and wildlife enthusiast. Here are some wonderful photos she sent to us recently:
As well as the on line newsletter we also offer a print copy which can be delivered to you within the parish. We love your feedback and articles email to editor@south-hill or call Ali on 07305 044049.
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THANK YOU, AND ENJOY READING THE NEWSLETTER.
From The Connection Team
Archived newsletters (all of them!)
can be found in our public Google Drive folder – here…
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First of all, we’d like to thank our Cornwall Councillor Sharon Daw for a recent grant from her “Community Chest” fund. We’re having hi-visibility vests made, with our logo on the back, for volunteers. This will help reduce any risk to our regular volunteers collecting recycling (see below) in various locations; also planting trees, and helping with the firewood project.
The project continues to grow, thanks to our enthusiastic volunteers that help monitor collection bins, pick up, sort into boxes and send the vast amount of items to Terracycle every month. By saving these otherwise hard to recycle items from being incinerated, we are generating funds for charities.
Continue readingTom was married to his beloved wife Ann for 58 years. Ann was the niece of boxer Len Harvey, a national sporting idol. Their son Andrew lives in Tavistock and daughter Elaine still lives locally in Golberdon.
Tom is pictured below assisting Ley Daniel (South Hill Parish Chairman), Fern Friend and Les Hambley, Tom Brewer and one other, with the construction of The South Hill Parish Hall, which was established by an Order of the Secretary of State in 1965.
Fund raising from people of modest means via Whist and Beetle Drives meant that construction took a long time, as shown by the ivy growing on the structure. Prior to and during this time Parish matters were discussed in the Sunday School of The Chapel in Golberdon. Tom’s unbroken service on The South Hill Parish Council exceeds 50 years and whilst he remembers Golberdon being a very tidy and clean place, with well-kept gardens, hedges and verges in his youth, he accepts that growth and infill of property amongst the original properties was a necessity.
Tom’s unwavering commitment to others is demonstrable in many ways. He gave up smoking his beloved pipe on the spot 16 years ago, when his son asked him not to blow smoke in his grandsons’ face. Years earlier he was part of the fund-raising efforts for the bereaved families of the Aberfan disaster and remembers The White Aces band came all the way from St. Austell to play. In recent years Tom has served by checking the Parish Hall children’s play area every day since its installation. He championed the alteration of the parks metal safety barrier onto the road, so that children leaving the park faced the oncoming traffic rather than away from it. The wildflower area, soon to be installed by The Parish Council was Toms’ idea, as was the bench within it that will benefit from a magnificent view of Caradon Hill.
Renowned and respected for his patience and compassion for both the animals he dispatched and for their often distraught owners, Tom travelled over 1000 miles a week working as a slaughterman. He recalls his first horse to dispatch was a large dray at Courage brewery, so tall in fact that Tom had to climb onto a beer barrel. He served the local hunts and attended the point to points of Spooners, Lamerton, Bolventor, East Cornwall and Tedcott hunts. Tom recalls the BSE (1980 – 1990) and Foot and Mouth (2001) outbreaks as being hugely traumatic for all involved, with millions of animals slaughtered.
Tom prefers to focus instead on the many animals he has saved over the years, one a horse, which survived for a further 6 years, and another, a heifer, for 18 months, following his advice to treat instead.
Tom’s eyes dance with merriment as he recalls the numerous bottles of whiskey bestowed upon him over the 55 years he served the Cornish and Devonian communities. Tom drinks whiskey, and always accepted it graciously. He remembers teaching young ladies, who were studying to become vets at Duchy College, about horse anatomy. Their gratitude was such that they bought him a fabulous statue for his retirement. Toms recalls that his leaving party at Duchy College was attended by over 50 guests, who of course brought him more whiskey. Nowadays Tom enjoys relaxing in his bright, sunny lounge reading the daily paper from PaperPhil. He loves to travel and is an avid fan of coach tours to Scotland. His warm personality draws others to him and his many friends clamour to meet up with him again on a trip at Christmas and next July, and of course Tom has readily agreed.
The New Year is typically the time when we reflect on the past and then look forward to the coming year in the hope that it will be better. The desire to have something to hope for that will improve our life is strong. The month of January gets its name from the Roman god Janus who has one face looking back and the others looking forwards. He is the god of gates and transitions.
Often, we can’t move forwards unless we have looked back, retraced our steps and asked some serious reflective questions such as: Is there a pattern in my behaviour and relationships that keeps repeating itself? Is there something I need to acknowledge and take responsibility for? Do I recognise my reactions could have been different? The key is to learn from the past and not just glance at it, so we don’t get stuck in the same old patterns of behaviour. If we do this well, we will grow and develop ways and means of working better with others; as well as being authentic to ourselves.
Continue reading
Back in 2020, SHARE volunteers had already completed the metalwork for the measurement weir and reinforced the banks along the short stretch of the stream that suffered flooding in November 2019’s torrent. We completed putting in place a 65mm (2 ½ inch) high weir ready to use the electronics to measure the fall over it. We’d checked in the Environment Agency’s guidance that a measurement weir didn’t need any additional permission. But for reasons unknown to us the Environment Agency took an interest in our work, and sent a fisheries expert to take a close look, and we were then advised that changing the flow from turbulent to smooth along the weir structure (just three feet long) would contravene the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act. It turns out that we would need at least three extra items: a salmon ladder, an eel pass and a supplementary licence, the application fee for which is an additional £1500!
The impact of the Environment Agency intervention was that the metal weir structure had to be removed. This was done quickly and the site completely restored to the state that it has been in for the past 50 years. The purpose of the metal weir was to straighten and smooth the water, resulting in “laminar flow” over a clean edge. This, in conjunction with a water depth measurement system, would have enabled flow over the weir to be very easily calculated, with little manual intervention. It would in fact have been possible to monitor the flow closely over a 12 months period, in a fully automated way. Occasional site visits would have been necessary to ensure that the metal channel and weir remained clear of obstructions such as branches and other debris.
But we’re determined to complete what we originally set out to do; it’s just that we had to find a method that meets these additional regulations. We still want to characterise the catchment area and stream flow, throughout the year – even on a weekly basis. We also want to be able to assess the power generation potential of small streams such as this one, and so put ourselves in a better position to be able to subjectively judge alternative potential power generation sites. Consequently, we have purchased a small water turbine flow meter and started to measure flow with this equipment on a regular basis. The site has concrete piers that were used in the distant past to provide the greater head of water needed to drive a water pump. These piers provide an area that constrains the flow and makes it relatively easy to carry out a matrix of flow speed measurements. Although it is still early days, we are gathering some interesting results.
We have already seen that flow can vary widely in a short space of time. In the dry weeks of November, the flow would only have been sufficient to generate around 1kW of electricity. In early December, following heavy rain, 6kW electricity generation would have been possible. 6kW round the clock, entirely independent of wind or sunshine would be a very valuable local generation capacity – equivalent to the average energy used to power around 15 homes.
