Editor: John Kane 3 Lindfield Road, London W5 1QS

Email: editor@selbornesociety.org.uk

Web: www.selbornesociety.org.uk

Issue: 131, Autumn 2014

I love the natural world with all the challenges that doing so can bring. Some of these are becoming evident in our Reserve as we look forward to real progress with our aim of creating a new ‘Hut’ or, in modern parlance, an ‘Education Centre’.

The illustration above comes from a book published at a time when studying nature for many was encouraged by simple text and lovely drawings accompanied by the occasional coloured picture. I find these books a joy to read.

Notices and Letters 2

News from the Reserve 3

Society Outing: Wrest Park, Bedfordshire 7

Perivale: From Farmland to Factory Land 9

Other news 10

Inside this issue:

I have now moved away from West London where I had lived all my life to Ixworth – a large village near to Bury St Edmunds. I am enjoying seeing nature in a different environment – farming not built – and observing what differences there are between the two. I still have many links with my ‘old’ area and come back when time allows. I wish all of you the very best for Christmas and the New Year.

Tom Berry, Chairman

Members are reminded that subscriptions are due on 2nd January. Rates for 2015 remain as for last year.

Adult subscription ......... £10

Couple at same address ......... £15

Juniors ......... £3

Lifetime membership ......... £200

Joint Life Membership ......... £350

Make cheques out to “Selborne Society” and send them to the Membership Secretary at:

89 Daryngton Drive, Greenford, Middlesex UB6 8BH.

Please include a SAE if you would like your membership card to be sent to you directly. Otherwise, it will be enclosed with your copy of the next newsletter.

Rae Hall

Membership Secretary

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The Selborne Society Newsletter

Published by the Selborne Society Ltd,

a Company Limited by Guarantee.

Registered Office: 36 FERRYMEAD GARDENS,

GREENFORD MIDDLESEX UB6 9NF

Company No. 00149247

Registered with the Charity Commissioners

Register Number 267635

Does any member have a good understanding of statistics? Nic Ferriday is working on the next in our series of booklets on the wildlife of Perivale Wood and would very much welcome some advice on statistical methods to use in analysing the data. Statisticians (amateur or professional) should contact Nic by phoning him on (020) 8930 4119 or by an email to nic.ferriday@ntlworld.com.

The Editor writes: “I received the following letter from a reader after publication of the last issue of the Newsletter, responding to the item about the “Little Wild Sleepout” for our Junior Section and their parents, which featured an account of netting and ringing a robin. I reproduce the letter below and would like to hear from any member with a view on this issue. Letters are always welcome but may be edited for publication.”

Re: Issue 130, Summer 2014

Thank you for the Newsletter. However, surely catching a female robin in a net, handling it and allowing children to touch it, is a trespass on the bird, instructive as this may be to children. Causing it to fly into a disguised introduced device on its home patch must be frightening. What new information did this achieve for our knowledge bank that could not have been more sensitively achieved?

Elizabeth Gowans

Members are reminded that keys to the Reserve may be borrowed for the duration of a visit by calling in at Perivale Library or the Café Rendezvous next door to the Library and leaving your membership card as a deposit. Borrowed keys should be returned promptly upon leaving the Reserve so that other members are not inconvenienced.

Current opening hours for both places are shown below and you should make sure you leave the Reserve in good time to return your key and retrieve your membership card during their opening hours.

Security of access to the Reserve is very important, and we would ask you all, when visiting Perivale Wood, to lock the gates after entering, as well as when you leave.

Day Library Café Rendezvous

MON CLOSED 10:00 - 16:00

TUE 10:00 - 13:00 14:00 - 18:00

10:00 - 16:00

WED CLOSED 10:00 - 16:00

THU 10:00 - 13:00 14:00 - 18:00

10:00 - 16:00

FRI 10:00 - 13:00 14:00 - 17:00

10:00 - 16:00

SAT 10:00 - 13:00 14:00 - 17:00

CLOSED

SUN CLOSED CLOSED

For Bank Holidays and Bank Holiday Weekends, it is likely that

neither the Library nor the Café will be open for business.

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Throughout the sessions, my role as the practitioner was to assess the individuals’ progressions and re-adjust the activities to meet each child’s requirements. The last session included a lunch ‘cook off’ to which family members were invited. During this session we carried out a final review. The young people presented a piece to parents and siblings reflecting on their activities and achievements during the Forest School sessions.

One parent commented that her son, “clearly grew in confidence as the forest schools sessions progressed and he was thrilled with the practical skills he used.”

Another parent spoke about their child “loving everything about forest school – going everywhere in the forest, making mallets, building dens etc… a thrilling experience all-round.”

We will be piloting more sessions next May for local schools and children. If you have contacts for local schools or individuals who might be interested in taking part then please email Gillian de Soyres at gillian_e_allen@yahoo.co.uk

Gillian de Soyres

We were recently delighted to host a trial forest school at the Reserve which was run on successive Sundays in June and July by Gillian de Soyres, West London Education and Community Programme Manager with Groundwork London. Here is Gillian’s account of this exciting new programme.

Forest School is a unique learning initiative, which encourages and inspires individuals of any age through its innovative, long-term, and educational approach to outdoor play and learning in a woodland environment. Most importantly, the method of delivery focuses on themes of conservation and sustainability which are fundamental to any education programme which takes place in Perivale Wood’s magical setting.

Earlier this summer, we were lucky to be able to pilot six Forest School sessions at the Reserve. The sessions were carefully planned to remain within the capabilities of every person in the group (by creating small, achievable tasks).

This focus upon individual skills and self-esteem was heightened throughout activities such as storytelling and exploration of the forest, shelter building, tool skills, lighting fires and environmental art. Each activity developed intra and inter-personal skills as well as practical and intellectual skills. Tools were used in our Forest School in a traditional woodland manner and were introduced gradually with a structured safety base that children became familiar with. Participants learned to use loppers, bow saws, whittling knifes as well as fire steels, to light the camp fire and they learned to tie three types of knots.

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For National Insect Week 2014, the Society organised a Bioblitz at Perivale Wood on 27th and 28th June. Moth traps were operated on the evening of 27th, and members went on a walk around the reserve to listen (and look) for bats flying. Pipistrelle bats (both common and soprano) were seen flying over the canal and detected well on the bat detectors. A full list of the moths seen is in the table below.

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The weather was not kind to us on the 28th with rain quickly arriving shortly after the Reserve gates opened and so few members attended the event and walks around the Reserve to look for invertebrates were rather curtailed. Several species of bugs, beetles, flies, spiders, grasshoppers and butterflies were seen and a selection of these can be seen online at :

www.iSpotNature.org/taxonomy/term/24502

There are quite a few of these that still need identification, so if you can help, please do so either by adding the ID to iSpot or by writing to the Editor.

David Howdon

Undetermined Coccoidea scale insect

Possibly Meadow Grasshopper (Chorthippus parallelus)

Beetles on willow

If you’ve not been to Perivale Wood for a few months, there are quite a few new things that you'll notice, and explaining them will be a great way of updating everyone.

First, as you go in on the left, you'll see materials stacked under tarpaulins. This is stuff that we have scrounged from Walpole Park. There's a huge heap of 3/4” (18mm) waterproof ply - this was the hoarding round the building site there and was to be tossed in a skip when they had finished with it. We will need board to protect the ground while the main new education centre is being constructed, and free, second-hand ply is ideal! Beside it, there is a heap of 4” x 2” timber, which will make stud partitions, and beyond that, there’s a heap of wire mesh, and some fence poles – those are from the old playground area in Walpole Park, and will be used to make the new fence around the new pond area and fence off the Education Centre Site.

Then you'll notice that, just beyond the old hut, there is a new building, small, just 2.5m x 3m, but looking very smart, clad to match the old building. This is our new, “accessible” toilet, which has been built by a team of volunteers over the past three months, mainly from recycled materials – the foundations are oak posts from the Walpole Park fences, sunk into the ground, then there's a frame from new wood, but the floor covering and walls are made mainly from the 4x2 mentioned above and 2 walls and the roof are clad with the ply.

The new AccessiLoo!

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It was insulated mainly with stuff from the Walpole Site, and then lined out with ply which we bought in; the shiplap cladding is new too – at about £400, one of the most expensive items.

The windows to the toilet were donated by a kind neighbour and are original 1920s stained glass leaded lights from one of the houses nearby. The floor is tiled with new tiles but the toilet, cistern and basin are all reclaimed. Much of the electrical items were reclaimed from Walpole Park too.

Another kind neighbour has given permission for a foul water drain to be connected to a manhole in her garden and Thames Water and Ealing Council are okay with this too; we have a contractor and the job should be done in January. So then, for the first time ever, there will be a flushing toilet at the Reserve! Who, I wonder, will “baptise” it?

Then, to the old Hut: now, this is a real work in progress; the team have been busy; additional fluorescent lights have been installed (again, these were salvaged from the old ‘Spencer’s Café’ in Walpole Park) and 3 bulkhead lights on PIR control fitted outside - the bulkheads were salvaged too, although we did splash out on a new PIR but with 10% Discount from B&Q – being over 60 has one advantage! Inside, a partition is being built, again using salvaged materials. The ‘North End’ will become the new tool store and the ‘South’ will continue to be used as before – there is a surprising amount of space now we have removed the furniture. A new tool store is needed as the old Garage has to come down, and soon, to make way for the new Education Centre.

Finally, if you go beyond the garage, you'll see that some trees have been severely cut back - alas, they need to be removed so they don't interfere with the Education Centre and soon a mechanical digger will be brought in to get them out.

The plans continue; we want to start on the foundations soon, and discussions are in hand with Building Control. The building will be on rubber tyre foundations, and we'd like to get the build to the point where, by Open Day 2015 (26th April) we have the floor structure completed so we

can lay the first Ceremonial Straw Bale on Open Day itself.

The aim, overall, is to have the Education Centre weathertight by September 2015, so we can finish off in the warm and dry if necessary.

All this has been achieved by a wonderful band of volunteers and, while it is always a risk to name people individually, our thanks are due to John Morrell, John Sears, Viv Cane-Honeysett, Alec Coomber, Mani, Howard Levy, Michael Lyons, John Gilbert, Len, Thomas, Alex Nieora, Gill, Mary, and probably quite a few more. We’ve had a good time working on it; we’ve discovered skills we did not know we had; and the toilet is beautiful! It has been a delight working with everyone.

Of course, an Education Centre is all very well but it needs Education to occur within that place. Our Memorandum and Articles of Association state that one of the Society’s objectives is (my emphasis):

“to bring about an appreciation on the part of the public (especially among children) of the value of science to the community, and to promote the study of natural history and antiquities”

It is one of the goals of the new building to enable the Society to fulfil that objective, so Council has commissioned Nicola Goddard, a long-time member of the Society, and a Biology teacher of some note and experience, to develop a full programme for schools, with lesson plans for preparatory work, field work, and follow-up work, for a variety of key stages in the National Curriculum. We hope to be able to pilot this

programme in September 2015.

Financially, the Society has sufficient funds to cover the cost – currently estimated at about £142,000; we have been greatly encouraged by a grant of £25,000 from the John Lyons Charity, to whom many thanks! That

estimate is for the building itself, assuming a good slice of voluntary labour; fitting it out and finishing it, will be a separate calculation and the more money we can raise, the better the job that we can make of that!

Andy Pedley

We are looking for volunteers to

help us lay the rubber tyres - great

warming work for a cold winter’s

day - and, if you would like to help,

register your interest by email to:

contact@selbornesociety.org.uk

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Beautiful buildings adorn the garden throughout, notably the Orangery, the baroque Archer Pavilion, a Chinese pavilion with a beautiful bridge nearby, looking for all the world like a Willow Pattern plate, the old Dairy, which contains statues and a sundial, and the Bowling Green House. My favourite building though is the smallest, referred to as Le Petit Trianon, a rustic log cabin - I could have moved in!

After lunch, we went to visit the house. The entrance is at the side and we went into the Conservatory, which as it is now unheated, contains hardier plants. Then we went into the house to view the rooms. The house was built by Thomas de Grey from 1834 to 1839. He demolished the original house and built the current one in the French style on a different site. English Heritage took ownership in 2006.

Only the sitting room is furnished and at times there is a strange noise in the room. I asked the attendant “What is it?” and she explained that the china in the cabinets rattles when someone walks on the floor above but they tell visiting children that that it is the resident ghost!

One room shows the history of the house and garden, there is a large library, drawing room and ante-library, all with wonderful wallpapers and decorated ceilings. The exit is via the doors to the terrace, where the sun had started to shine.

We decided to visit the dog cemetery but could not find it. However we did have a very nice walk beside the canal and found a tree with large amounts of Mistletoe on it. As the time was near to departure, we walked back towards the house. My friend Rosy wanted to ride on one of the buggies that ferried people throughout the park, so we hailed one and it returned us to the entrance close to the restaurant. After coffee and ice-cream (it was now very warm), it was time to return, reluctantly, to the coach.

After another smooth ride back to Perivale, we said our goodbyes and went home. It was a truly lovely visit and we all want to thank Secretary Andy Pedley for arranging it. Definitely a house and gardens that warrant a return visit.

Wendy Knight recalls a recent memorable Society outing.

This October 14th started out rather overcast as the Selborne coach turned into the car park of Wrest Park in Bedfordshire but we kept all fingers crossed.

We met our guide, Helen, one of the English Heritage staff, who gave us all stickers to wear but, as any quick scan of the car park or grounds would testify, their stickability was sadly lacking.

The priority was coffee or tea, so we made our way to the restaurant. Once refueled, friends and I decided we would explore the gardens, just in case it rained later, and then visit the House after lunch.

The gardens date from the early 18th century, while buildings, statues and changes to the garden, continued throughout the 19th century, with the famous landscape designer Lancelot 'Capability' Brown making significant contributions to the way it looks today. Of course the work continues on the restoration to this day.

There are many water features in the garden, with ponds, lakes and a canal. All this water is well used by coot, mallard, Canada geese and a family of mute swans, with their seven cygnets. The gardens close to the house are formal, with a red, blue and grey theme. In front of the house, and best viewed from the terrace, is a French Parterre, which was being attended to while we were there.

There are statues everywhere, notably the Wyvern standing guard between the shop and the house. The wyvern is a mythical half dragon, half lizard and is on the family crest. Another large statue is called the Hawking Party and is of a women on her fine steed, she has one arm raised awaiting the return of her hawk.

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The other night I was listening to, and watching, a Daubenton's Bat catching insects on a pond on Stanmore Common. One of my favourite Bats, I could watch them for hours, but suddenly I had a thought. Who was Daubenton?

When I came home, on went the laptop and I looked up the name. Of course, that then led me to the other names of the six British breeding Bats, Bechstein, Leisler, Brandt, Nathusius’ Pipistrelle, Natterer and one occasional vagrant, the Kuhl Pipistrelle, who were all named after people.

So to the Bat that started the research, Daubenton. Who was the eponymous naturalist? His full name was Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton (1716-1800), born in Montbard, Cote d'Or, France. He studied medicine but in 1742, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, asked him to help on his natural history work. They fell out and then came back together again and he became Buffon's assistant at the Jardin du Roi (the King's Garden, a royal institution for the study of natural history) in Paris. He later became its first director, when it became the Museum of Natural History. He was involved in many different sciences and also in agriculture, being the person who first introduced Merino sheep to France.

Next we move to Austria, where we find Johann Natterer (1787 - 1843). Natterer was a zoologist who went on an expedition to Brazil, financed by Emperor Franz I, in 1817. He must have enjoyed being in the country, as he stayed for eighteen years, returning in 1835 to Vienna. He had collected thousands of specimens but sadly his notebooks and diary were destroyed in the Vienna Revolution of 1848. The message here is clear: always back-up/copy your files/data!

The remaining people are all from Germany. Johann Philipp Achilles Leisler was born on the 1st August of either 1771 or 1772 and died on the

8th December, 1813. He was a physician and naturalist and a friend of the Dutch zoologist, Coenraad Jacob Temminck, after whom he named the Temminck's Stint. Leisler's Bat was described by Heinrick Kuhl (1797 ­ 1821), a naturalist and zoologist who was born in Hanau and was assistant to Temminck at the Leiden Natural History Museum. In 1820, Kuhl went to Java and found many new species of animals. He memorably wrote about Bats in 1817 and Parrots in 1819, but sadly died in 1821 of a liver infection. The vagrant Kuhl's Pipistrelle is named after him.

Johann Matthaus Bechstein (1757 - 1822) was born in the German town of Waltershausen, in Thuringia. He was a theology student but always liked being in the open air. He became a teacher for a while and then left to open a forestry school. He was interested in a wide range of natural history subjects and was really ahead of his time as he tried to conserve wildlife that were thought to be pests, e.g. Bats and the Bechstein bat is named after him.

Johann Friedrich von Brandt (1802 - 1879) was born in Jüterbog, Germany and died in Estonia. He was a naturalist who described birds, millipides and beetles. He became director of the Zoology department at the St. Petersburg Academy of Science. He arranged the collection of native animals to be shown in the museum. As well as a the Brandt’s Bat, he has a Hedgehog and a Cormorant named after him.

The final Bat, the Nathusius’ Pipistrelle, has proved a little difficult to research. But I believe may have been named after Hermann von Nathusius. I would be happy to be proved wrong! He was born in Magdeburg, Germany on the 9th December 1809 and died on the 29th June 1879. He was a student of the natural sciences and was involved in cattle breeding. He formed a collection of domestic animal skeletons. He did not agree with Darwin's theories, but he kept such precise breeding records that his data was used in support for the Theory of Evolution.

I wonder what they would all think of the advances in watching and listening to the Bats named after them, that we have today.

Wendy Knight

Daubenton’s Bat

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In the third part of our serialisation of a talk by Ealing Archivist, Dr. Jonathan Oates, he describes how Perivale shuffled off its rustic trappings and became a modern industrialised suburb.

By 1933 there were numerous industries there [Perivale]. These included Hoover on the Western Avenue, of course. Many others were on Bilton Road and Wadsworth Road and were concentrated in the half square mile to the north of the Western Avenue.

Most were fairly small scale factories employing between about 50- 400 people each. They included a sewing silk manufacturer, manufacturing stationers, a golf club maker, a candied peel manufacturer, Ponds, the chemists, makers of kitchen furniture, wirelesses, optical glass, condensers, wall paper, cartons and refrigerators. There were also shops, not seen in Perivale until the 1920s. These included most of the staple goods, such as newsagents, grocers, butchers, fishmongers and clothiers. There were builders and doctors. Interestingly, one of the doctors was Dr H. Singh Batra from India.

By the end of the 1930s there were even more manufacturing businesses in Perivale. Bulmers had opened a cider depot, for instance. Perivale Clock Manufacturing Company was another. Unlike those former villages to the south, such as Ealing and Hanwell, which had grown from villages to chiefly dormitory towns throughout the nineteenth century, Perivale had grown from village to ‘Factoryland’ in less than two decades. This resulted in Perivale having no obvious centre. Whereas towns had historically grown up around the parish church or manor house, Perivale had grown up around its road. That road was the chief reason for the development of Perivale.

Perivale had been relatively isolated until the end of the First World War. In fact flooding of the river Brent often cut Perivale off from Ealing. After 1918, there was great economic growth around London, in

contrast to the depressed regions of the time. London was a great market for goods, both domestically and internationally. However, it needed to expand and the only way it could o so in the 1920s and 1930s was outwards, especially towards Middlesex. Industry favoured the county because it still had plenty of space where factories could be built. Secondly, the county council imposed fewer planning restrictions than did the London County Council.

Transport, too, was crucial. Although there had been a canal near Perivale and a railway, by the beginning of the nineteenth and the twentieth century respectively, neither had had much economic impact, though the Grand Junction Canal did enable hay to be moved to London for sale (London’s horses, before 1914, consumed an immense amount of hay). There was a railway halt at Perivale in 1904, along the line from London to High Wycombe. This was enlarged into a station in 1908 and existed until 1947 when it was replaced by the Central line underground station. Railways are always said to be the harbinger of population and housing explosions, but in Perivale’s case it was not to be.

The A40, or Western Avenue, began to be built west of the capital, as did the Great West Road through Brentford, in the 1920s and by 1930 had reached Perivale. At the same time, transport had become more and more mechanised and the roads were now seen as the supreme form of modern transport for industrial goods, rivalling the railways which had reigned supreme in the nineteenth century.

The ease with which goods could be moved to and from the factories along the road to their final destination, sealed Perivale’s future. In 1933, Briggs wrote, ‘This splendid highway has already completely destroyed the rustic isolation of Perivale and is already partly lined with some of the finest modern factories in England, being only surpassed in that respect by the Great West Road’.

In the 1950s, the industrial nature of the district was acknowledged by the borough guide thus:

“It is in the Perivale area that Ealing’s major industrial development has taken place. Between the two wars various old-fashioned firms with premises in the City began to look around for sites near London which would permit expansion. Certain advantages attracted them to Perivale, notably at first the presence of the Grand Union

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We are pleased to report that Ealing Council have adopted Greenredeem, an innovative scheme to

encourage recycling. The concept is simple – people are r e w a r d e d f o r

recycling by receiving points which can be converted into rewards, which they can use in local and national retailers. You can collect points by logging your recycling activities at Greenredeem’s website or, if you have a smart phone, via a mobile app. Greenredeem also allows members to donate points toward community projects and it just so happens, Dear Reader, that we have registered our new Education Centre build with the scheme so, if you sign up online at:

www.greenredeem.co.uk/pwpcontrol.php?pwpID=10880

you can then get rewards or, better still, donate your points towards our project. Remember to use the Advocate Code “HFR” when you first register and we will get an additional 25 points towards our fund - we have amassed £418 worth of points so far, so thanks to all of you who have donated – we are nigh on half way to our £1000 target.

The Society owns a lot of precious books; they’ve been cared for by Ealing Council over the past many years, initially in the Central Library, Ealing, then they got moved out to the old Library Resource Centre in Perivale, then about 4 years ago, to Southall. Then we received news that Southall was to close and they needed a new home. The Society's Honorary Librarian, Frances Hounsell, has organised the purchase of new cupboards to house the Library, and their installation in Ealing Broadway Central Library, close to the Local History Library. So now they are centrally located and much, much more accessible. Frances and hubby Peter are going to tidy them up a bit, and we are planning a celebration to welcome them to their new home, where they can be used as the focus of activities such as exhibitions, and study sessions, in addition to being available to academics and researchers.

Thanks to Frances and Peter for the considerable amount of work that they’ve done on this!

Andy Pedley

Canal and latterly the construction of the great arterial roads, viz Western Avenue and the North Circular and the Great West Roads. Perivale thus became a much sought after location for light industry, combining as it does an open and healthy area with excellent road and rail facilities and proximity to London and its docks”.

Let us look at three of the most important industries there. Firstly there was Sanderson, wall-paper manufacturers, who bought a site in 1929 at the foot of Horsenden Hill. The factory takes up 16 acres but the firm also bought a adjacent 36 acres for gardens and sports grounds. In the 1950s, it employed 1,000 people.

Then there is the Hoover Works, who bought land on the Western avenue in 1931. The factory was opened in 1933 and extended over the next few years. The press referred to it as a ‘Modern Palace of Industry’ in contrast to the older industrial premises in the north of England. In the 1930s it employed 1,600 people and in 1951, 3,000. It closed in 1982 and was later bought by Tesco, thus preserving the building’s fine Art Deco exterior.

Pond’s Extract Company took up premises on Wadsworth Road in 1932 and rapidly grew from having a few employees to over 400 by 1950. Pond’s concentrated on beauty products such as cold creams, face powder and lipstick and did an excellent export business. An advert alleged that “Society’s loveliest women make Pond’s their beauty care”.

Speculative housing began to appear in Perivale throughout the 1930s and by 1939 it had almost reached capacity. There was now a population of almost 10,000. Some had arrived from inner London and some from other parts of the country. For example, some people came from Wales because of the high unemployment in some of the mining valleys there. Employment in the local factories was the key reason why people moved to Perivale in this period. Houses in Perivale Park estate cost £725 freehold and weekly repayment were just under £1, so were within the reach of anyone in employment. Most people were home owners, not tenants and had semi-detached houses. Some roads were named after builders, so Bilton Road was after Percy Bilton.

Jonathan Oates

More from Dr. Oates on schools, the Library and the disappearance of farming from Perivale in our next issue!