31. Wednesday 1st September, 2010

It was a glorious day of warm summer sunshine at last, for myself, Ruth and Peter who turned up for some more surveying today. We were able to go back onto the moorside and check out a few more details for the gazetteer of archaeological features.

Peter taking a GPS reading © Jane Lunnon

And Jane continued the botanical survey as usual. There are no new flowers emerging at this time of year, so this will probably be the final month for the year’s survey of flowering plants.

The water level of the reservoir appears to have settled at a half-way point – not as low as it has been, but still revealing quite a lot of the mill site which would normally be underwater. The longer the site is exposed the more stones are moved around or thrown into the reservoir – the site is losing its integrity little by little as the weeks go by, but thankfully, so far, there has been little significant damage except to the section of 18th century field wall, now destroyed, which used to lie on the popular footpath nearby.

The Mission Building continues to deteriorate gradually, but happily is still providing enough shelter for an owl to live there.

Ruth checking the Gazatteer © Jane Lunnon

We were asked recently if there were any traces of the old cottage gardens left on the site – unfortunately the botanical survey has found no evidence of the survival of vegetables, herbs or cottage garden flowers – introduced plants such as purple and yellow irises we know were first planted here during the past decade, while the white foxgloves are growing several hundred metres away from the mill site, so we cannot be sure if they originate from the mill workers’ cottage gardens.


Jane Lunnon

30. Wednesday 25 August 2010

Alan and I turned up for a day’s botanical surveying again. Now it’s the school holidays the reservoir isn’t so quiet as normal – it’s more like the weekend, when this place is a very popular spot for family walks, and children playing. As always there were plenty of dogs around, and we enjoyed the company of several friendly canines - and their owners - curious as to what we were up to.

Alan started off the day by re-taking some of the technical photos of the mill site features on the foreshore – he’s a perfectionist with his photography and wanted to get everything just right.

Then he followed my trail of blue flags marking flowers and fungi that I thought were ready for photography.

Luckily, he was wearing his wellies as he slipped into one of the numerous little becks while photographing water mint flowers. His feet still got wet, though!

We enjoyed a leisurely lunch on the newly oiled bench by the millennium-planted oak trees. Someone has recently tidied up around here and cleared out all the weeds. Luckily the tiny little germander flowers have survived.

I spent the day finishing off the August botanical survey for the reservoir side – the moor was closed for the shooting season today, and since my survey would have involved going off the footpath, I couldn’t complete the survey on the moorside today, and will have to return another day. The flowering plants are slowing down now, and we should soon be able to stop recording these, although we still have non-flowering plants on our agenda. We hope to focus on these from September onward – and Embsay Reservoir and Moor certainly have a wide variety of grasses, mosses, lichens, ferns and fungi waiting to be recorded.

Jane Lunnon.

29. Wednesday 18th August 2010

Toothache notwithstanding, I joined Alan at the Whitfield site today to continue our botanical survey. The weather was very changeable again, and the shower cap proved very useful in protecting Alan’s camera! We are now finding that the rate of new flowers appearing has slowed down as summer progresses, and the survey went well as so much is just a repeat of last month’s inventory of plants.

We agreed that since we are new to this kind of thing, that we would focus this year just upon flowering plants, and leave grasses, lichens, mosses, ferns and fungi out of our report for UWHG’s Whitfield Project 2010. This makes things much simpler, and allows us to give more attention to producing a good data set and photographic collection based on this smaller botanical survey.

I left the site early in the afternoon, leaving Alan waiting for the latest shower to pass so he could photograph the last of the flowers on his list for today.

The botanical survey will continue again next Wednesday.

Jane Lunnon, UWHG Archivist

28. Wednesday 11th August 2010

It’s been a fortnight since we last on-site. If you want to know what we’ve been up to, then why not have a look at our blog for the Hartlington dig at : http://uwhg-hartlington.blogspot.com/ . Several members of UWHG have been on a thoroughly enjoyable week’s dig under the direction of David Johnson, at Hartlington, near Burnsall.

Now we’re back to Embsay again. Three of us arrived at Embsay Reservoir this morning to be greeted by a heavy downpour of rain – not what the weather forecast had promised at all. We sat in the car waiting for the dark clouds to roll on by, and eventually some blue (ish) patches appeared overhead, and we ventured out to continue our surveying.

Alan spent the day photographing various botanical specimens across the site, while Jane and Ruth started the morning by checking out a few more features of the old mill on the foreshore, making the most of the lowered water levels since the last proper field survey was done. However, we did notice that the water levels were not as low as they had been a couple of weeks ago.

Noticing that it is now the grouse shooting season, we made the most of being able to get on to the moorside before it is closed to public access. Jane spent the rest of the day starting the botanical survey for August, around the sheepwash and mill pond areas, while Ruth checked out the details of the Gazetteer of features, making sure we had all the features identified and numbered correctly on the moorside. Alan continued with his photography.

We had a leisurely lunch, despite the constantly changing weather – from hot and sunny to cold, overcast, drizzly and windy – and back again to hot and sunny. A small boy thought he’d found a good toy, and we spotted him just in time, marching cheerily off with one of our red flags, which had been set down to mark some fungi Alan was going to photograph after lunch. Poor little chap – we had to ask him to give it back. At the end of the day, the 3 of us met up at the bogbean pond, and sat down for a cup of tea, and a long discussion in which we put the world to rights.

Jane Lunnon

27.Wednesday 28th July 2010

With other people away on holiday, or busy with other projects, it was just me today – here to carry on with the botanical survey. The skies were grey all day, with intermittent drizzle and light showers all morning and well into the afternoon. I managed to cover about a third of the site on the Reservoir side of the wall, before I decided to go over to the moorside and see if the sundews were still flowering on the moorside. They weren’t but I did find a couple of white thistles which was rather nice. The bracken is now very high, and it will be impossible to finish off the field survey in this area for quite some time now. I continued the botanical surveying around a couple of the mill ponds,

About 2.30 the skies became very dark, and I decided it would be best to seek shelter in the car. As I reached the car park the heavens opened and it seemed a good time to go home.

Apparently Ruth was on her way through the rain, and drove up to the reservoir very shortly after I left. She had a quick look at the mill features on the foreshore, and checked out the water levels.

Jane Lunnon, UWHG Archivist.

26. Wednesday 21 July 2010

We have been absent from Whitfield for a few weeks because we have been involved in the excavations of the Romano-British site at Chapel House Wood near Grassington (see our blog for the dig at: http://uwhg-chapel-house-wood.blogspot.com/), an annual summer dig for many of us.

Three UWHG members returned to Whitfield today, having recovered from the aches and pains of digging, to monitor the water levels at Embsay Reservoir. We found even more of the foreshore exposed, revealing a little more of the stone foundations of the mill buildings and old field walls.

Low water levels at the reservoir reveal more of the mill site © Jane Lunnon

Alan spent much of the day taking the opportunity to take technical photographs of these rarely revealed features, while Ruth checked over some details of our gazetteer of features and drawings, to assess how much more work we need to do here. She also measured and drew in the features newly exposed on the edges of the reservoir.

Alan photographing mill site features uncovered by lowered water levels

© Jane Lunnon

Jane focused on the botanical survey, and started the July checklist of flowering plants around the site, with the invaluable aid of Heather Burrow.

We were very saddened to see that one of our favourite parts of the mill site has been unexpectedly robbed out and covered with gravel. At the eastern end of the long boardwalk footbridge, where the footpath reaches the mill site, there was formerly the clear foundation of a short but interesting section of a double skinned field wall – solidly built, it was one of the few remains still evident of the old field boundaries which once divided Embsay Pasture, and could be seen on the 1847 tithe map. It is now inexplicably gone, the large stones shoved to one side, as a sad remnant of Embsay’s history.

Jane Lunnon

24. Wednesday 30 June 2010

Another very hot day with temperatures well in the 80’s! We have been so lucky with the weather, only having one wet Wednesday, since our delayed start.
Having finished the surveying of the sheep-wash area & the stream, David undertook a walk-over to investigate the western end of the field, being regularly interrupted by interested passers-by. It is getting very difficult to distinguish these ‘lumps and bumps’ now as the vegetation is getting so high.

Jane continued with her survey of the wild flowers, while Vera, Peter and Ruth completed a gazetteer of the area now exposed by the lowered water level of the reservoir.

Completing the gazetteer on the exposed foreshore © Jane Lunnon

Following a leisurely lunch, during which we chatted with curious walkers, and Peter lost his sandwiches to two eager dogs who quickly sneaked in behind him, work continued. Peter wore a different metaphorical hat as acting site photographer, photographing the exposed structures on the foreshore and in the cottage area. We were very excited to see the outlines of the cottage walls now showing up very clearly as scorch marks in the grass, after all the dry weather. Ruth continued to assist Jane in continuing to record more of the flora.

White foxglove © Jane Lunnon

At 4pm we all decided that we were too hot and exhausted to continue – all we needed was a shower and a long cold drink

Ruth Spencer, UWHG Chairman