Slingsby will be getting its own set of traffic lights for two weeks starting from the 28th October as construction work takes place in an area starting at the corner leading up to the Balk.
Hopefully the work will be completed on time and the disruption will be minimal.
Our thanks to John Clayton and Margaret Mackinder for this news about the Slingsby Church yews.
Whether you walked between them on your wedding day, or regularly pass through them on your way into church, or simply see them on your daily route to work, or walks around the village, many of you will have a fond association with the avenue of Irish Yews that line the main entrance to Slingsby Church.
Over many years the individual trees have been trimmed into individual cylindrical shapes to create a formal feature.
Unfortunately the trees were planted very close to the footpath and have inevitably grown to a point where they are obstructing passage, especially for weddings and funerals, and, although it would be possible to trim them back to solve the problem in the short-term, the required amount of trimming would cause individuals to be misshapen which would detract from the desired formal appearance.
Rather than taking the radical decision to remove them and start again, it has been decided that they should be retained but formed into a shape that will not affect the footpath in future. The trees are therefore to be shaped into individual pyramids which will allow for sloping sides away from the footpath edge. To achieve this it will be necessary to prune them quite hard to fit them under specially made metal frames with mesh sides which will allow the new shoots to grow through to eventually form the new pyramidal shape. Fortunately yew is one of the few conifer species which regenerates well following hard pruning, therefore, although the trees will look a little unsightly for a period of time after pruning this will only be a temporary appearance. This process is by no means a quick fix, and may take a few growing seasons to achieve the desired result. However the final result should be worth waiting for.
It is intended that work will begin before Christmas.
The website had a great summer this year with the page views going up to over 4000 from May to September. Although the website pages provide a lot of great information about the village, the real heart of the website is its news and events section where we post information about what’s going on locally. It’s a very popular feature of the site.
To keep the website up-to-date, the website team rely on being told the information. If something isn’t mentioned on the website, then it comes down to one of two reasons. One, we don’t know about it (i.e. we haven’t be told about the event), or two, we aren’t allowed to report it as the organisers don’t want the event appearing on the website. Sometimes we’d like to tell you but we can’t!
The popularity and strength of the village website is down to the diversity of content we have on it. If you’d like to write something for the site or just tell us about a local event, you can contact the website team (Jon, George and Ringo Richard) via the contact page located here.
Slingsby Badminton Club’s 2013/14 season will start on Monday 21 October 2013 at 7.30pm in Slingsby Village Hall.
We are a friendly and enthusiastic group of players of varying skill levels and age . The emphasis is on fun. New members are welcome. If you are interested, please come along! There is no annual subscription and you only pay for each session you play.
Village Hall, Monday evenings 7:30pm (October to Easter).
Janet Clarke 01653 628625 or Barbara Holmes 01653 628107.
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A word from the Website Editor
The regular Monday players are looking forward avidly to another competitive season. As I write, our pre-season training is just reaching full intensity and bodies are being honed to a peak of perfection. Why not come along and join us from 21st October to see if this is just another journalistic flight of fancy? [Actually, we did have some nice pub meals in the off-season…..]
Jon
Nunnington Hall has a couple of great photography exhibitions on over the next couple of months starting with the brilliant work of Steve McCurry that will run until November 3rd. A visit to see his work is definitely recommended.
Steve McCurry is part travel photographer and part photojournalist and has covered stories all around the world, but he is probably best known for his work in Afghanistan (especially the photograph of a young Afghan girl called Sharbat Gul) and India. A hugely influential photographer, Steve has a terrific photography blog featuring portraits, landscapes and other great images that can be found HERE.
The second photography exhibition starts on November 9th and is the British Wildlife Photography Awards 2013. As the Nunnington Hall website says ‘See the winning entries of this prestigious national photographic competition celebrating the diversity of the natural history of the British Isles.’
The exhibition last year featured some fantastic work and no doubt the standard will be equally high this year. The exhibition runs from the 9th November – 15th December.
Two superb world class exhibitions, just down the road from Slingsby.
