| Moseley Bog | |
|---|---|
 | |
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| Type | |
| Location | Moseley, Birmingham |
| Coordinates | 52°26′10″N1°51′47″W / 52.436°N 1.863°W |
| Operated by | Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country |
| Website | www |
Moseley Bog and Joy's Wood Local Nature Reserve, formerly The Dell, is a Local Nature Reserve in the Moseley area of Birmingham, England, with an area of about 12 ha (29 acres). [1] [2] Along with the nearby Sarehole Mill, and a number of other sites, it forms part of the Shire Country Park. [3]
Evidence of human activity at Moseley Bog dates back some three thousand years, to the Bronze Age, in the form of burnt mounds on the banks of Coldbath Brook, which runs through the bog. Comprising piles of cracked stones and burnt wood, archaeologists believe them to be the remains of sweat lodges – huts, or bender tents, in which water was poured over heated stones to create a sauna, often for the purpose of spiritual purification, followed by a cold bath. The mounds and their surrounding area are Scheduled Ancient Monuments. [4]
The forested area of the bog is a surviving fragment of primeval wildwood, much of the surrounding parts of which had been cleared by the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, replaced with meadowland and common land, used for grazing livestock and strip farming. The boggy area was once a secondary reservoir to feed the millpond at Sarehole Mill. Although now drained, the embankment on its eastern side remains. Coldbath Brook flows from Coldbath Pool, in what is now Moseley Golf Course, through a culvert, then through Moseley Bog as an open stream, and is then culverted to the millpond, from whence it flows to its confluence with the River Cole. [5]
The western half of the current nature reserve, adjoining the bog, had been used by Birmingham City Council as a landfill site from 1960 to 1973, when it was levelled off and converted into a playing field for Moseley School.
In 1980 the city council announced its intention to build a housing estate on the bog. This led to the successful Save Our Bog campaign, organised by the urban conservation activist Joy Fifer, which saved the site from development and helped inspire the Urban Wildlife movement. Fifer's campaign also popularised the name Moseley Bog for the site, which had hitherto been known as The Dell. Starting with a major tree planting initiative in 1987, the school playing field adjoining the bog, which had proven to be damp and unsuitable, has been allowed to revert to natural woodland, to create what is now known as Joy's Wood, named after Joy Fifer.
In 1984 Moseley Bog hosted the first ever International Dawn Chorus Day, organised by the Urban Wildlife Trust, founded in Birmingham in 1980 and now the Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country. The whole site was declared a Local Nature Reserve (LNR) by Birmingham City Council on 17 July 1991. Much of the area comprising Moseley Bog had been declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in 1980. However, following its LNR declaration and re-evaluation by English Nature the site was denotified as an SSSI on 21 July 1992, but remains a locally designated Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC). In 2000 it was formally renamed Moseley Bog and Joy's Wood Local Nature Reserve. [6]
In August 2006 a public consultation on proposals to conserve the site, enhance access and encourage a wider audience was launched. In March 2010, a lottery grant of £376,500 was awarded for improvements and restoration [7] while management of the site was leased to the Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country by the city council. On 26 June 2011, a formal reopening was conducted by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Councillor Anita Ward.
The firepit in Joy's Wood, where bonfires are allowed, is a popular meeting place for local Pagan groups, including the Daughters of Frya – Oera Linda Order of Priestesses [8] and Dinas Canolog – The Grove of the Central City. [9] Since 2011 it has also been the venue for the In Memory of a Free Festival event at the summer solstice. [10]
J. R. R. Tolkien lived nearby, as a child, and acknowledged the site as inspiration for the ancient forests in his books The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit . Nearby Sarehole Mill and the surrounding area on the River Cole are said to have been inspiration for Tolkien's writings. [6] [7]
In 1966, in an interview for The Guardian , Tolkien said (emphasis added):
It was a kind of lost paradise … There was an old mill that really did grind corn with two millers, a great big pond with swans on it, a sandpit, a wonderful dell with flowers, a few old-fashioned village houses and, further away, a stream with another mill. I always knew it would go — and it did.
A house adjacent to the reserve (since demolished) was used by reggae band UB40 as a studio for their earliest recordings. [11]
Moseley is a suburb of south Birmingham, England, three miles south of the city centre.
The River Cole is a 25 miles (40 km) river in the English Midlands. It rises on the lower slopes of Forhill, one of the south-western ramparts of the Birmingham Plateau, at Red Hill and flows south before flowing largely north-east across the plateau to enter the River Blythe below Coleshill, near Ladywalk, shortly before the Blythe meets the Tame. This then joins the Trent, whose waters reach the North Sea via the Humber Estuary. Its source is very near the main watershed of Midland England: tributaries are few and very short except in the lower reaches, so the Cole is only a small stream.
Hall Green is an area in southeast Birmingham, England, synonymous with the B28 postcode. It is also a council constituency of Birmingham City Council, managed by its own district committee. Historically it lay within the county of Worcestershire. The 2001 Population Census found that there were 25,921 people living in Hall Green with a population density of 4,867 people per km2, this compares with 3,649 people per km2 for Birmingham.
Sarehole is an area in Hall Green, Birmingham, England. Historically in Worcestershire, it was a small hamlet in the larger parish, and manor, of Yardley, which was transferred to Birmingham in 1911. Birmingham was classed as part of Warwickshire until 1974, and since then has been part of the West Midlands.
The Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country is a wildlife trust covering Birmingham and the Black Country in the West Midlands of England. It covers five of the seven districts of the West Midlands county: Birmingham, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton.
Local nature reserve (LNR) is a statutory designation for certain nature reserves in Great Britain. The Wild Life Conservation Special Committee established them and proposed a national suite of protected areas comprising national nature reserves, conservation areas, national parks, geological monuments, local nature reserves and local educational nature reserves.
The Shire Country Park is a country park in the south of Birmingham, England, taking its name from Tolkien's The Shire.
Sarehole Mill is a Grade II listed water mill, in an area once called Sarehole, on the River Cole in Hall Green, Birmingham, England. It is now run as a museum by the Birmingham Museums Trust. It is known for its association with J. R. R. Tolkien and is one of only two working water mills in Birmingham, with the other being New Hall Mill in Walmley, Sutton Coldfield.
Wake Green is a historical area in south Birmingham, England between Moseley, Kings Heath, and Hall Green.
Birmingham has 591 parks and open spaces, totalling over 3,500 hectares (14 sq mi), more than any other equivalent sized European city. The centrepieces of Birmingham's park system are the five Premier Parks. Fifteen parks have received the prestigious Green Flag Award. The city also has five local nature reserves, one national nature reserve and a number of Wildlife Trust nature reserves.
Ten Acre Wood is a Local Nature Reserve (LNR) in Yeading in the London Borough of Hillingdon, which is owned by Hillingdon Council and managed by the London Wildlife Trust (LWT). It is also part of the Yeading Brook Meadows Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC), which includes two neighbouring LNRs managed by the LWT, Gutteridge Wood and Meadows and Yeading Brook Meadows LNR.
Yeading Brook Meadows is a 17 hectare Local Nature Reserve (LNR) in Yeading in the London Borough of Hillingdon. It is owned by Hillingdon Council and managed by the London Wildlife Trust (LWT). In the north it adjoins Ten Acre Wood across the Golden Bridge and Charville Lane; it then stretches south along the banks of the Yeading Brook to Yeading Lane. The reserve is also part of the Yeading Brook Meadows Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation, which includes two neighbouring LNRs managed by the London Wildlife Trust, Ten Acre Wood and Gutteridge Wood and Meadows.
