TRAWSCOED HALL,WELSHPOOL
– a year on
by Trevor Trevor
I thought you might be interested in some feedback from an owner’s perspective following your Field Visit in June 2005. Your comments and suggestions were helpful and encouraging, and could be broken down as follows:
- Cut down and kill all the laurels
- Create more open spaces to encourage natural regeneration
- Kill as many grey squirrels as possible.
 WH members gathering outside Trawscoed Hall in June 2005 |
Felling Mature Oak
Having got bored with spending months cutting
down laurels with nothing financial to show for it, I
thought I would fell some Oak as a thinning and,
following my usual practice, looked for the worst
trees. I couldn’t find any suitable in the area your
members wanted me to thin, but found some further
up the wood, and marked nine. Oak trees
(especially 150 year old Oak trees) always seem
small until they are on the ground. Then you find
that they are larger than you thought, but also they
are not as straight. There were more gateposts than
intended, but I did cut a number of beams,
including a 17 feet by 16 inch beam out of one tree,
and I now have a fair amount of Oak drying in a
shed. No doubt it will come in useful some time.
Grey Squirrels
All in all I found your visit here most helpful,
and it gave me a push to get on with something
which I had been putting off.
The squirrels had a reprieve for this year, but it
is only temporary. Having learned a little about
poisoning them I will now have to wait until next
year. I have to say that there does not seem to
have been so much damage this year as in the
past. The national policy of “containment” around
the red squirrel areas will inevitably fail, and there
will be a great deal of hand wringing. The only
answer is a massive effort to exterminate grey
squirrels, but regrettably many people will not face
up to this. They seem happy to suggest doing
away with non-native trees, but unwilling to
do the same to non-native animals.
Sally Goodwin presents Mr & Mrs Trevor with a Woodland Heritage
commemorative bowl at the end of our visit to Trawscoed.
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