By Susan Barker, Great Avon Wood Conservation Heritage Co-ordinator

Did you know that we are creating a waymarked heritage trail through the new woodland we are planting at Great Avon Wood?

ANT is keen to enable long term access to the wonderful natural and cultural heritage in the landscape and create more understanding of how that landscape has changed over time. The one thousand year old Publow Oak stands in Great Avon Wood and we often wonder what the tree has seen over the centuries and what it might come to see as the new woodland grows. The heritage trail hopes to add a little insight.

So it is fitting that the names we have chosen for the three woodland blocks at Great Avon Wood reflect some of its landscape heritage. You might remember our ‘Hicks Mead Wood’ naming celebration last year with the name chosen by local neighbours after the ancient meadow at the centre of that part of the site. This year volunteers helped us name ‘Hermitage Wood’ for the old hermitage or farmstead that used to be in the fields there. Just like the old Bristol and North Somerset railway that once ran across the site, the hermitage has been absorbed back into the land – but you can still find the clues if you look.

The hermitage still shows as buildings on maps from the late 1800s so would have been there when the first steam trains came past bringing coal up from Radstock, over the viaduct at Pensford and on to Bristol. Both the railway and the hermitage will feature on the trail, as will a section of the Wansdyke scheduled monument. The Wansdyke is a post-Roman defensive earthworks running from Maes Knoll hill fort, south of Bristol, to Savernake Forest in Wiltshire and is one of the largest linear earthworks in the UK. A section of the earthwork runs along the boundary of the third block of woodland, which we are starting to plant in December, and which will be aptly named ‘Wansdyke Wood’.

 

 

Installing the trail will happen in two stages. Firstly we will be installing way markers, benches and new kissing gates this winter: the trail will join existing public footpaths with new paths that will link our three woodland blocks. Putting together the content for the graphics panels will take place over the winter for installing in the spring. We are grateful to the West of England Combined Authority and to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for their support which means that as the woodland forms so will the waymarked trail. The trail will also have linked digital resources such as more information on our website and downloadable maps.

Once tree planting season is complete we will continue with our events programme to highlight heritage. Many of the events we have run at the site serve to shed a light on its heritage, from story walks, site tours and community visits as well as a story creation workshop with Pensford Primary School which resulted in a new story ‘The Riddle Tree’. These events will continue throughout 2025 so look out for ways to join us and celebrate the history of this fascinating place.

Image credits:

  1. Story creation workshop at Great Avon Wood with Lisa Schneidau and children from Pensford Primary School, by Susan Barker
  2. Excavating the West Wansdyke at Blackrock Lane in 1995,  courtesy Avon Archeological Unit
  3. Proposed route of Great Avon Wood Heritage Trail