News
Concerns over wildlife impact, road safety and nearby power lines sink plans for solar farm
Thursday 10 February 2022
So they can be stopped… Plans for a solar farm to be built between Manuden and Berden, on the Essex-Hertfordshire border, have been blocked by Uttlesford District Council. Low Carbon Solar Park 6 had applied to both East Herts and Uttlesford district councils for permission to develop its Pelham Spring solar park but failed to […] Read more >
Join us for our next talk as the farming environment comes into focus
Monday 7 February 2022
The next talk in our winter series could hardly be more topical, with Rebecca Inman from the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group presenting The Farming Environment. Ms Inman is a farm environment adviser for FWAG East, with almost 25 years’ experience giving on-farm advice. Prior to this she worked for seven years on farm enterprises […] Read more >
Veganuary, solar farms, neonicotinoids, greenwash… it’s all there in the first talk of our winter series
Friday 28 January 2022
The first speaker in our series of winter talks didn’t pull any punches when he got things under way this week with The Importance of British Food Production. Essex farmer Tom Bradshaw, vice-president of the National Farming Union, gave the talk via Zoom to a healthy audience of 29 people on Wednesday (January 26). Launching […] Read more >
Plough Sunday is alive and well in Thaxted!
Wednesday 19 January 2022
Always first to the draw, we gave you plenty of advance notice of Thaxted’s Plough Sunday service… and what an event it was, as our star man Gordon Ridgewell demonstrates with these photographs. He tells us the story: “It wasn’t the Red Arrows attracting the crowds at Thaxted on Sunday but a Tractor Drive-By. “Some […] Read more >
Meet farmer Tom Bradshaw, the first speaker in our winter series of talks
Tuesday 18 January 2022
The first speaker in CPRE Essex’s series of winter talks is Essex farmer Tom Bradshaw, vice-president of the National Farming Union. Mr Bradshaw is a fourth-generation farmer from Fordham, near Colchester, and has a tremendous record in British agriculture, having chaired the NFU’s National Combinable Crops Board and represented it as chairman of the local […] Read more >
Moon musings
Monday 17 January 2022
Nothing we can add to Gordon Ridgewell’s ponderings… “Look at the size of that! “When I pulled back the curtains this morning, I just had to get my camera. The distance of the moon from Earth is currently 404,516 kilometres. It was 07.58 and when I checked on sunrise time it is as exactly the […] Read more >
We’re presenting a winter series of talks based on farming… here are the dates
Friday 14 January 2022
So many people enjoyed our series of talks last winter that we felt we had no option but to offer you some more… With circumstances and indeed life very different a year on, we won’t be holding quite as many as last time and we have chosen to present them under a unifying theme – […] Read more >
Explosion in holiday lets is strangling rural communities, new CPRE research shows
Wednesday 12 January 2022
A surge in the number of homes marketed for Airbnb-style short-term lets is crippling the residential rentals market, new research shows. The problem is most acute in staycation hotspots, where hundreds of homes previously available to rent to local people have been switched to short-stay holiday rentals. The worsening housing crisis – which is particularly […] Read more >
Deer, deer! Gordon takes his photographic opportunity
Monday 3 January 2022
Does anything escape the magic eye of Gordon Ridgewell? He shares with us: “I had a ride round the lanes at Littlebury Green and Strethall this morning and a few deer ran across the road, so I stopped and opened the car window. “About 30 of them were gathered just in the field, so I […] Read more >
Blooming roses must mean… Happy New Year!
Saturday 1 January 2022
These are of course strange days… in so many ways. Photographer Gordon Ridgewell took a walk round his Littlebury garden and saw these roses in bloom – we’re talking December 30! It’s probably fair to say that most of us would welcome a return to some kind of normality in 2022. Happy New Year from […] Read more >