North Kent Marshes self guided Heritage Trails around Cliffe

The Charnel House Project – protecting our heritage

Set in a Hoo Peninsula landscape that inspired Charles Dickens to write ‘Great Expectations’ and overlooking globally important wetlands lies the village of Cliffe and this photograph from Friends of the North Marshes Flickr photostream shows the opening of the restored Charnel House on the 28th June 2008 – one of only three in the whole of Kent – located in the north west corner of St Helens churchyard.

The Charnel House was restored with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund, Groundwork Kent & Medway and St Helens PCC. Friends of the North Kent Marshes were proud to be a part of this wonderful project.

Many visitors come to this historic village and as part of the project Friends of the North Kent Marshes produced some free self guided trails around Cliffe to promote and celebrate the natural and cultural heritage of this unique area.

Cliffe Heritage Buildings Trail FoNKM

Cliffe Literary Heritage Trail pdf FoNKM

Cliffe Military Heritage Trail FoNKM

Cliffe Industrial Heritage Trail FoNKM pdf

Cliffe Farming Heritage Trail FoNKM

Cliffe Wildlife Heritage Trail

The restoration process can be seen on the interpretation boards outside of the building.

The Charnel House, located in a corner of the graveyard at St Helen's Church in Cliffe, Kent, England. — The Charnel House, located in a corner of the graveyard at St Helen’s Church in Cliffe, Kent, England.

Above photograph by Slaunger (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Wetland Wonderland Inches Closer at RSPB Cliffe Pools

Aerial shot of Radar and Black Barn Pools, Cliffe Pools RSPB Reserve, Medway, Kent, March 2012

A vision to create one of the country’s best nature reserves for wetland wildlife has inched closer with planning permissions being secured.
This will allow for clean sand, gravel and clay from construction and tunneling work to be used at Cliffe Pools in North Kent; in addition to the river dredgings we have had to date
Working with our commercial partner, Boskalis Westminster, and consultants WYG, we’ll use the excavated material to alter the depth and shape of the man-made lagoons, making them more attractive for wildlife, especially winter migrants and breeding birds such as avocet and common terns.
Development and erosion have reduced the amount of naturally occurring shallow banks and mudflats in the Thames Estuary where birds and other wildlife can feed and breed.
Project Manager Sarah Cooper says: “Cliffe Pools is already a great site for wildlife, but securing these consents allows us over the next few years to create a magnet for waders and wildfowl, which currently struggle to find suitable living space along the Thames. It shows that conservation and business can work together to bring benefits for both wildlife and people.
The project perfectly demonstrates the ethos and sense of the European Directives, which encourage such partnerships, and shows why proposals to alter them should be resisted.

Please sign here today to tell politicians not to weaken the European Directives that protect RSPB Cliffe Pools from inappropriate and damaging development such as a Thames Estuary Airport. The consultation closes on the 24th July.

Urgent! Defend Nature now! The laws that protect it are under threat!

We need you to speak up to save nature. The EU Nature Directives have provided the highest level of protection to vulnerable habitats and species for the past 30 years – but they’re under threat!

European leaders are considering rolling back decades of progress by revising the Directives in the mistaken belief that weaker protection for wildlife is good for business. In reality, this would be bad for business, and a disaster for wildlife. We urgently need you to add your voice to thousands of others below and defend nature. Without a massive demonstration of public support for the Directives, it will be very hard to prevent them being weakened.

Gill Moore, a spokesperson for the Friends of North Kent Marshes, explained that the marshes would not exist without the Nature Directives.

She said: “Our marshland landscapes inspired Charles Dickens to write Great Expectations, and hold a world-class natural heritage so important that it is protected under local, national and international law. The strongest of these laws are the Nature Directives, which protect our globally important wetlands from inappropriate and damaging development.

“These laws were instrumental in stopping an airport at Cliffe in 2003 and, more recently, in September 2014, when the UK Airports Commission ruled out building an airport anywhere in the Greater Thames Estuary or on the Hoo Peninsula. Any weakening of these laws could put our most important wildlife sites in peril. We must now join together to fight any and all attempts to water them down.”

TAKE ACTION NOW! http://www.rspb.org.uk/joinandhelp/campaignwithus/defendnature/

#DefendNature #RSPB #Natura2000

Black-winged stilts arrive at RSPB Cliffe Pools

A mini influx of black-winged stilts has brought a touch of the Mediterranean to southern England, as two pairs of these exotic-looking wading birds are attempting to nest at RSPB sites in West Sussex and Kent.
It is thought that a dry spell in southern Spain has displaced these wetland birds to southern Britain. And it is believed that a changing climate may bring these birds to Britain more regularly in future. The only times black-winged stilts have bred successfully in the UK was in Norfolk in 1987 and Nottinghamshire in 1945.

One pair is nesting on the RSPB’s newest reserve in West Sussex, Medmerry, the other pair at the RSPB reserve at Cliffe Pools on the north Kent marshes.

“This is really exciting news and the first time we have had black-winged stilts breeding on the reserve here at Cliffe Pools,” said Warden Andy Daw. “They have visited before and a pair was seen about seven years ago on the reserve but they did not produce any young.

Yet another great reason to protect this special place for wildlife and say #jeThames #noestuaryairport

How you can help say No Estuary Airport with the RSPB

Say NO Estuary Airport with the RSPB

With 300,000 birds visiting every year we know the Thames is amazing, but we are concerned that the Airports Commission haven’t yet had the chance to really understand how special it is. With all this focus on the Estuary as an airport location, it would be easy to lose sight of the Greater Thames as a place that’s home to six million people. A place that has been at the heart of our country’s economy for centuries, as a base for commercial shipping, intensive farming, heavy industry, power generation but yet is still one of the most important places for nature in the UK.

And a place that we want future generations to be able to enjoy too.

The Commission is currently examining all the technical evidence for and against an airport in the Estuary and they will be consulting on their conclusions later in the summer. But until then, please help us remind them of what is at stake.

Please go to RSPB Thames Estuary online actions ‘How you can help’

5 Inner Thames Estuary Airport Options Are Still on the Table!

The UK Airports Commission are currently calling for evidence and studying 5 inner estuary airport options on the Hoo Peninsula. These options were studied in the run up to the Airports Commission Interim Report announcement in December 2013 when they were published alongside many other documents which can be found here
The five options are

Foster Partners Thames Hub Airport 46 Foster Sift 2 FINAL

Mayor of London Inner Estuary Airport 51 Mayor of London – Isle of Grain Sift 2 FINAL

IAAG Cliffe Airport 47 IAAG Sift 2 FINAL

Thames Reach airport 48 Metrotidal – Thames Reach Airport Sift 2 FINAL

Airports Commission own airport option based on a combination of the above which has sought to minimise cost, environmental impact and avoid relocation of the existing LNG facility 67 Isle of Grain Sift 3 FINAL

We believe that the idea of a Thames estuary airport is deeply flawed on every level

Here are some useful links to help you respond

RSPB are vehemently opposed to the construction of an airport in the Thames Estuary

Kent Wildlife Trust is vigorously opposed to any proposals to build an airport in or near the Thames Estuary.

Medway Council case against a Thames Estuary airport

CPRE Protect Kent is utterly opposed to any new airport anywhere in the Thames Estuary

FoNKM – Great Expectations and Profound Concerns

Say No Estuary Airport facebook

Please respond to this important consultation – the call for evidence closes on the 23rd May

Urgent! Email the Airports Commission today and help us say NO Thames estuary airport ever

Saving special places Great Expectations and profound concerns

Saving special places Great Expectations and profound concerns.

Thanks go to RSPB Andre Farrar for posting this blog

Strawberry Tea – with Pimm’s! – Saturday 22 June 2013 2:30-4:30pm

The churchyard of St James Church, Cooling was the setting for the opening scene in Charles Dickens world famous novel ‘Great Expectations’ where Pip met the escaped convict Magwitch

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister — Mrs Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, `Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,’ I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine — who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle — I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers- pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

Please help to protect our cultural heritage here on the North Kent Marshes

Saving special places Great Expectations and profound concerns

A flavour of what it’s like to face the obliteration of your local landscape – with all its connections and heritage – not to mention internationally important wildlife. Friends of North Kent Marshes was formed in the heat of battle ten years ago when last the airport planners came calling.

Please click on link below to read

Saving special places Great Expectations and profound concerns

Our thanks go to RSPB Andre Farrar who started the RSPB Saving special places blog.

Read his bio below:

This blog is where you can read about the places we work to protect and the people on the front line. The scope of this blog covers planning, the policies and legal framework that exists to protect the best places for wildlife and of, of course, the individual cases that are the daily work of staff across the UK. We help BirdLife International partners overseas – and you will be able to read contributions from Europe and further afield.

Of course – probably of the best way to save a site is to a acquire it as a nature reserve – this blog will sometimes feature our reserves and the role they play in future of our wildlife, but the full story of the RSPBs network of nature reserves is told elsewhere: http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves

This blog features the contributions of many individuals – I will have the pleasure of holding the ring and acting as the narrator to this compelling story. So a little about me; I’m Andre Farrar and my first active involvement with the RSPB was in the late 1970s as a volunteer with our Leeds Local Group http://www.rspb.org.uk/groups/leeds.

I was one of many who wrote to their MPs as part of the campaign to get the best outcome for what became the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981). It wasn’t perfect but it was a good start. Thirty years on, I’m still in the thick of it campaigning for our protected areas and special places for wildlife. Are we winning? Read on and find out, and see how you can help.