Chipping Norton is fortunate in having retained much of its ancient common land, while in many places this has been lost for ever.
With the help and support of the Field Reeves, entrusted since medieval times with the stewardship of the people’s commons, Chipping Norton Green Gym have been instrumental in recent years in helping to increase and manage woodland areas on that land. Notably, this has been through the creation of Fitzalan Wood and the Community Orchard, tree planting at the William Fowler Memorial Wood, and since 2020, work on an area of former grassland and scrub at the top end of Hawkyard Common, where woodland to be known as Hawkyard Copse is being created. This is an addition to the mature Wood on Hawkyard Common, with its magnificent trees.
The Copse site is a short walk across Hawkyard Common from the gate opposite the main entrance to the Playground, at the bottom of New Street (on the A44).
Bounded by stockproof fencing, the planting area offers the space to create a small wood potentially of several hundred trees, depending on spacing. The people of Chipping Norton will be encouraged to get involved in the planting of different broad-leaved species here and these already include both nut trees and fruit trees, with the famous Bramley apple represented. As the scheme progresses, the on-site nursery will ensure a supply of reasonably-sized trees to plant. In 2023 a bench was installed at the copse, with its view to the west over the valley. The bench is a memorial to the late John Grantham, a good friend of our Green Gym, whose wish it was that the area be named Hawkyard Copse.
Some of its first users enjoying the John Grantham memorial bench
A view of the site in January 2022.
Trees will be planted gradually over the next few years, following an initial focus on the 2021-2 and 2022-3 planting seasons as Chippy’s contribution to the “Queen’s Green Canopy” project, a celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. The initiative encourages the planting of trees to create a legacy in honour of the late Queen’s seventy-year leadership of the country, a legacy which will be to the benefit of future generations, not least because it is an important way of tackling climate change.
The first public planting day was Saturday, February 26th, 2022, when well over 100 trees were put in.
We “did our bit” for Queen Elizabeth’s Green Canopy and for the planet.
U3A members at work on the first public planting day
Members of Chippy Scouts group helped out too.
October 2021: Green Gym members enjoy a break from scrub clearance at the Hawkyard Copse site.
Hawkyard was the surname of a once prominent local family, and it became the name used to refer to this part of the Common. This was probably because the family lived on New Street in a house overlooking it, which is now known as Hawkyard House. The Hawkyards were, like so many townspeople then, employed at the Bliss Tweed Mill.
This Hawkyard Common site assessment aroused some curiosity!
The cattle are in fact standing on what was in earlier times the old Worcester road.