FoIM Volunteers Conserving Ilkley Moor

The Golden Mattock

On Tuesday 18^th March about 30 volunteers were up on Heber’s Moss. Planting sphagnum plugs. Although this is the first time for a while that we have had so many volunteers on the Moor at the same time, it seems appropriate to devote a Newsletter to the many volunteers who turn out, week after week, to do practical work on the Moor.

Although not quite the Oscars or the Baftas, we do have our own red-carpet moment – the award of the ‘Golden Mattock’ to the member of our Tuesday Work Party who has contributed the most (in terms of attendance) during the last year.

As a reward for our Tuesday Volunteers, each year we give them a Christmas lunch, and this provides the occasion for the award of the ‘Golden Mattock’. This year’s winner was Tim South. He can be seen in the background of the photo of this prestigious award. Tim turned out more often than any other volunteer, taking part in 34 work parties, but there were others who were not far behind. Next Christmas lunch we shall look forward to seeing whether he has retained his crown, or whether some other contender will emerge. It is a keenly fought battle.

 And what is it that the Tuesday volunteers do? Well in January there were two work parties (two were cancelled due to snow). The first one was devoted to drainage work on the path from Willy Hall’s Spout to Keighley Road. This involved clearing the ditches and rodding the drains. On the second, work was concentrated around the Tarn, clearing and rodding the drains into the Tarn and clearing the paths and steps on paths to the Tarn.

In February most of the work has been concentrated around White Wells. Drainage work was done on the path above White Wells and cutting back on the vegetation on the path from the Paddling Pool to White Wells. Then, towards the end of the month more work was done around the Lower Tarn and in Heber’s Ghyll maintaining the path that we surfaced some years ago. And lastly our volunteers have been re-opening and re-constructing the path (shown on the 1894 map) that runs north-west down from White Wells. The volunteers also did some maintenance work on benches, re-sited the information board at the bottom of the White Wells track and constructed ‘leaky dams’ on the small stream that runs down to the White Wells track, to reduce the likelihood of flooding.

I have given this lengthy list, as members may not be fully aware of the sheer amount of work done on our Tuesday work parties. We can anticipate that somewhere between 15 and 20 volunteers will turn out every week. They are mainly men, post-retirement, but we are very glad that we do have one or two women volunteers. Unlike a certain US President, we do believe in diversity and inclusion.

The photos show Tim receiving the Golden Mattock and a group of our volunteers displaying some of the new hand tools we have just bought for them, Tim is holding the spade.

 And don’t forget

A date for your diaries. Our AGM will be held on Friday 16th May at the Clarke Foley Centre. We propose to make some minor changes to our format, to give more time to our speakers and to reduce the amount of time necessary for our formal business. However, we do propose to introduce the changes to our constitution, consequent on the decision of our last AGM to extend our remit to cover the publicly owned woods in Ilkley (Middleton Woods etc). We have a presentation planned by both Yorkshire Water and the National Trust on the flood mitigation work done in the Calder Valley, which is of direct relevance to the work being done on Ilkley Moor. So, note the date. We want our usual impressive turn-out of members.

Owen Wells
Chair, Friends of Ilkley Moor

24^th March 2025