Fire sets back Brockswood education project!

First of all... Why an Anglo-Saxon village at an animal sanctuary? At Brockswood, our mission is not only to care for animals in need, but to educate too. While our work sees us teaching about animal care, wildlife conservation, beekeeping etc; we are also aware of the importance of other subject areas, and one very dear to our hearts is local history.

Many of you will know of the different incarnations of 'Cotwall End', but what if you looked back not 20 or 30 years, but well over a thousand years! To the Age of Penda when this land in the kingdom of Mercia (the Midlands) was a settlement for our Saxon ancestors.

With Generfeld - literally "Sanctuary Field", we hoped to give you a snapshot in time; showing you how some of these fascinating people lived and worked. The Age of Penda group are all volunteers – they do this in-between their day jobs. Penda is a fantastic opportunity for like-minded people to learn new crafts and skills, discover some of our history, and build new friendships. They have also recently joined forces with one of Dudley College’s Foundation Land Based Learning groups, enabling local students to have a hand in this unique venture.

To say that a lot of time and work has gone into this would be an understatement. It has been years in the making, and was really starting to take shape. We were so excited to show you what we had achieved together!

Instead we have to tell you about the fire-fighters called out on Saturday night, and several buildings torched by thoughtless intruders.

Photo by Dudley Fire Station

Thankfully we had very recently moved our group of senior sheep that had been grazing in this paddock, and we can assure you that all our animals are completely unharmed. We just wish that we could say the same for Generfeld.

This comes after the group had items stolen last year, including a blacksmith’s anvil, and previous intentional damage.

This is sadly the sort of thing that we are having to fight, alongside trying to restore and improve the site, and caring for the animals. The last few months have seen old pipes falling apart, causing flooding in paddocks and costing both countless hours of our time and funds spent that we had earmarked for rebuilding enclosures (more about this HERE).

The buildings that were burned have taken months of hard work to complete, and has left us feeling more than a little deflated after so much effort. Built in the Saxon style, complete with turfed roof (which our sheep were quite fond of playing on and mowing). The items inside have also been destroyed, including various pieces of replica historical items, and tools.

 When we took over this site, we knew that we had our work cut out for us.  

We knew that this would be continuous hard work and a real labour of love.  

We knew that it would mean long hours, long weeks, and little sleep; sometimes leaving us aching, stressed, and very tired. 

We knew that this would never make us rich in anything but the knowledge that we are doing something GOOD.  

What we didn’t bank on, was the people that would stand in our way.

These are setbacks not only to Brockswood, but a huge dent in the morale of those working so hard here. The unseen hours spent every day, trying to not only provide the best care for these animals, but to make our and your vision of Brockswood become real.

We have said for many years that we are trying to restore the site to its “former glory”. We want MORE than this. We want it to become even better than that. We want you to be proud of this little Oasis in the Black Country. We want to make a big impact for not only our animals and the many more that need us, but our local community (and others beyond!)

We can’t do this without help, and we most definitely cannot achieve this if we are persistently knocked back down whenever we pick ourselves up.

We’d like to say a big thank you to the locals who have inquired after the safety of us and our animals after seeing the smoke and fire engine – and a very big thank you to the fast response of the Fire Service, who do such a wonderful job! Thank you to all who have offered support, and to those who have supported us from the very beginning. We need you!

How You Can Help...

• If you think that you could help us in any way, please get in touch! We need timber and other building materials.
  
• We will also need to replace the tools that were destroyed. We need old fashioned wooden handled tools for building.
• If you have an interest in history, or good with DIY and would like to help, please don't hesitate to get in touch. Email: volunteering@brockswood.org
  
• If you have any other ideas for ways to help us, we would love to hear from you! Email: brockswood@hotmail.co.uk

"Invisible" Jobs

We are constantly working to improve the site, but a lot of our biggest jobs lately have been what we've come to call the "Invisible Jobs" here. These are the tasks that will make a big difference to us, but unfortunately aren't things that you can really SEE. For example, we are currently undertaking the enormous task of fixing and replacing old and broken pipework under a few of our paddocks. Though a huge job involving a lot of hard work, man power, and expense; once covered back up, this becomes "invisible" to you, leaving you wondering what we've been up to!

However, once completed this should help fix some of the flooding which has affected several paddocks for years now. With clay soil, in the dip of a valley, and many natural springs on site; wet ground and mud are things we've battled since Day #1, so broken and burst pipes on top of that are most definitely NOT wanted!

It's a bit of a mess at the moment (we've covered up the dug out holes with pallets for now, so Leo the Shetland doesn't accidentally stumble into one - we like to hope he's more intelligent than that, but you can't be too careful!) but we're working hard to have it all covered and fixed up by the time we re-open - and hopefully some drier paddocks, plus a re-instated footpath which we had to close due to its flooding and damage a couple of years ago! There is a lot more repair work needed for this, but we're on the case!

Leo surveying the chaos in his paddock!

It's all go here, and rest assured that though you cannot always see the work being done here, we are ALWAYS working to improve the site and make it great again!

If you think you could help us in any way, please don't hesitate to get in touch! Thank you.

New Aviary!

It's been a labour of love but our brand new Cockatiel aviary is now complete, and the birds moved into it. It is truly wonderful to have an enclosure that makes us smile to walk in to! We always want the best for our animals, and find ourselves walking into their enclosures each day thinking about all of the things that need fixing and making better for them, and at times that can be quite disheartening. To see what CAN be achieved has been a big morale boost for us, and we can't wait to start work on all of the other enclosures. In time we'd also like to build more, but the animals here now have to come first.

Cockatiels settled in their new aviary!

A big thank you to those who made it happen... the kind people who made donations and everybody who entered our summer raffle - YOU, as well as our very hard working volunteers and staff, made this possible!

We also took great pleasure in dismantling the old aviary next door once we'd moved the birds, ready to build a new one here too... and slowly get them ALL up to this standard one-by-one! The future's bright, together we can do this!