Garden wildlife calendar photography competition results 📷

Thank you so much to all of you who took part in this year’s Wildlife Photography Competition. With almost 850 entries it was incredibly difficult to choose the winning 12 photographs, but the panel of judges eventually made their selection. Cumbria Wildlife Trust members recently voted for their favourite photo amongst the 12 to help us award prizes to the top three.

We’re delighted to announce the winners are;

📷 First Place – red squirrel and lavendar by Rosamund Macfarlane
📷 Second Place – wasps by John Cobham
📷 Third Place – blue tit chick by James Underwood

All of the winning 12 entries will feature in our 2021 calendar, which celebrates the amazing and varied wildlife encountered in gardens or on local walks. The calendar will make a perfect gift for all wildlife lovers. It is available to pre-order in our online shop and will be dispatched in October 👉 www.cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk/shop

One of our members, Kate is doing an online lecture on 12 August looking at lead tokens in Medieval England – those found at Holme Cultram Abbey have a starring role! See below for more details.

Archeoscan Online
The next of these presentations is planned for Wednesday 12th August at 1930 BST:
The title of the talk is: Connectivity or Control? A story of Medieval England told in Lead.

Lead tokens are rarely given a passing glance in excavation records – they’re often poorly made, unattractive and very rarely datable and so they have largely been ignored. In 2016, a large volume of lead tokens was recovered in the chapter house area of a Cistercian monastery on the Scottish Borders. When studied, it became apparent that these tokens were unusual and could be compared to others found in similar Cistercian houses in the north of England. Furthermore, they could potentially be dated and all of a sudden, these ugly, seemingly inconsequential items were telling a story about a way of life in medieval England that is nowhere else described. This is a talk that reminds us that in archaeology, sometimes it is the smallest things that can lead us on the most interesting of journeys.

Kate Rennicks will be talking to us about the lead token story seen through the lead token found at Holme Cultram Abbey.

In 2015, she was part of the digging team that recovered a large volume of lead tokens and they became the focus of her dissertation. It became apparent that these innocuous seeming items had barely been studied but they had a great story to tell and an undergraduate dissertation grew into published work earlier this year.

The presentation will start at 1930 BST on Wednesday 12th August. Cost £6. (1 hour)

The presentation will be streamed live via the Zoom platform.

To book a place for the presentation please contact Archeoscan on archeoscan@hotmail.co.uk. You will be sent instructions on how to pay and to receive your log on details for the presentation.

Our partners – The North Pennines AONB Partnership is looking for a manager for their ground-breaking nature recovery and engagement programme, Tees-Swale – naturally connected.

Tees-Swale is led by the North Pennines AONB Partnership, with the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, and covers nearly 850km2 of outstanding Protected Landscape. They aim to demonstrate how — by working in tandem with our High Nature Value farmers in particular — they can conserve, restore, expand and connect priority habitats on an unprecedented scale; at the same time, this work will deliver multiple other public benefits including climate change mitigation, flood-risk management and increasing people’s well-being.

Interested? More information and apply here 👉 www.northeastjobs.org.uk/job/Tees_Swale_Programme_Manager/198844

The post will be based in Stanhope, in County Durham, with the need for travel throughout the programme area. The postholder will be employed by Durham County Council on behalf of the AONB

Deadline for applications: 24/08/2020. Interviews will be held online on 04/09/2020