Talk:Old Lodge

I have made a couple of small changes to the article.

I am currently the volunteer reserve manager of the reserve.

The land is not owned by the SWT, but there is a management agreement between the owners and SWT which has a number of years still to run. I had not looked up the references for the original statements, but it is in error. I have now asked SWT to check the wikipedia entries for all their sites, and so hopefully there will be a corrected version for the source article to reference.

The original Local Nature Reserve was reduced in size when the House ajoining the reserve was sold off in the 1990s, with two sections near the house being taken out of the Reserve, and becoming part of the house sale. One of these did have a plantation of Pines. This was the only plantation on reserve at the time. All the trees that are on the current reserve are basically natural regrowth since the second world war, or a few veterans which have survived various large forest fires. The trees can be dense in places, and are often mistaken for plantations, but no wood planting has taken place since that war. Reference can be made to some aerial photos just after the war, and current google maps.

The sold plantation were planted after the first world war by the parents or grandparents of the current owners of the Reserve. They were never harvested, and were largely destroyed in the great storm (1980s?). There are some individual trees still standing, but basically cannot be seen from the reserve.

The area of the original reserve is given in the original article, but is out of date because of the house sale. I did not change this, as I do not have a definitive figure, but it is something like 180 acres.

I have now handed responsibility over to SWT to do further corrections and improvements.

martin 24.4.2021

Emartinwilkinson (talk) 11:27, 24 April 2021 (UTC)