Carton recycling

Carton recycling is now available in Sheffield at Waitrose on Ecclesall Road and Sainsbury's on Archer Road. This includes all drinks cartons, frozen drinks containers, ready mixed custard, washing powder boxes etc. Details from The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment tel : 020 8977 6116 or info@drinkscartons.com

Tree massacre

There was widespread concern from local residents at the sudden felling and pruning of mature trees within the curtilage of Bushey Wood during August. The work was carried out in the woodland immediately behind one of the houses in Devonshire Road, despite the existence of tree preservation orders on the trees involved. The Council is currently considering what remedial action can be taken, including the possible prosecution of those responsible.

Planning Matters

Planning applications, decisions and issues have raised some surprises, disappointments and satisfactions during the last quarter.

‘Fairthorn’ Townhead Road. As is well known, Home Farm Trust the owners and occupiers of ‘Fairthorn’ have had a change in policy in the provision of housing accommodation and in consequence put ‘Fairthorn’ on the market some time ago. There was a significant amount of interest in the property, but because of its position in the Green Belt any prospect of significant development of the site was out of the question. A planning application has now been made by Methodist Homes, a charity providing sheltered accommodation and housing particularly for the elderly.

The application is for 30 units for retired people and includes 30 car parking spaces. The proposal is for a single new building on the footprint of the existing main building, sheds and greenhouses would be demolished and the applicants propose extensive landscaping and tree planting on the site. Whereas we would prefer nothing at all in this Green Belt, the proposals are probably of the better type for the site. The Society have asked that if the application is approved, the property is only occupied by the elderly retired and that the building is faced in natural stone, and not stone and rendering as shown on the plans.

114 Totley Brook Road. Since last reporting the application for housing in the back garden of this property, regrettably the planning authority have given planning permission for the development. This is a disappointment to the Society as the proposed houses will look directly into the backs of other properties and tandem development of this type is not to be encouraged. Needless to say the neighbours are not happy.

64 Dore Road. A similar situation occurs here where this property is a bungalow on a fairly large site at the back of the Victorian Villas in Dore Road. An application has now been made for three further houses on the land.

‘Farfield’ Townhead Road. This is a substantial property at the corner of Townhead Road and Blackamoor Road. At the back of the house is a paddock, which has a frontage to Blackamoor Road. An application was made for two large detached houses on part of the paddock. Whereas this would not have been over development of the site there was concern that the existing tree belt which screen the site from Blackamoor and the Green Belt, should be retained as far as possible. As it happens the planning committee turned the application down because the paddock is not within the village envelope for housing. Whereas this might please some it is understood that the property has been bought by a developer with a record for flat developments. Who knows what might happen here now.

Totley Bridge Garage Site. You will recall that planning consent was obtained for a convenience shopping outlet on this site, and Tesco have recently taken up occupation. The shop has extended hours opening and there has been some nuisance to neighbours, primarily from noise from an air-conditioning unit. Tescos have now applied to extend the times for delivery vehicles visiting the site to operate from 7am to 11pm with half an hour less on Sundays. The Society considers this most unreasonable in a primarily residential locality and has objected strongly.

22 Townhead Road. It is with considerable sadness that the Society learned that the Inspector allowed the appeal against the Council's Enforcement Notice against the demolition of the wall and the construction of a car park at this property. The case made by the Council and DVS was that the loss of stone boundary walls in vulnerable situations was serious in the Dore Conservation Area. Dore Village would be a very different place without the stone walls fronting the roads. The Inspector said in his report that he could understand the Society's disappointment, but the appeal was allowed on technical grounds set by precedent elsewhere. Regrettably the gain by the owner of 22 Townhead Road is the community’s loss.

David Heslop

Bonfire Headaches

Every year Dore Scouts organises a bonfire and firework display for the Village on Guy Fawkes night. Unfortunately the future of this event is threatened. Although this year’s event has not yet taken place we are already plagued by illegal fly tipping of waste intended for the bonfire.

Every cowboy landscape gardener for miles around dumps lorry loads of green waste in the gateway or by the roadside rather than paying to dispose of it at a dump-it site. We don’t want any of it!

We have to handle it 3 times and then it doesn’t burn well. Inconsiderate folk from the Village exacerbate the situation by off-loading, under the cloak of darkness, all kinds of rubbish – boxes of old bathroom tiles and an avocado Jacuzzi complete with gold plated taps being the most memorable items. The middle aged men who have to handle this rubbish can’t cope anymore so please desist and ask your landscape gardeners to do the same.

We will gladly collect your bonfire fuel as a service to the community, providing it is wood (not conifers), not plastic and not likely to unduly pollute the environment. We apologise to all those who missed out on this year’s collection but we spent all our time sorting out the mess.

Geoff Cope

The Wildlife Garden

While long, thin legs can earn a fortune for a supermodel, they are definitely a public relations disaster when it comes to spiders. These spindly appendages make them objects of fear and loathing in many people’s eyes, everyone from Little Miss Muffet to Cardinal Wolsey.

But what is so illogical about this hatred, is that for many years spiders have been considered lucky and having a diminutive ‘money spider’ walk across your clothes has traditionally been thought to foretell the sudden acquisition of wealth. All in all it seems a strange dichotomy; on the one hand some of us believe that spiders bring us luck, yet on the other, many people are afraid of them, but is this fear rational? Although there are a number of venomous spiders around the world, such as the ‘funnel web’ and ‘black widow’, no British spider has a bite which is poisonous to humans. In fact there are only three out of the six hundred or so species living here in Britain that even have fangs capable of penetrating our skin. However, some people can show an allergic reaction to their venom if bitten, but dying from a British spider’s bite is about as likely as winning the jackpot in the National Lottery twice in one week.

Whether irrational or not, our fear of spiders has to a certain extent caused us to overlook the significant role they play as pest controllers in our gardens. Bristow, the doyen of British arachnophiles, wrote in one of his many books ‘that the weight of insects destroyed by spiders in England and Wales each year well exceeds the weight of human beings in these countries’.

Spiders are not just important because of the sheer volume of prey they consume, they are also usually the first predators to colonise new plants or crops in any numbers. This is because ‘spiderlings’ have an ingenious trick up their sleeves to help them disperse. Once they leave their eggs in spring, the young spiders will climb onto a prominent piece of vegetation, raise their abdomens and release a number of long silk threads high into the air from their spinnerets. When there is a suitable breeze, the young spiders are carried along to another location, a process somewhat euphemistically known as ‘ballooning’. Inevitably some fall prey to aerial hunters like swifts and swallows, while other unlucky ones land in water and drown, but many survive and will colonise favourable environments. Their numbers can build up to staggering proportions and by late summer, an acre of rough grassland may have a population of just over 2 million spiders, which to those of you who insist on having everything in metric, is around 500 per square metre.

Actually, only a small proportion of spiders will have arrived on silken parachutes. Most emerge from eggs that were laid on the undersides of blades of grass late the previous year, in fact many British spiders survive the cold weather this way, albeit as eggs. Yet not all spiders succumb to the first frosts of autumn, the adults of some species go looking for cosier retreats to pass the winter months, such as garden sheds, cold frames and even our houses. Unfortunately for arachnophobes, it is these close encounters with large spiders lurking in dark corners or racing across the carpet at night that is the stuff of nightmares.

But for spiders, there are distinct advantages to living indoors. In the warmth they can remain active throughout the year - hunting, mating and laying eggs. Other species which live in sheltered situations like wood piles may also stay alive all year round. This means that if you bring wood indoors for your fire, you may inadvertently carry a few resident spiders in with it. To dislodge them, I usually give my logs a sharp tap and check under loose pieces of bark for clusters of eggs, so as not to condemn the next generation to a fiery end.

What else can we do to help spiders thrive in our gardens?

Basically, the same rules apply for encouraging spiders as any other garden wildlife, in that the more diverse you can make your garden, the more spiders you will attract. By doing this, you will also be providing an additional source of food for many of the smaller garden birds, such as dunnocks, robins and wrens. Interestingly those distant relatives of spiders, the harvestmen (sometimes erroneously called ‘daddy-long-legs’), are not eaten by birds, presumably because they have an unpleasant taste, although I cannot personally vouch for this.

Despite their fearsome appearance, spiders have quite delicate bodies and can easily be killed by insecticides. As far as I am aware, no pesticide is labelled ‘spider-friendly’, so it is best to avoid using any.

Walls that have small gaps between the stones will provide homes for crevice-nesting spiders, such as Amaurobius, while plants like aubrieta which drape over low structures make particularly good places for wolf spiders to hide and hunt from. Also, leave a patch of long grass uncut over the winter months, together with a few of your herbaceous perennials, so that any clusters of eggs laid there will not be consigned to the dust bin or compost heap.

And who knows what good luck might befall you if you look after the spiders in your garden?

‘If that you would live and thrive

Let the spider run alive’.

Jack Daw