River Stour Blessing Ceremony

admin on March 15, 2026

On Saturday 14th March, the Stourvale Action for the Environment group (SAFE) held an event to celebrate the 29th International Day of Action for Rivers Join us for the 29th International Day of Action for Rivers on March 14, 2026 – International Rivers. This included a River Blessing Ceremony by local Druid, Martin Russell, and displays and activities to demonstrate:

the work of the Shipston Area Flood Action Group – Slow The Flow
water power and the many historic watermills on the River Stour
the river pollution testing that takes place weekly by Safe Avon – Pollution, Sewage & Data citizen scientists
kick-sampling in the shallow water by the bridge, to identify the wildlife present, and find out why they are so important for understanding the general health of the river: with Alex Jones of the Riverfly Monitoring Initiative (RMI) — The Riverfly Partnership

Music was provided by ‘Misspent Ukes’, the local U3A ukulele band.

The event was blessed with sunshine and was well-attended. The ‘find’ of the day was a Brook Lamprey, a primitive fish which is quite scarce in rivers these days and is a protected species.

This was one of a series of events that were part of the River Hope ‘Gathering’ The Gathering – River Hope.

Community orchard pruning day at Cornmill Meadows, Shipston-on Stour

admin on February 9, 2026

A dry February 2026 morning and a dozen volunteers turned up at Cornmill Meadows, Shipston’s wildlife site, to lightly prune and cut out suckers in the community orchard planted 2 years ago.

A mixture of heritage trees were planted including plums, gages, apples, pears and damsons, 54 in total. We hope to harvest some fruit this year for the first time.

New scrape and butterfly bank in Cornmill Meadows, Shipston-on Stour

admin on January 18, 2026

Shipston is very fortunate to have its own designated Local Wildlife Site. Cornmill Meadows is owned and managed by Shipston Town Council with the help of Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and a team of local volunteers.

As soon as they took on Cornmill Meadows, the management group were encouraged to include ‘more water’. A team from the Severn Rivers Trust dug out a scrape in the lower meadow at the end of 2025 (at no cost to the group) and created a butterfly bank with the soil that was removed. The site obviously looks very bare at the moment, but the group will plant it up as soon as they can and, hopefully, within a year it should look a lot more established.