Little Thetford .org

Whilst cycling along Sustrans route 11, Tony Shaw tells us he saw two Egrets.

Sustrans is the sustainable transport charity formed in 1983 from the 1977 Cyclebag network. Sustrans national cycle route 11 connects Harlow in Essex with Kings Lynne in Norfolk, passing Little Thetford towards Ely along the east bank of the River Great Ouse. Co-incidentally, the 50 km route from Cambridge to Ely, passing Little Thetford, is the same route said to have been used by World War II code breaker Alan Turing, whilst a fellow at King’s College, Cambridge. This part of the route is commemorated to this day as the Turing Trail relay.

Little Egret. Photo CCA-SA 3.0 Birdman1

The Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) is a member of the heron (Ardeidae) family new to the United Kingdom since 1989. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) classifies the Little Egret on its amber list noting that it is a rare breeding species. World-wide, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists its conservation status as of least concern. These fish eating birds are more generally found along the south and east coast of England although increasingly they are moving inland. These birds can be found all year round although more can be seen during autumn and winter.

Have you seen any rare or unusual wild-life in Little Thetford? Tell us about it and send us a picture if you can.

Cambridgeshire ACRE are making an affordable housing proposal presentation to the village parish council on Monday 14 February 2011.

The Little Thetford housing needs survey (HNS) was carried out by ACRE in August 2009. A questionnaire was sent out to all 303 households in Little Thetford. About 10% of the village responded, i.e. sixty-five households. The results are shown in the Little Thetford – HNS Report – 2009-Sep1 [PDF - 848K]. In February 2011, Cambridgeshire ACRE are recommending that Little Thetford allow ten new affordable houses to be built in the village. See the Cambridgeshire ACRE HNS presentation here [PDF - 505K].

The results of Little Thetfords own residents survey can be found here.

Photo © 2007 Sergey Yeliseev

John Parish of Bedwell Hey farm saw a Corncrake (Crex crex) on his land during the harvest in September 2010. These small secretive moorhen like birds are rare in England and Wales, although larger numbers are found in Northern Ireland and western Scotland. The males have a distinctive rasping call.

This migratory species breed in the United Kingdom from mid-April and leave for sub-Saharan Africa in August – September. Their breeding grounds are meadows and arable farmland where progressively earlier and more mechanised harvesting since the 19th century has led to their European decline. Action by the RSPB and others since the late 1990’s has improved the population of these birds, although they are still a threatened species according to the RSPB; the IUCN red list of February 2011 lists the Corncrake as of least concern. There is a project co-ordinated jointly since 2001 by the RSPB, Natural England, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Pensthorpe Conservation Trust which began introducing Whipsnade Zoo bred Corncrakes to the Nene Washes, floodplain meadows in the Cambridgeshire Fens, east of Peterborough. Since then numbers have steadily increased.

When Bob Young first asked me to write this article I thought he had said “John Parish has seen a cornflake on his land and it flew away. Write an article for the village web site”. It took me a few moments to realise I had misheard him.

If you have an article for the web site, send it to us at: articles {at} LittleThetford [dot] org

John McCullough

Along with Bob Young, I will be giving a presentation at the Library, 6 The Cloisters, Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 4ZH on Friday 11 February between 10:30 and noon on the subject Little Thetford: Two square miles of history. This presentation is part of Mike Petty‘s regular Fenland on Friday series. Tickets are available at the door for 2.50 GBP. (Numbers are limited. Arrive early to avoid disappointment.)

Bob will introduce the presentation which I will present. By using information from this website and other research, we will examine the contribution this small area has made to our English heritage. The presentation will be of interest to anyone who wishes to look deeper into their own town or village history and provide an amateur introduction to palaeontology, archaeology, geology, human history, UK heritage, zoology, botany and cartography. We will also briefly consider how much of this information was written into Little Thetford on Wikipedia.

John McCullough

Presentation: Little Thetford - Two square miles of history - Friday 11 February

Tuesday 25th January – The Little Thetford Wikipedia page is the Featured Article on the Wikipedia Main Page.

Well done John McCullough for all the hard work!

A New Year walk

Photo: Judy Young

Next time you are walking in Little Thetford, take your camera. You never know what you may find. If you are unsure what you have seen, send us your photograph and we will identify it for you.

Whilst walking from Little Thetford to Ely on New Years Day with six friends, Judy Young spotted this unusual goose enjoying a swim on the River Great Ouse. Colin Saunders, one of the party, was so intrigued he looked it up on his return. The large black dewlap and knob  distinguish this as a brown African Goose.

Photo: Judy Young

The African Goose is said by some breeders to be a distinct breed imported from Africa, but the evidence a large genetic part of the Chinese is indisputable; see Tegetmeir 1873. They were known as a pure breed in the USA from the 1850′s and although often crossed with the Toulouse as a commercial meat cross are a definite species descended from the Swan goose (Anser cygnoides) rather than the greylag (Anser anser).”

Also spotted. Well not spotted actually, crested! In any case, crested ducks were seen during the same walk. Unfortunately, we do not have a Little Thetford photograph of them, so Colin Saunders found this image on the web. Colin again “Crested ducks are basically an aberration appearing in any colour and as such have a mixed history. The crest is essentially a mutation associated with skull deformities and known for hundreds of years. There are those who claim that crested ducks first appeared in Britain, which is unlikely but they were certainly first shown here and appear in many early poultry books . Genetic mutations appear occasionally all over the world. Selective breeding would then have increased the numbers of birds with the same characteristic. 17th century Dutch paintings show crested ducks on wildfowl such as Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1636 -1695) and Marmaduke Craddock (1660 – 1717) from Somerset in the UK showed them”

John McCullough

Little Thetford 1905

Edwardian centenarian Norah Bedford celebrated her 105^th birthday on 27 December 2010. Born in 1905, during the middle of Edward VII‘s reign, Norah now lives in Littleport. A founder member of the Little Thetford social club, Norah has been active in Ely district village matters most of her life. For example, she has been a parish and county councillor for Stretham, a governor at many primary schools in the Ely area and president of the Little Thetford Womens Institute.

Norah was the St George’s Church organist for many years, only relinquishing the post in 2002 when the multitude began singing faster than she could play; she remains a well respected member of the congregation.

Mother of two, grandma to six and with ten great-grandchildren, Norah, who lived at Braham Farm with her husband Cyril, attributes her longevity to having a happy active life. According to the Cambridge News 27 December 2010, Norah said “I’ve never smoked, I’ve never really drunk and I’ve always tried to be as active as I can”.

Some significant events of 1905 include:

• 13 July 1905 release of the British silent film, Rescued by Rover, starring the world’s first canine film star
• 5 December 1905 the liberal leader Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the first man to be given the use of the term Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, being asked to form a government on the resignation of the conservative Arthur Balfour

It was also the year in which

• Albert Einstein published four papers significant to physics: Photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, Special relativity and Matter and energy equivalence. He called it his Annus Mirabilis, or his extraordinary year
• the Russian Revolution was at its height
• Henri Matisse painted the oil on canvas Woman with a Hat, purported to be his wife, Amelie

John McCullough

Waxwing in Little Thetford

Illustration: RSPB

This rare winter visitor from Scandinavia was spotted by Gill Norman recently in Little Thetford. Breeding in Northern European pine forests, this beautiful plump bird, with yellow tips to its wings, migrates south in winter when breeding grounds become over-populated. They feed on berries, particularly hawthorn, supplemented by cotoneaster and rose.

Photograph: Stuart Elsom

The Bohemian Waxwing, Latin name of Bombycilla garrulus, was first described by Linnaeus in 1758. It is not a threatened species, being listed as of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), although our visitor is very rare in the UK; the RSPB reports that less than 100 individuals winter on the east coast.

Waxwings do not mind feeding close to humans. The RSPB suggests that if we see such birds, it will encourage us to help other migrant species which all have a tough time finding food in our cold weather.

RSPB advice: Feeding birds and what food to provide.

Article by John McCullough

William Sole (1741–7 February 1802) was a British botanist born in Little Thetford, Cambridgeshire. Read more…

This wonderful pictures shows Graham Driver driving the last herd of cows in the village past the old Dutch manor house on the left and the Three Horseshoes in the background. The cows had names: Bess on the path, Angela in front of Mr Driver, Doll front left of the leading three, Vera to the left of leading three cows.

Last herd of cows in Little Thetford. Approx 1968