Celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee

In the near future Rushcliffe Borough Council will no longer provide paper copies of planning decisions so these will only be available in electronic form on the borough council website www.rushcliffe.gov.uk Should you need help to view them any of your parish councillors will assist.

Saving on street light costs

Notts County Council has confirmed plans for switching off street lights in Stanton on the Wolds from 12 midnight to 5.30am each day. It is part of a money and energy saving exercise the council is undertaking county wide. Lights on the A606 road will not be affected.

Thomas Ousley Trust closes

The value of the Stanton on the Wolds centuries old Thomas Ousley Trust has decreased over its many years since 1718 when the Reverend Ousley died and it has been decided to close it. The remaining monies have now been used to provide a pair of ornate candles for Stanton parish church. The remaining funds were presented to the church by the chairman of the trust Mr John Stockbridge at a ceremony in the Parish Commumion service on Sunday December the 4th. As well as acknowledging Rev. Ousley's generosity Mr Stockbridge thanked Margaret Healy for the work she has done and Elwyn Bradshaw who's family have supported the trust for many years.

Bits and bobs

Parish councillors at Stanton have agreed to give further consideration to Notts County council plans to introduce opportunities for parish councils to undertake some of the duties currently not available to them, such as rubbish bin emptying, litter collection and grass cutting.

Rushcliffe Borough Council turned down a planning application for the demolition of the existing bungalow at 5 Stanton Mews, Browns Lane and replacing it with a dormer bungalow and double garage.

Residents are reminded that the new telephone number to contact the police on for other than 999 calls is now 101

Keyworth Medical Practice has updated it's proposal for a full service pharmacy open until 11pm seven days a week. The proposal include liaison with the practice providing a close working relationship with GPs, nurses and the pharmacists. A full statement is available at the surgery and comments can be made to the practice or to the Patient Participation Group.

A "Mammoth" barbecue ?

 Readers may be wondering what happened to Stanton’s own ‘Time Team’ in their efforts to put a date to the stone age hut floor discovered in the garden of ‘The Rectory’ in 1938. The original hut floor was characterised by a saucer shaped depression some 7 metres in diameter lying between 1.3 and 2.0 metres below the surface and consisted of a black earth layer 10 to 13 cms thick composed of much charcoal and matted hut floor material.  The project began in October 2010. Eight coring expeditions at two sites along Browns Lane were made during the month, before the weather became atrocious with severe frosts and much snow that rendered further work impossible. In all 235 cores were taken with many producing cores down to a depth of two metres. No evidence for a second occupation was found in any of these cores.

 Following the worst winter weather for some years, the project began again in March 2011 when a further eleven coring expeditions were made through to the middle of April from a further four sites, during which another 192 cores were taken. A core sample from a paddock facing The Rectory produced material resembling black earth at a depth of 1.9 metres. Two repeat corings made close by also went through a dark layer at the same depth. The black material consisted of fragments of charcoal from logs and short sections of burnt twigs all mixed in a fine black carbonised ash and burnt clay. The material looked extremely similar to what we thought the original hut floor material would have looked like. Because the site from which these three cores were taken was quite close to the original find site, in May we decided to submit the charcoal to Oxford University for  radio-carbon dating. Results from the laboratory were to be expected in five to six months.    

It was with high expectations that the envelope containing the result was eventually opened in October. Our sample proved to have an age greater than 53,000 years BC ! This was not at all what was expected. Because of the presence of worked flint flakes and sheep teeth from the original hut floor, its date had been expected to be between 6,000 and 2,000 BC sometime in the Mesolithic period. Our charcoal must have been produced before the last ice age and dates to some time in the Palaeozoic time period. At this age local man was a wandering hunter-gatherer only making temporary overnight encampments and was definitely not a settled farming type. Our charcoal might have come from a forest fire or a hunter barbecuing a mammoth! The submission of this sample for dating has exhausted our research funds and makes further work unlikely unless we can get another grant. Our thanks go to the landowners who gave their permission for access to their land.