Troserch Wood Newsletter – April 2009
It’s three years since we launched the campaign to secure the Troserch Woods for public enjoyment, wildlife and restoration of ancient woodland. The Troserch Woodlands Society (TWS) was set up after a public meeting in April 2006. Nearly 200 people paid their £5 membership subs and a few months later we were lucky enough to receive a Cyd Coed (Forestry Commission) grant to cover the purchase of 80 acres, north of Llangennech, up the Morlais river valley. Oddly, it was this same Forestry Commission which, 15 years earlier, had sold off the same bit valley with its standing crop of conifers.
For us, it was one thing to buy a wood, another to know what to do with it. The woods were ours, a community asset, but the business of management, maintenance and insurance required funds and expertise. Luckily, the committee was soon to include a financial adviser, a forester and a woodland owner with management experience. To save individual members from liability, the elected TWS committee doubles as a not-for-profit limited company, Troserch Woodlands (Property) Ltd. None of the members are paid, and one of our first tasks was to beg and borrow the money we needed for immediate costs. The National Pipeline company, then working nearby, came up with one grant, and others covered wildlife surveys and disposal of accumulated rubbish. The Coal board was called in to start making safe the many mine-workings in the woods, but before that could be done, there had to be check for bats. Greater Horseshoe bats, as it turned out.
The TWS committee includes a wildlife group and a history group, and here as often the two came together. Forty birdboxes have been nailed to treetrunks and fold-out nestboxes strung to hazel branches for dormice (some of the little prefabs have been lived in, but it’s not yet clear what by!). Goshawks, another rarish breed, have begun nesting in the wood, and taking a neigbours’ hens. Buzzards and owls, badgers and foxes go about their daily and nightly business. There are trout in the river and an otter recently left the remains of a salmon on the bank.
The history group has compiled a history of the woods and tracked down people old enough to remember living and working in the valley - a family who lived in the mill and a man who worked as a boy with his father down one of the mines.
Human nature, and industry, have helped to shape the wood and the evidence is vsible here and there among the greenery. Trees were felled and coppiced, for building, fencing and burning, charcoal and tannin. The valley sides were reshaped by quarrying and mining, the river dammed and diverted for watermills.
After the timber shortages of the Second World War, the Forestry Commission felled most of the old broadleaved wood and planted conifers. This past winter has seen another round of felling, by us. This time it was the conifers' turn: nearly ten acres east of the river has been cleared, fenced and replanted with native broadleaved trees. This required improved tracks, a new bridge, payed for with more help from the Forestry Commission, which also subsidises replanting. The income timber sales, though reduced by recession, will help with future management and project costs. And the felling has enabled us to extend the network of tracks and paths around the eastern side of the river, linking up across the bridge to old rights of way.
It hasn’t always been sweetness and light. The byeway that runs along the top of the wood gives access to joy-riders and flytippers, burnt-out cars and piles of old tyres. When we suggested gates, there was an outcry: ‘They're closing our Roman Road.’ (though the legions managed without four-wheel drives and motorbikes). Now mechanised roughriders resent our decision to ban motors from the rest of the woods: in the interests of safety and wildlife and because most visitors say they value peace and quiet. Horseriders are represented on the committee and we welcome cyclists. We don’t keep anyone out for the sake of it, nor do we want to turn a wild wood tame and clutter it with bossy signs.
Troserch Wood is a rare wild space in an unspoiled river valley and we want to keep it that way. The recent felling has left a mess, but thousands of young trees have been planted and the churned-up ground will soon be green again. Now that the big machines have gone, we can restore the carpark and put up signs and maps at entrances.
We trust our members and visitors to the woods to take care of themselves, each other and the place as they find it. If anyone has time and energy to spare, we have working parties every few weeks, to improve the paths, clear rubbish and brambles, thin and plant young trees. We would also welcome groups with new ideas and skills for projects or activities. Get in touch! There’s more on our website http://www.troserchwoods.co.uk/, but no substitute for the real thing.

An earlier draft noted that the green wood could also be the dark wood, and mentioned the death of a young man on the road not far from the carpark. He had spent the evening in the woods with a group of friends, and we planted a tree for him, or his family, near the picnic site.... I cut the reference because some committee members felt it too offputting. I censored myself when it came to costs, particularly the £40,000 for a bridge. On environmental grounds, we were not allowed to haul timber across the river, or to improvise a temporary tree-trunk bridge - the traditional method. Although the cost was mainly covered by grants, I wonder if fish and animals could have survived at less public expense - especially since there's already a footbridge 20 yards upstream. Now we'll see if we can move that, to make a new circular walk.
Did I say dark wood? There's a new dark space, where the concrete cap has been broken on an old mine shaft. The story is that the mine closed down when a miner put some sticks of gelignite to dry on the boiler that powered the winding gear. And forgot it. Nobody was killed but the works were beyond repair. Now there's dark water a few yards under the concrete hole. How deep, or not?
That aside, the amazing thing about the felling is how much light it lets in, not just to the denuded ground but sidelong into the untouched woods along the river banks below. A brave new world, of our own making - except that it wasn't us, but the men we paid, with money that wasn't ours.