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Romsey & District Society

Conserving our Heritage

Protecting our Future

Dear {$firstname},

Welcome to the January 2025 Newsletter and Happy  New Year to all our members!

TALK: Return of the Peregrine

Thursday 30th January

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Over the last 15 years, Keith Betton has been licenced to study these birds around Hampshire and has set up nest boxes and trays to encourage them to breed. He has also helped to set up a network of local Peregrine webcams, including one of the best known at Winchester Cathedral. Now he runs a team of volunteers who monitor up to 25 pairs in the county, including at Romsey Abbey this year.

FULLY BOOKED waiting list only.

Find out more and have your name added to the waiting list HERE

Poetry for Pleasure

Friday 31st January

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19:45, Romsey Methodist Church

THEME: Mind Body and Spirit



Join the team of poetry readers for an evening of poetic pleasure. All members and their friends are cordially invited to the next evening of our poetry readings.

Details Here

AGM 2025

Tuesday 18th February

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The Romsey and District Society Annual General Meeting will be held on Tuesday 18th February 2025 at the Crosfield Hall Annex and everyone is warmly invited to attend.

We welcome new members -this is an opportunity to find out more about what we are doing and how you might get more involved.

AGM Details

Volunteer Fair - can you help?

Romsey and District Society intend to have a stall at the Volunteer Fair on Sunday 19th January in the Town Hall in Romsey between 10.30am and 3.00pm. We would welcome some assistance on the stall on the day and if anyone can help then please contact the Chair ([email protected] / tel: 01794 502357)

Walks 2025

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A number of friendly walks have been arranged for the first quarter of 2025.  To find out about all our arranged walks, visit our walks page at bit.ly/rdswalks

RDS Walks Page

The Natural Environment Committee Responds

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Our Natural Environment Committee closely monitors planning applications and, where appropriate, submits responses and challenges based on their impact upon the natural environment in and around Romsey.  Similarly, our Planning Committee submits responses to planning applications based on the impact to the built environment.  These are all posted on the TVBC Planning website.

We plan to post future responses on our website so that interested members can more easily find them and see what the society is saying.

Our most recent response was to the application to build houses on the Hillier Brentry site and can be viewed using the link below.

Brentry Development Response
Full Brentry Details

How to Help the Restoration of Chalk Streams

Watch out for the full report on chalk streams in the January Magazine - it can be downloaded here from 6th January.

RDS Magazine Downloads
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Meanwhile, here are some tips on how you can help...

Those of you who attended the excellent talk arranged by the Natural Environment Committee and presented by Mike Blackmore on The Devastation and Restoration of Chalk Streams will already know how much they have been damaged over the centuries and are still in need of a vast amount of work to help them to recover in even a small way. 

One question posed by his talk was “What can we do as individuals to improve water quality?”



Mike has suggested the following:

  1. Manage the water (both foul and rainwater) flowing out from our properties. This will vary depending on individual circumstance, but it boils down to thinking about what goes down our sinks and toilets, and what goes down our gutters and flows off our driveways/land.
    This might be at an individual home level, thinking about fats/oils going down drains, choosing better cleaning chemicals, choosing permeable driveways, and installing gutter-fed rain gardens or upgrading septic tanks. At a community level it might involve promoting sustainable urban drainage at a local government level, raising awareness of which drains connect to the sewer network and which flow directly to the river; and/or engaging with citizen science water quality monitoring initiatives.
  2. Campaign for better regulation, better funding of regulators, and better standards in the water and agriculture sectors. The three biggest sources of pollution are agriculture, sewage and road run-off. Agricultural run-off is probably the biggest issue, and road runoff is the least understood, controlled and regulated (it isn’t!).

We hope this gives you food for thought and some suggestions for ways in which you could begin to help improve things.

For those of you who didn’t attend the talk, here’s a link to it online. It’s definitely worth viewing - particularly if you are wondering about the management of the Barge Canal.

https://bit.ly/rdschalk 

    More Events and News

    If you ever miss or lose a monthly Newsletter, you can find present and past copies on our website HERE

    To get involved in what we do or if you have ideas for activities you think we should be organising or that you would like to take part in, please contact our secretary using the email address below.  

    You are receiving this email because you provided your email address to the Society.

    [email protected]

    Romsey & District Society 

    c/o Bells Solicitors, 5 Market Place, Romsey, Hampshire, SO51 8FX

    Email: [email protected]

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