The Novers Forest Garden Project | T.C.H.T. CONSERVATION OBJECTIVES:

The Novers Phase Three:

This will be to deliver the longer term vision for the Novers as a field education resource to provide experience and training in a wide range of field based subjects.

The fragmented nature of the Novers topography and the diverse habitat enables discrete areas to be zoned out. One area will be set aside to be managed as a wildlife reserve. This will be managed in a similar manner and in association with the adjacent Shropshire Wildlife reserve on the eastern border of the site.

In the eastern area of the site a field study building will be built using renewable building materials. It will provide a field classroom and some storage and office facilities. This building will be built as a 0-carbon building incorporating renewable energy and sustainable building techniques.

Such a building would provide facilities for educational visits to the site and in the longer term possibly look to some limited accommodation. The building or buildings would:

• Be built to 0-carbon standards from renewable building material, wood
• Would showcase small scale renewable energy technology
• Collect and store water and re-cycle grey-water to secondary use-age
• Use compost based waste disposal

There are clear models for such a structure in the eco-cabin style study facilities at the CAT centre. Initial conversations with the planning authority have indicated that such a scheme may be favourably received. This element as seen as particularly important in view of the urgent need to raise public awareness, particularly in more rural communities, of alternative renewable building and energy opportunities

To the south of the site, centred within the main mining complex itself interpretation material will explain the development of industry and the effects that this had upon society and the landscape itself. Treasures conservation building company of Ludlow have expressed interest in the construction of an experimental, traditional lime kiln on the site to enable experimentation in the small scale production of lime. This will be in association and support of a scheme to re-introduce small scale lime burning into Romania where the technique has been lost and where there is an increasing need for lime to re-introduce this low carbon material into building conservation.

The Novers is a uniquely suitable landscape to provide a range of field educational opportunities, sufficiently large to accommodate the concept but small enough to be effectively managed. It also provides a centre from which parties can be taken out into the rich public access landscape of Titterstone Clee hill. Itself a unique cultural and natural landscape. Themed courses will be offered initially on a day basis but with the aim of extending courses to allow students to live for several days within a time zone.

To achieve the necessary sustainability of the project it necessary to identify a larger client base than is currently available. A relationship with the Cleobury based Pioneer Centre, which has a through flow of c 18,000 students per year from a wide area and diverse cultural background is currently being discussed.

It is stressed here that the Novers is a component part of a much wider landscape, one which contains within it a range of complimentary archaeological, cultural and natural resources. Future plans for the Novers would be considered holistically within this broader canvas.