Calder Park Monday, 5th January 2004
A huge flock - easily hundreds but to me it looks like a thousand,
even two thousand, it's so difficult to estimate such numbers -
of
Gravel extraction at Grange Farm is now coming to an end. On a mound of unsorted sand and pebbles by the track we spot granite and quartz pebbles amongst the predominently local sandstone. Boat House Farm
Nearby Grange Farm had a barn which was remarkable for the flaggy sandstone used in the construction of it's walls. I was astonished to see that it had gone, it was such an impressive and historic building, perhaps 150 or 200 years old. Still standing at Grange Farm is a wall made of unusual handmade bricks, each the size of a cereal packet. I guess these would have to be at least a hundred years old, more like 150. It probably once enclosed the stable yard or piggeries but now serves as a hopper for piles of sand and gravel.
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As
we get to the highest point on the soap waste mound by the Calder
there's as wooshing of pinions just above us and over go six swans,
on their way to the lake that's been left by sand and gravel extraction.
I'm
glad that the golden plover are still wintering here as they did
in previous years as the most impressive wildlife spectacle you're
likely to see in the Wakefield area. Old Moor Wetland
near Barnsley attracts increasing numbers and I thought our Wakefield
birds might have gone there in preference.
I'm
sorry to see that two historic farms have vanished. All that is
left of Boat House Farm which had an old stone
flag-roofed barn (which might have been the original farmhouse)
- is a couple of groups of shrubs, marking where the gardens were.
When
the gravel is dug out and the landscape restored Calder
Park, as it will be called, will boast over a million square
feet of office space. It's a shame that the farms can't be a part
of that but it looks as if the part of the site they are on is to
be used as washland in times of flood. 
