Mud, snow and budgets

As featured in The Hovarian magazine, February 2025.

It’s a fairly quiet time for The Friends of Three Cornered Copse in the depths of winter.

Our last workday of 2024 scheduled for early December had to be cancelled due to the passing event which became known as Storm Darragh. The high winds it brought rendered a workday in our woods as quite risky, so the Rangers asked us to reschedule. We will have the next workday late February, or early March as the weather abates.

Meanwhile, the snowdrops have begun to appear, poking their shoots out of the mud at the north end of the woods. Mercifully avoided by the disruption of the ash dieback contractors, they provide a welcome sign that a Spring is not too far away.

Despite the cold weather we found evidence of an attempted camp at the top corner of the woods near King George VI Avenue. The woods provide a scant shelter from the
weather, so whoever was camping would have been subjected to the biting January winds and temperatures. One can only imagine at the level of desperation a homeless person reaches, to try to camp in one of the coldest parts of our city.

The cold snap in mid-January froze the mud and made venturing into the copse slightly easier. Three small, white, and rare, visitors appeared in the Three Cornered Copse, after the snowfall last month, and remained for a few days, until the warmer temperatures melted them away. A few adventurous sledgers were also seen taking advantage of the few days each year that the Three Cornered Copse becomes a venue for winter sports.

The Brighton and Hove Green Spaces Forum is an umbrella organisation connecting volunteer groups across the city, and recently have detected some worrying signals from our council about budgeting priorities, which may affect the Cityparks Ranger service. Budget challenges persist with local services and the easiest place to defund is our leisure and culture areas. There is no real threat to the Rangers at this time, but we have been through these “re-assignments” of budgets before, and it has led to some real cuts which had a noticeable effect on our parks and green spaces. Cityparks provides a framework for the 90 volunteer groups across the city, without which our vital green spaces will deteriorate further. Please engage with our local councillors if you have concerns.

Simon Baxendale