Bishop’s Castle is the sort of place where everybody knows just about everyone else and in many ways it thrives on community spirit. We, like very many others, try to help out in whatever way we can, whenever we can. Some of the more unusual requests for help sometimes come from Bishop’s Castle Fire Station.…
Category: News
Bloomin’ marvellous
It was great to hear from Jane Allard today. Every year she grows plants to sell as a way of raising funds for the #SpArC here in Bishop’s Castle and in recent years we’ve helped start the process by giving her some bags of #sylvagrow. SylvaGrow® is an award-winning, RHS endorsed peat-free compost which is…
When the sun shines….
Friday was a glorious day here in Bishop’s Castle so our solar panels were generating electricity at a cracking rate. This grab of one of the control panel screens shows us producing over 500kw. Double it up and you can see we’re at 1mw. We’re producing more than we use on days like this so…
Real progress at St. George’s School in Clun
You might recall that we helped St. George’s Church of England School in Clun by donating some timber recently to create a timber framed shelter so that pupils can observe the pond and work outdoors whenever possible. As you can see from the picture the dream is steadily becoming reality and it really won’t be…
A welcome visitor to the mill
It was great to see this SylvaGrow® liveried trailer picking up materials in the yard today: it’s a very large and physical representation of our determination not to waste any part of the logs we mill. SylvaGrow® is an award-winning, RHS endorsed peat-free compost which is used by gardeners throughout the UK and is manufactured…
Here’s a sight for sore sawmiller’s eyes!
Despite the fact that it’s a dreary day there are few finer sights for those who work in a sawmill than 8 fully loaded trailers waiting for the wagons to get the finished product on the way. There’s boards, posts, feather edge and fencing rails in there: treated and untreated, heading to sites and stockists…
There’s a new defibrillator in Bishop’s Castle
Thanks to a 50% grant from government and the balance from us there’s now a new public defibrillator on Station Street. It’s near the Public Hall and opposite the car park. Public defibrillators save lives: more than 25,000 people die from cardiac arrests outside of hospital annually. If a defibrillator is used within one minute,…
There’s a new defibrillator in Bishop’s Castle
Thanks to a 50% grant from government and the balance from us there’s now a new public defibrillator on Station Street. It’s near the Public Hall and opposite the car park. Public defibrillators save lives: more than 25,000 people die from cardiac arrests outside of hospital annually. If a defibrillator is used within one minute,…
Further investment in solar energy
These drone images taken by a friend of ours yesterday show the scale of our investment in solar energy. Harnessing the power of the sun in this way not only reduces the overall carbon footprint of the business as a whole but also makes it less vulnerable to energy price shocks. This in turn makes…
Funeral arrangements for Steve Green
Steve’s funeral will be held on Thursday 21st March at 11am in St John the Baptist Church in Bishop’s Castle. That’s the Parish Church at the bottom of the town. We’ll be closing the mill that day so that all of Steve’s colleagues can attend. Please feel free to park here if you wish. It’s…
Steve Green, our Company Secretary.
We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Steve Green after a short illness. Steve, who was our Company Secretary for almost 50 years, joined us in June 1977. He was held in the highest regard by colleagues here at the mill and in the local area, and was universally respected throughout the forestry…
St. George’s Primary School in Clun ponders some outdoor lessons
St. George’s Church of England School in Clun is one of many local schools we support whenever we can. These include the Primary School and Community College here in Bishop’s Castle as well as the schools at Norbury and Chirbury nearby. Many of our colleagues either attended these schools or have children and grandchildren who…
A new Co-op store for Bishop’s Castle is on the way – but first we have to clear the site
An exciting proposal to build a new Co-op store on land we own on the edge of our sawmill has passed all the planning hurdles and work has started on the demolition of the empty building which stands on the site. Local people will know the building as one that stood behind the old Countrywide…
The new system for Saturday firewood collections is working well
Following a safety review in what is a busy working sawmill we had to restrict collections of loose firewood which was manually loaded into car boots to Saturday mornings between 8.00am and 12.00 noon. It’s great to report hat the system is working well…and that everyone is safe! Of course, firewood can be made available for…
Recognising long service
People seem to change jobs every five minutes these days so it’s great for us to know that we have several members of staff who have been with us for multiple decades. Ian Andrews and Stephen (‘Reg’) Morris are two such staff who were today presented with long service awards to mark 40 years each…
It’s the early bird that catches the worm
You can see daylight arriving in these shots from our very early delivery to a site near Hull. It’s one of two loads of Highways treated post and rail fencing going in today. We and our customers have had a really busy start to the year…an…
It’s an ill wind….
…that blows no-one some good. This visiting crane wagon was delayed on his travels today and arrived at the mill too late for it to go further tonight. We were happy to grant a favour and let him stay overnight…and even happier that he had just the kit to help us unload some posts. Everthing…
Local forest, local logs, local timber – all cut and treated by local people
Remember that timber from Bury Ditches harvested and hauled to the mill by local firms? It’s now been transformed in our mill from round bits to square bits and here it is going in for treatment to prolong its serviceable life. It’s all thanks to some very impressive machinery, equally impressive systems, and a team…
An owl’s eye view of our mill
We’re grateful as ever to AW Jenkinson driver Ray Powell for these stunning drone images of our mill at night just before we switch off all but the security lights. That’s Ray’s rig towards the bottom of the top image with a load of logs coming into the mill. The pictures here and others we’ve…
More on the harvesting at Bury Ditches
Here are some more images from the harvesting going on at Bury Ditches. The GIF show the location and the logs being loaded to go to the mill. The last frame is a justifiably happy Simon Flack of SJF Timber as another load goes on its way The video shows Simon bringing logs up to…