Beeley Wood Walk - Factory Traditional Cache
Kry102001: Archived due to relocation of owner.
Beeley Wood Walk - Factory
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Located in Beeley Woods, a nice walk along the river don, this is the 4th cache in a series, can be found individually if so desired, clue to final cache is contained in logbook.
Contains log book and pencil and trinkets.
The woods are situated on the eastern side of the River Don between the village of Oughtibridge and the Sheffield suburb of Middlewood. Most common access from the Middlewood end of the wood is from the end of Clay Wheels Lane or from Middlewood Road South over the Don by the Rocher footbridge. The woods cover an area of approximately 60 hectares and slope up quite steeply from the river gaining around 70 metres in height before ending at farmland. The wood is traversed by two public footpaths, the lower of these is a pleasant and recently re-covered riverside walk which is part of the Upper Don Walk, a scenic walk by the river from the centre of Sheffield to Oughtibridge. The other public footpath runs the length of the upper wood at its highest point, there are many other paths not marked on the OS map. Beeley Wood is traversed by the famous Woodhead railway line, there is one level crossing and one footbridge for pedestrians to cross the line. The woods are home to a large colony of bats and all three species of woodpecker native to Britain can be seen in the woods. In spring there is a large covering of bluebells on the woodland floor.
The earliest written reference to Beeley Wood is in a deed dated from 1161 in which the monks of Ecclesfield Priory were given permission to graze their flock every year from January to Easter in a large wood stretching from Birley Edge down to the River Don. Beeley Wood is a surviving part of this large wood and part of it is still called Priory Wood. Further mention was made in a document released upon the death of Thomas de Furnival in 1332 when Beeley Wood was named as one of eleven locations under the heading of Woods, Moors and Commons. Under this agreement people were allowed to graze their animals in the wood. However by the 1500s Beeley Wood had become a coppice wood in which the pasturing of animals was discouraged. At the end of the 16th century Beeley Wood was one of eleven coppice woods in Sheffield which were mentioned in a document drawn up for Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury.
By the 1890s the coppicing of Beeley Wood along with the other coppice woods in Sheffield was coming to an end because of reduced profits and woodland management problems. The wood was allowed to become a "high forest" with the strongest growth of a coppiced tree allowed to grow into a fully grown standard tree. Many of the older and sickly trees were cleared away at this time and replaced by saplings of trees that were not native to the Sheffield area, such as beech, sweet chestnut, common lime and sycamore. In late 1898 the Duke of Norfolk's forester planted Beeley Wood with 60 acres of timber trees such as ash, elm, sycamore, birch, lime, sweet chestnut and beech. The young trees were ordered from a nursery in Cheshire and were delivered to Wadsley Bridge railway station.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Orgjrra n ebpx naq n uneq cynpr.
Treasures
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