Access Fingringhoe Blog

The final panels are finished! Have a look at the artwork below.

Interpretation panel to go in the phone box listening post.

Sorry for the delay since the last blog update but it’s been all go with the project. On January 26th CoastNet headed to Fingringhoe Primary School with Essex Wildlife Trust to design the classroom with Class 2. After a tour of the site to see the area we would be working in we headed back to the classroom to put some ideas to paper. The children were overflowing with ideas and pretty quickly we had more ideas than could possibly fit in the space we had. Here’s a run down of the highlights:

• Money tree (to help those in Haiti)
• Log circle
• Clay oven
• Fruit bushes and trees
• Pond dipping platform
• Mini beast hotel
• Compost heap
• Stag pyramid
• Bird hide

After voting on the best ideas Class 2 constructed a model of the garden and presented it to the rest of the school.

Digging and Worms.

Now armed with the plan, we returned to the site on the 3rd and 12th of February to start building.  Construction of the outdoor classroom is well under way now with apple trees, gooseberry, raspberry and blackberry bushes planted.  The log circle is finished and the bird hide is almost finished. But we’ve still got a lot more to do so please come along, help out and have some fun! The next build days are 24th February and 2nd of March.

The workers heading home after a hard day building the classroom

The Interpretation meeting on 28th of January had a fantastic turn out and I think everyone learnt something about Fingringhoe that they didn’t know before!

We  started off explaining the location of the interpretation panels, and there purpose. Most importantly we want the panels to appeal to as many people as possible and so should have information for adults and children as well as for frequent and occasional visitors. We also want to ensure that the panels allow readers to take the next step once they’ve read the panel and find out more about the area and what it has to offer.

With all this in mind we opened up the floor and discussed the history, legends, geography and wildlife of the area.

The next steps to be taken are to separate out these topics into the three panels and then allow our interpretation specialists to do further research in each area and produce the panels.