The garden has two ponds in it one small and oval, the other rectangular and large. They were heavily overgrown with ivy and brambles. We have been waiting for the springs to dry up. This usually happens in early summer but the wet weather this year has kept the flow going and it doesn’t look like it will stop. So work has started. The mud in the bottom of the oval pond was damp and sticky and not too bad: the floor of the rectangular pond was a swamp. However, a large part of the overgrowth has been cleared so the ponds are visible again. The oval pond is shown on the 1868 Ordnance Survey map and is probably Victorian in origin. The rectangular pond is older and has a much more complicated, and not very well understood, history, dating back to the 18th or perhaps even the late 17th century.
 
Work also resumed on the clearance of the raised beds along the back of the garden. These have got a lot snowberry and elm suckers. Clearance is going to be a slow job.