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THE PLOUGH has turned up blue pottery fragments in the field on the crest of Storrs Hill. In Victorian times there was a rubbish dump here, near the sandstone quarry. In those days it was a fairly remote spot. It was chosen as the site for an isolation hospital, built to cope with a smallpox epidemic.
 
Gradually the town of Ossett has extended towards the hill. Wakefield's new Unitary Development Plan proposes that the last remaining field should go for housing. Ossett cannot expand any further in this direction unless it spills over into the neighbouring parish.
Flowers in December
There are still Dandelions about in the grass verges, a few with seedheads, others in flower (though they're closed up today).
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At the foot of Storrs Hill there are a couple more 'windfall housing' sites, as the plan calls them. One is a neglected field by the railway while, on the other side of the tracks, housing will cover an industrial site and an extensive thicket of Hawthorns. Taken together, in the space of a single square kilometre, these remnants of countryside amount to a serious loss, not only for the wildlife but also for distinctness of the smaller local communities which are now being swallowed up by Wakefield.
There doesn't seem to be a month when the Tree Mallow, Lavatera, growing in a sheltered south facing spot on the towpath, is without flowers.
Chickweed keeps its tiny white flowers throughout the winter. A friend gathers it as greenery for her Budgerigars.
