Hill End Stories is our blog celebrating 100 years of outdoor learning

No.3 – The Millin’s Tale

Our very own David Millin looks back at Hill End from 1981 to today

How has our landscape and teaching changed over the decades? 

I first visited Hill End on work experience from Wood Green School in Witney in the autumn of 1981. I had asked for anything outside with nature as those were my interests then, and they still are now.

Hill End in the 1980s was an inspirational Field Studies Centre run by Oxfordshire County Council. The technician then was Robin Edwards – a fantastic naturalist and mentor for a young man with a love of the outdoors.

I returned to volunteer in the holidays over several years – managing the ponds, the chinchillas, tanks in the classroom full of newts, hedge and tree planting, and installing fencing using a sledge to pull the posts in the snow.

After finishing my degree in Environmental Studies and a brief spell farming, I came back to Hill End to take up the role of Land Technician – and have stayed ever since to care for this very special place.

I moved into the staff bungalow on the hillside, later sharing this idyllic location with my wife Jane, who I met through teaching the Countryside Skills Course she designed whilst working at the Northmoor Trust (as was then, now the Earth Trust). We had our son Tom and later moved down into the Farmhouse when our daughter Daisy was just two weeks old. Hill End was the perfect place to raise children and live, but it was obviously a bit isolated for them when they get older. I do hope we get a cycle lane one day.

In the 1980s, teachers from the Hill End Field Studies Unit taught nature studies to day visitors, but the residential groups staying in ‘Hill End Camp’ were completely separate and did their own thing. It was very different to the way we work now.

The Head Teacher back then was Jacquie Fynn, who helped shape Hill End from open farmland fields into the much more diverse, wildlife-rich site that it is today.

At this time new wildlife ‘corridors’ and habitat zones were created to benefit both nature and education. New ponds were made in this time as well as the ‘Orchard Triangle’ which later became our Ancient Settlement area.

Species could now move more easily between our site and the neighbouring ancient woodland, and schools could study and enjoy wildlife in learning spaces immersed in nature. We could not host the number of groups we do today if we had not planted all of the trees back then to screen off different activity areas, and the education potential has hugely increased. It has been a real privilege to see this vision come to fruition – but we’re still refining this, and always adding to it even now.

For over 20 years I managed Hill End’s own breeding flock of sheep. These originated from bottle fed lambs donated from local farmers that we raised with the help of the visiting school children, and we peaked when our flock achieved soil association organic status. Now we hire in sheep to graze our fields, which is less time-intensive.

I became Hill End Land Manager in the 2000’s and gained my MSc in Countryside Recreation Management from Sheffield Hallam University by distance learning. When Hill End left the County Council and became a charity in 2017 my role evolved once again to Site and Operations Manager.

I have been very fortunate throughout to have the great support and friendship of Nigel Fisher, the Conservator of Wytham Woods, Oxford University and his team. He and they have always been an invaluable source of advice and support as we manage our wildlife-rich heritage sites together. It is exciting how close we are to our landlords Oxford University now as we have regular support from Wytham Bird Researchers on our family days and we are now part of the Oxford Green Estate and their exciting future.

I am proud to have coordinated the ‘Friends of Hill End Volunteer Team’ for many years. We simply could not maintain the grounds and buildings and run our community activity days without their tireless support. Our first volunteer was Mr Les Bishop who painted the inside of almost every Hill End building over the years.

The volunteers have also been a great source of support with their professional skills such as energy consultant, drainage engineer, electrical engineer, green woodworker and many, many more. Our history volunteer Mervyn Hughes has doggedly compiled the Hill End historical archive and uncovered the role that the ffennell family played in the creation of Hill End, the Wytham Estate and other beautiful green spaces in Oxford.

We have given back to the volunteers with some of them keen pancake makers, marshmallow roasters, car-parkers, hedge layers, coppice workers and thatchers. They have developed skills they didn’t even know they needed in life. Their additional boost to the team is their friendship; they are a great group of people who want to help and who chat through the most arduous tasks with a smile.

I am now in my 38th year working at Hill End and it has never been so positive and dynamic.

Modernising our facilities is an enormous challenge for our charity, but the number of projects we have undertaken recently is staggering for such a small team, many of them generously grant-funded. From renovating our North Dormitory for disabled access, to installing insulation in our roof spaces, replacing doors and windows, these improve comfort but also reduce our energy bills and carbon footprint.

As the custodians of this beautiful landscape we’re also working hard to enrich our natural habitats -creating even more ponds and restoring others back to life, planting kilometres of hedgerow and protecting our grassland SSSI with new fencing.

Of special note and pride for our charity is the Alternative Provision programme we run for schools to support individual pupils who cannot cope in a classroom but who can cope in nature. I’m particularly pleased with the secluded forest fire pits we’ve created recently to accommodate these small ‘nurture’ groups. These are away from the main activity areas so that nature-immersion therapy and education can take place in safety and comfort.

I have always saluted any teacher leading a residential or day group. We see the children at their best when they are out of the school environment, and how they support each other in a different setting. That we now move the school’s luggage and offer catered packages reducing the load on visiting teaching staff and our growing pool of Hill End tutors help schools get the most from their visit.

Hill End has always been a lovely place to work and I have some amazing colleagues who have travelled the journey with me.

We are constantly looking for ways to improve what we do for children and how we can do more. This is a challenging economic climate but we cannot be more relevant to society than we are now; with the great need for children to escape technology, stress and the urban miasma and get back in touch with nature and have time to renew and heal.

A huge thank you to David for sharing just some of his wonderful memories and insights with us – truly the lynchpin of Hill End over four decades!

If you have your own memories of Hill End, no matter how old or how recent, please let us know in our new Memory Bank – it only takes a moment, and we’d love to hear from you!

You can read more about our rich heritage on our history pages and our 100 year celebration page.

Join us to celebrate and help ensure the next 100 years are even stronger.