A housing association has brought a taste of rural life to a seaside town by using a small flock of sheep to keep the grass on one of its sites under control.
Cartrefi Conwy housing association plans to build 48 new homes on land where a range of former government office buildings have stood empty since 2018.
But much of the four and a half acre site in Rhos on Sea, Colwyn Bay, which is surrounded on all sides by existing housing, is grass which would need to be cut on a regular basis until work on the new housing scheme begins.
“It was apparent, given the vastness of the site, that we needed to be having some sort of sustainable maintenance of the site whilst we developed our plans,” said Dan Hall from Cartrefi Conwy.
“This fitted in with our carbon neutral agenda. But also it was a low noise, cost-effective way of maintaining the land,” the director of customer and communities added.
The former government buildings were originally built in the final years of World War Two for use as an emergency hospital but were never needed. Instead, for 70 years, they were used by government departments as offices.
“There’s good fencing here,” said Gethin Davies, a farmer from the village of Llansannan 13 miles away, whose sheep are now chewing their way around the site.
“We come down about twice a week, just to double check on them, and to make sure the water is running right.”
The sheep will be heading back to the hills in late October when the grass growing season comes to an end.
“I don’t mind the sheep at all,” says Tracy Baguley, whose garden backs on to the land where the sheep are grazing. “I quite like hearing them. It’s better than all the traffic – that’s for sure.
“I feel like I’m in the countryside. We look over the hedges quite often just to see the sheep. We like it – we get a taste of the countryside.”
And with planning for the new homes still to be completed and approved, there’s every chance that the sheep will be back next spring to continue their low-key gardening work for at least one more season.
