Northcroft Meadows Nature Reserve

We are very excited to announce that we have acquired 37 acres of land next to Newbury Town Centre, with permission to turn it into a public access nature reserve. There is now much to organise, but ecologists are on site doing wildlife surveys, with new habitat designs being made this year, ready for groundwork to start in 2025. Having the land also allows us to start seriously fundraising as it will form the basis for grant funding applications.

This is a fantastic opportunity to pursue our 3 core aims bio-diversity, education, community.

Bio-diversity…

We will use gentle management techniques to enhance habitats and better support bio-diversity. The site has different zones that are quite distinct environments; from the wetland and ponds, to the meadows and naturally rewilding juvenile woodland.

Education…

We will provide education facilities such as a nature trail, outdoor classroom, science equipment and safe access to the wetlands. We are designing various ready to go activities for schools, organisations such as scouts, local community groups, and also members of the public who visit the site with families. Things you can just turn up and do, that are fun, educational and exercise.

Community…

There are a network of paths around the meadows where the public has used the land for walking for many years. With that access now official we can start clearing the overgrown paths to allow more safe and enjoyable access.

Our education facilities will include an all weather outdoor classroom with soft flooring, tables and chairs. It will have toilets and a small kitchen. The local community can also use this space for any local groups who can make use of the facility.

Can you help?

We need volunteers for all sorts of jobs:

• Work parties on site maintaining the land
• Educators and ecologists creating education materials
• Back office, planning and grant funding, stakeholder engagement, marketing and media creation

If you can spare any time to help make this new nature reserve fantastic for nature and people, then please get in touch…

You can find out more about physically volunteering with us on site here…

Read more…

The document below shows a general high level plan of the sorts of things we would like to do…

Northcroft Meadows History

The land has had a lot of human intervention over centuries which still very much influences it today, even though some of that is crumbling and nature is reclaiming the land for itself. The river Kennet runs along our western and southern borders and is heavily modified from its original course.

The first map we have found is from the time of the civil war around 1650. It is tricky to match this with the ground today with not many landmarks on the very basic map. But it is that the river had two main channels across the flood plain of Newbury.

Over the centuries the meadows at Northcroft and above in Suttons Estate were modified with a complex network of drainage channels, aqueducts and sluices. Some of this was done by forced labour using French prisoners of war during the Napoleonic wars. This was to make the land more useful for arable farming where controlled flooding would be used at certain times of year to spread nutrients from the river across the meadows and increase fodder for the grazing animals the following year.

When the Kennet & Avon canal was built the valley west of Newbury was significantly modified with the original river course becoming just a side stream as the main flow was diverted into a canalised river section of the canal as it passes West Mills and goes through Newbury. The river still had a northern channel that went under Northbrook street near the clocktower. Hence the name ‘Northbrook’ street.

At some point a ‘dipping pond’ was established at Northcroft on the north brook. Victorian dipping ponds were modifications of the river to create a manmade pool for people to swim in. The river would flow in one end and out of the other, with the bit in between resembling a swimming pool like we would use today but with river water and somewhat colder! There were many of these on private estates, but the Northbrook dipping pond was a public swimming facility. And still is today!

The Lambourn Valley Railway opened in 1898, spanning the valley west of Newbury. Consideration must have been given to the existing aqueduct system when the railway was built. Bridges were built to allow the north brook to flow separately to main channel of the Kennet.

By 1906 the dipping pond was called Northbrook Lido and had roughly the same dimensions that the Lido does today. It still had the north brook running through it though, so retained much of its Victorian dipping pond charm.

The pumping station on Moor Lane had been established by now and is marked on the map as ‘Newbury District Water Co’. The meadows that are now the nature reserve are marked as ‘Northcroft Dairy Farm’. There is still evidence of this activity as recently as a few decades ago. The entire area including the wetlands were cattle fields which goes to show just how much wetter it is today.

Newbury underwent some significant development after world war 2, the A339 was dueled with the large bridge over the canal built with the roundabouts and flyover. Around about this time the Northbrook was filled in and its flow diverted down an aqueduct. The Lido was renovated and became an isolated pool, much more like we see today.

Today much of the historic infrastructure is collapsing. The river has quite a strong say in where it wants to go and is already enacting its plan. This is an exciting opportunity to embrace natural processes of river restoration, but managing them in a way that helps protect Newbury from flooding.

Learn more about our wider ambitions for river restoration on our projects page…