Hatch Park is a Site of Special Scientific Interest

Site of Special Scientific Interest

A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...

 (SSSI) near Mersham

Mersham

Mersham is a small village and civil parish, three miles east of Willesborough and the town of Ashford in the county of Kent.-History:Historically Mersham has been a farming community with close ties to the local market town of Ashford. The small village dates back to Saxon times and is mentioned...

 and Brabourne

Brabourne

Brabourne is a village and civil parish in the Ashford district of Kent, England. The village centre is just under five miles east of Ashford town centre.The centre of the modern village of Brabourne is the Five Bells pub, which overlooks the village green...

, five miles (8 km) from Ashford

Ashford, Kent

Ashford is a town in the borough of Ashford in Kent, England. In 2005 it was voted the fourth best place to live in the United Kingdom. It lies on the Great Stour river, the M20 motorway, and the South Eastern Main Line and High Speed 1 railways. Its agricultural market is one of the most...

 in Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 .

The site is of special interest for its unimproved acidic grassland

Grassland

Grasslands are areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses and other herbaceous plants . However, sedge and rush families can also be found. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica...

, a scarce habitat

Habitat

* Habitat , a place where a species lives and grows*Human habitat, a place where humans live, work or play** Space habitat, a space station intended as a permanent settlement...

in Kent, with its ancient pollarded

Pollarding

Pollarding is a pruning system in which the upper branches of a tree are removed, promoting a dense head of foliage and branches. It has been common in Great Britain and Europe since medieval times and is practiced today in urban areas worldwide, primarily to maintain trees at a predetermined...

 woodland

Woodland

Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...

s, supporting the richest
epiphytic lichen

Lichen

Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic organism composed of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner , usually either a green alga or cyanobacterium...

 community in the county. The grassland is the remnant of a formerly much more extensive deer

Deer

Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the Cervidae family include white-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer, fallow deer, roe deer and chital. Male deer of all species and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year...

park, and the turf here is believed to have remained unbroken for the last 500 years. The deerpark still exists but on a smaller scale, including some artificial pond

Pond

A pond is a body of standing water, either natural or man-made, that is usually smaller than a lake. A wide variety of man-made bodies of water are classified as ponds, including water gardens, water features and koi ponds; all designed for aesthetic ornamentation as landscape or architectural...

s and marsh

Marsh

In geography, a marsh, or morass, is a type of wetland that is subject to frequent or continuous flood. Typically the water is shallow and features grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, other herbaceous plants, and moss....

y areas.