Northwich Community Woodlands
Encyclopedia
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
s of publicly-accessible countryside to the north of Northwich
Northwich
Northwich is a town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It lies in the heart of the Cheshire Plain, at the confluence of the rivers Weaver and Dane...
in Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
, 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...
. Much of the land was formerly industrial and used for mining salt and manufacturing chemicals
Chemical industry
The chemical industry comprises the companies that produce industrial chemicals. Central to the modern world economy, it converts raw materials into more than 70,000 different products.-Products:...
. The extraction of salt caused subsidence
Subsidence
Subsidence is the motion of a surface as it shifts downward relative to a datum such as sea-level. The opposite of subsidence is uplift, which results in an increase in elevation...
leading to the formation of pools known as flashes. The land became derelict during the 20th century as the salt industry collapsed. Much of the area has now been reclaimed for the purposes of conservation and recreation and forms part of the Mersey Forest
Mersey Forest
This article is about a community forest in the United Kingdom. See also Mersey Forest, Tasmania.The Mersey Forest is a network of woodlands and green spaces being created across Merseyside and North Cheshire by a wide-ranging partnership of different organisations including local authorities,...
initiative.
Description
Marbury Country Park
In the north of the area beside Budworth Mere is Marbury Country Park. It was formerly a country estate owned by the Smith-Barry family but it became derelict and Marbury Hall
Marbury Hall, Anderton with Marbury
Marbury Hall was a country house in Marbury, near Northwich, Cheshire, England. Several houses existed on the site from the 13th century, which formed the seat successively of the Marbury, Barry and Smith-Barry families, until 1932. An extensive collection of artwork and sculpture was housed at the...
was demolished in 1968. The site was reclaimed in 1975 and is now run as a country park
Country park
A country park is an area designated for people to visit and enjoy recreation in a countryside environment.-History:In the United Kingdom the term 'Country Park' has a special meaning. There are over 400 Country Parks in England alone . Most Country Parks were designated in the 1970s, under the...
by Cheshire West and Chester
Cheshire West and Chester
Cheshire West and Chester is a unitary authority area with borough status, in the ceremonial county of Cheshire. It was established in April 2009 as part of the 2009 structural changes to local government in England, by virtue of an order under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health...
Council. An arboretum
Arboretum
An arboretum in a narrow sense is a collection of trees only. Related collections include a fruticetum , and a viticetum, a collection of vines. More commonly, today, an arboretum is a botanical garden containing living collections of woody plants intended at least partly for scientific study...
, ice-house
Icehouse (building)
Ice houses were buildings used to store ice throughout the year, prior to the invention of the refrigerator. Some were underground chambers, usually man-made, close to natural sources of winter ice such as freshwater lakes, but many were buildings with various types of insulation.During the...
and avenues of lime trees
Tilia
Tilia is a genus of about 30 species of trees native throughout most of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The greatest species diversity is found in Asia, and the genus also occurs in Europe and eastern North America, but not western North America...
remain from former times. An area of ancient woodland known as Big Wood is important for wildlife with a variety of woodland birds including lesser spotted woodpecker
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker
The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is a member of the woodpecker family Picidae. It is assigned to the genus Dendrocopos ....
.
Anderton Nature Park
Anderton Nature Park stretches along the north side of the River WeaverRiver Weaver
The River Weaver is a river, navigable in its lower reaches, running in a curving route anti-clockwise across west Cheshire, northern England. Improvements to the river to make it navigable were authorised in 1720 and the work, which included eleven locks, was completed in 1732...
and Witton Brook from Anderton Boat Lift
Anderton Boat Lift
The Anderton Boat Lift near the village of Anderton, Cheshire, in north-west England provides a vertical link between two navigable waterways: the River Weaver and the Trent and Mersey Canal....
in the west to Haydn's Pool (formerly Marbury No. 1 Sludge Bed) in the east. A number of paths lead through grassland and recently-planted woodland. Wildlife includes uncommon flowers such as pennyroyal. Haydn's Pool is important for waterbirds including regular green sandpiper
Green Sandpiper
The Green Sandpiper is a small wader of the Old World. It represents an ancient lineage of the genus Tringa; its only close living relative is the Solitary Sandpiper . They both have brown wings with little light dots and a delicate but contrasting neck and chest pattern...
.
Neumann's and Ashton's Flashes
Imperial Chemical Industries
Imperial Chemical Industries was a British chemical company, taken over by AkzoNobel, a Dutch conglomerate, one of the largest chemical producers in the world. In its heyday, ICI was the largest manufacturing company in the British Empire, and commonly regarded as a "bellwether of the British...
to store lime
Lime (mineral)
Lime is a general term for calcium-containing inorganic materials, in which carbonates, oxides and hydroxides predominate. Strictly speaking, lime is calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide. It is also the name for a single mineral of the CaO composition, occurring very rarely...
waste but by the 1970s they had become disused. Paths and bird hide
Bird hide
A bird hide is a shelter, often camouflaged, that is used to observe wildlife, especially birds, at close quarters. Although hides were once built chiefly as hunting aids, they are now commonly found in parks and wetlands for the use of bird watchers, ornithologists and other observers who do not...
s have now been constructed around them.
A number of plants associated with alkali
Alkali
In chemistry, an alkali is a basic, ionic salt of an alkali metal or alkaline earth metal element. Some authors also define an alkali as a base that dissolves in water. A solution of a soluble base has a pH greater than 7. The adjective alkaline is commonly used in English as a synonym for base,...
ne soils grow on the site including fragrant orchid, marsh helleborine
Epipactis palustris
Epipactis palustris is an orchid. An example occurrence of this species is in the Sarmatic mixed forests ecoregion. -References:* C.Michael Hogan. 2011....
, ploughman's spikenard, and yellow-wort
Blackstonia perfoliata
Blackstonia perfoliata or yellow-wort is a species of plant in the family Gentianaceae found around the Mediterranean Basin, but extending into northwestern Europe.Pathogens affecting B. perfoliata include Peronospora chlorae....
. It is a stronghold for the dingy skipper
Dingy Skipper
The Dingy Skipper, Erynnis tages, is a butterfly of the Hesperiidae family. It ranges from Europe across Asia Minor and Central Asia to the Amur region.Erynnis tages favours open grassy habitats up to 2,000 metres above sea level...
butterfly. A variety of duck
Duck
Duck is the common name for a large number of species in the Anatidae family of birds, which also includes swans and geese. The ducks are divided among several subfamilies in the Anatidae family; they do not represent a monophyletic group but a form taxon, since swans and geese are not considered...
s, wader
Wader
Waders, called shorebirds in North America , are members of the order Charadriiformes, excluding the more marine web-footed seabird groups. The latter are the skuas , gulls , terns , skimmers , and auks...
s, and other waterbirds occur and numerous rarities have been recorded such as broad-billed
Broad-billed Sandpiper
The Broad-billed Sandpiper is a small wading bird. It is the only member of the genus Limicola; some have proposed that it should be placed in the genus Erolia with the "stint" sandpipers, but more recent research suggests that it is should rather go into the genus Philomachus with the ruff and...
, stilt sandpiper
Stilt Sandpiper
The Stilt Sandpiper, Calidris himantopus or Micropalama himantopus, is a small shorebird; it bears some resemblance to the smaller calidrid sandpipers or "stints". DNA sequence information is incapable of determining whether it should be placed in Calidris or in the monotypic genus Micropalama...
s, Caspian
Caspian Tern
The Caspian Tern is a species of tern, with a subcosmopolitan but scattered distribution. Despite its extensive range, it is monotypic of its genus, and has no subspecies accepted either...
, and whiskered tern
Whiskered Tern
The Whiskered Tern is a seabird of the tern family Sternidae. This bird has a number of geographical races, differing mainly in size and minor plumage details....
s.
Witton Lime Beds SSSI
Immediately to the west of Neumann's and Ashton's Flashes, in a loop of Witton Brook, lies Witton Lime Beds, a Site of Special Scientific InterestSite 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...
.