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Old Man’s Beard Has Disappeared : Photobook - Zemni

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East Pit Local Nature Reserve is is the largest of the complex of three chalk and lime quarries in this area. Chalk from this quarry was a source of building materials for Cherry Hinton and Cambridge Colleges and to make quicklime for agriculture until the early 1980’s.

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Lime Kiln Close Local Nature Reserve is the oldest in a complex of three chalk and lime quarries. Now known as ‘the Spinney’, it was a source of building materials for Cherry Hinton and the Cambridge Colleges. The site is owned by Cambridge City Council and is managed by the Wildlife Trust with dedicated volunteers.

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The undulating terrain of West Pit local nature reserve is unique to Cambridge’s usually flat landscape. The site was previously a quarry – it is now a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the presence of the beautiful but very rare moon carrot.

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Cambridge lies at the end of the Chiltern chalk hills. This is an ancient landscape that was inhabited since the neolithic age. The chalk hill peaks at Gog Magog Hills and East Pit were sites for burials and defensive fortifications.

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Coldham’s Common is one of the city’s largest parks, covering an area of 42.5 hectares (105 acres). The reserve is a mixture of chalky grassland, scrub and woodland. Coldham’s Brook and the East Main Drain run through the eastern side of the reserve.

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Chalk streams are pure, clear water that originate in underground chalk aquifers and springs. They only exist when chalk bedrock meets the surface, which is why they’re so rare. Chalk streams are internationally rare habitats.

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Paradise is a wooded area surrounding a small marsh. It’s on the west bank of the River Cam, southwest of Sheep’s Green and Lammas Land. Animals and plants.

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Sheep’s Green is one of the complex of three reserves on Lammas Land on the south bank of the River Cam, in west Cambridge. They were traditional grazing sites for sheep and cattle, and Charles Darwin is said to have conducted many beetle surveys on the site. In wet weather you can see the patterns of ancient streams meandering across Sheep’s Green. The land is a flood plain and is prone to flooding events.

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Lammas lands were so called because they were private property until Lammas Day (August 1st) after which they were subject to common rights of pasturage until spring.

From early times Lammas Land, Sheep's Green and Paradise were all part of a large stretch of marshy common land, they were bound by the River Cam on the east, with Coe Fen being on the northern side of The Cam. All within an area that was, in the past, relatively boggy and marshy, and prone to seasonal flooding due to the close proximity to the river. The challenging nature of this area meant that there was little settlement within the immediate area, until the area became better drained and more accessible in the more recent past, from the nineteenth century.

The site was fully owned by the City Council by 1921 and deliberate creation of a recreation ground took place during the 1920's.

For more about the history of the area see: the report by Michelle Bullivant .

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Lammas lands were so called because they were private property until Lammas Day (August 1st) after which they were subject to common rights of pasturage until spring. From early times Lammas Land, Sheep's Green and Paradise were all part of a large stretch of marshy common land, they were bound by the River Cam on the east, with Coe Fen being on the northern side of The Cam.

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Stourbridge Common and Ditton Meadows form part of an extensive riverside floodplain. They are part of a wildlife corridor that links a range of habitats from the Cherry Hinton chalk pits to the River Cam, which flows out into the fens.

In Tudor times Stourbridge Common hosted one of the largest markets in Europe, linking wool farmers in England with weavers in the Netherlands.

More recently the area has become a busy thoroughfare for walkers and cyclists crossing the river to Cambridge North Station.

Animals and plants

The reserve supports species such as the banded demoiselle damselfly, bullhead fish, snipe and the endangered water vole.

Despite being a busy waterway with many houseboats and rowers, the Cam supports a huge array of birds, including kingfishers, grey herons, little grebe and grey wagtails. The scrapes are of particular benefit to wading birds such as snipe and migrating geese. Kestrels hover over the tussocky grassland. A nest box encourages the kestrels to breed.

The site also hosts hunting field voles and other small mammals.

The scrapes are home to newts and frogs. Plankton such as daphnia and cyclops thrive in these ephemeral pools also.

Numerous species of insects are attracted to the microhabitats and the cows' dung, and they in turn provide food for birds and noctule and pipistrelle bats.

Management

Coldham's Brook discharges into the river at the north end of the reserve. The brook is an important example of a chalk stream, of which there are only a few in the country. The grassland is prone to flooding in wet weather, so we have created several shallow depressions that will retain water, known as 'wader scrapes'.

Grassland is managed with grazing cattle every summer. The cows use their tongues to graze, wrapping it around plants and grass to pull it up. This and their trampling the ground as they move around creates different plant heights and microhabitats within the grassland.

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Stourbridge Common and Ditton Meadows form part of an extensive riverside floodplain. They are part of a wildlife corridor that links a range of habitats from the Cherry Hinton chalk pits to the River Cam, which flows out into the fens.

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Logan’s Meadow isa small reserve next to the River Cam, prone to flooding. The ponds, reedbed, riverside, backwater channels and ditches form a micro river-catchment landscape. They are part of a wildlife corridor that stretches north beyond Wicken Fen, offering a viable habitat for many wetland species.

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Bramblefields is a small nature reserve just down the road from my house. The site was fen and farmland at the beginning of the 20th century, then allotments until the mid 1990s. The is the reserve I know best, and visit most frequently.

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The two small Fen Edgeland Reserves to the North East of Cambridge are part of a much larger and older fenland landscape that links Cambridge to the Fens. Unlike the large rich agricultural areas in Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk that have been drained, the nature reserves are created/re-created as lowland wetlands that flood to create a mixture of wetland and woodland habitat. The two reserves in Cambridge are different in the ways in which this has been done.

Bramblefields is a small area of grassland, scrub and wetland with two small ponds, surrounded by housing, allotments and Cambridge North Station. The site was fen and farmland at the beginning of the 20th century, and for a while after that was used as allotments. Because of the flooding risk this small area was set aside as a local nature reserve in the mid-1990s when a large housing estate was built. In 2022 it became a trial site for use of recycled building waste and ceramics as a haven for solitary bees and bumblebees.

Logan's Meadow is a small reserve next to the River Cam became a local nature reserve in 2005, significantly extended in 2016 and 2022 as part of a wildlife corridor that stretches north beyond Wicken Fen. The ponds, reedbed, riverside, backwater channels, ditches and woodland form a micro river-catchment landscape prone to flooding.

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The two small Fen Edgeland Reserves to the North East of Cambridge are part of a much larger and older fenland landscape that links Cambridge to the Fens. Unlike the large rich agricultural areas in Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk that have been drained, the nature reserves are created/re-created as lowland wetlands that flood to create a mixture of wetland and woodland habitat.