Nature in droves. How ancient pathways could help biodiversity in West Berkshire
West Berkshire has more local nature recovery plans than the rest of the county, with drovers’ roads around East Ilsley given one of the top priorities.
Apart from the more likely items in the soon to be published Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) – such as the protection of chalk streams, creation and protection of woodlands and wetlands and so on – West Berkshire is the only part of the county where old drovers’ roads feature in the plans to give nature a chance.
The Government says all councils must have a big plan to protect and care for nature, so the task for coming up with one for the whole county fell to Windsor and Maidenhead Borough Council with West Berkshire playing an advisory role along with a whole host of ecology and environmental groups.
Berkshire has seven priorities, one of which is to improve the quality of habitats in agricultural land and the wider countryside- and within that bit there is a priority to enhance the drove road corridors on the Downs for wildlife.
So it is an excuse to go down that road – or roads – back in history.
A drovers’ road, drove road, droveway, or simply a drove, is a route for moving livestock on foot from one place to another, such as to market or between summer and winter pasture.
Many drovers’ roads were ancient routes of unknown age.
As an old droveway, The Ridgeway was once busy with sheep, cattle, pigs, donkeys, turkeys and geese walking towards London and other markets.
In the 18th century, the annual sale of sheep at Smithfield Market in London averaged 750,000 sheep.
Some say East Ilsley in Berkshire was once second only to Smithfield Market and the number of village inns reached 12 in order to cater for the influx of drovers, farmers and sheep shearers from as far afield as Scotland.
A hollow way, or drovers’ road, is a narrow, sunken path created by the repeated use in the past for driving livestock over long distances.
The combination of thousands of hooved feet and natural erosion has etched these impressive grooves in the landscape.
And the general idea behind enhancing them for biodiversity isn’t new.
For instance, historical drovers’ roads in Spain are now essential corridors between protected areas.
Even stretches of the former Iron Curtain have been transformed into the European Green Belt.
This is a combination of ancient bogs and forests, river valleys and mountains across 24 countries.
It sustains a diverse range of species such as the brown bear, Eurasian lynx and the white-tailed eagle, ensuring ecological and genetic diversity across Europe, plus protecting many endangered ecosystems and species by acting as a buffer zone.
These corridors help wildlife by providing spaces for nature that connect ranges of habitats to ensure safe passages between landscapes.
So the West Berkshire drovers’ roads are a version of this approach.
Back in the day, men were licensed and paid as ‘drovers’ to take animals to market, on behalf of farmers, between April and October.
Welsh mutton was sought after in the 19th century and so sheep from as far afield as Wales regularly moved through the area.
Favoured routes were wide to provide space for the animals to move and verges for grazing – at Bury Down near West Ilsley in Berkshire.
The long track of Old Street, north of Newbury, was a key route for sheep being driven to East Ilsley.
Its first recorded market was in 1222 and, between 1620 and 1934, up to a quarter of a million sheep were traded annually. Eighty thousand sheep were auctioned in a single day in 1844.
Sheep were held in pens temporarily erected along the High Street and in an adjacent meadow known today as Pen Meadow.
The drover would lead on horseback and ‘drivers’ followed behind on foot, accompanied by dogs.
A single drove of sheep would be 1,500 to 2,000 strong, picking up more animals along the way.
Along The Ridgeway, The Hangman’s Stone near Upper Lambourn stands as a warning to sheep rustlers.
There is a legend associated with the stone found at a junction of tracks north of Upper Lambourn.
It goes that a man with a stolen sheep over his shoulder rested at the stone and fell asleep.
The sheep, which had is legs tied, began to struggle.
The rope binding the sheep got around the thief’s throat and he was strangled.
Hand in hand with the drovers’ roads plan is one for hedgerows.
Hedgerows in the UK have their origins in the Bronze Age, potentially even earlier in the Neolithic period, with some existing hedgerows potentially dating back 4,000 years.
While the widespread planting of hedgerows is often associated with the Enclosure Acts of the Middle Ages and later, evidence suggests that many of today’s hedgerows are much older, with some marking ancient boundaries and even pre-dating parish boundaries and churches.
The Berkshire plan suggests the creation of hedgerows where evidence shows previous hedgerow lines, and to extend hedgerows to connect fragmented woodlands.
It wants to support farmers to create or restore 30,000 miles of hedgerows by 2037 and 45,000 miles of hedgerows by 2050
The strategy insights say agricultural land makes up a large proportion of Berkshire, and if managed correctly, can be a fantastic habitat for mammals, birds, invertebrates and plants.
It says across all countryside areas, various changes in land management and agriculture have had an adverse impact on wildlife.
The intensification of farming, encouraged by policies to increase domestic food production after the Second World War, the introduction of pesticides, artificial fertilisers and mechanisation, and the scarcity of agricultural labour in a prosperous part of the country has seen the removal of hedgerows, ponds and traditional orchards and farmsteads, and the decline of pastoral and mixed farming.
These in turn, not says, have resulted in considerable reduction in plant variety and invertebrate numbers, with consequential effects up the food chain.
However, it says there are many actions that are and can be taken to restore nature back to agricultural land and the countryside.
So in many ways the nature plans are trying to turn back the clock on land use and use the traditional corridors, routes and boundary markers as nature super highways.
Historically, wool and cloth was an important trade item for England and places such as Newbury, near The Ridgeway, thrived as ‘wool towns’.
Today, sheep farming can still be seen along The Ridgeway but there is far more arable land than in the past and moving sheep along the route is an unusual sight where farmers need to move sheep short distances around their holding.
Farmers play a critical role in keeping traditional land management practices alive.
Sheep are important for conserving chalk grassland flora and fauna along The Ridgeway because they prevent scrub and tall vegetation from smothering low-growing native wildflowers.
Government guidance advises that all LNRSs follow particular processes to create a written list of local priority species and to propose specific measures (actions) which would help to recover and enhance local populations.
The Species Priorities List contains a table of 88 target species, collected into 43 categories/habitat assemblages in Berkshire which need particular and specific actions to be taken by people and organisations to support their populations to survive, recover, or spread further.
The list was produced by refining a longlist of 1,408 species which are all considered to be ‘threatened’ or ‘near threatened’ by extinction from Britain, which are also found in Berkshire.
Berkshire’s nature is also being impacted by pest species – these can be invasive non-native species or native species that are at unsustainable population levels.
One highly impactful group are deer.
In Berkshire, there are six species of deer; two native and four non-native species.
Since the loss of large carnivores in the UK, there have been no natural predators of deer, and the collective deer population has rapidly expanded without control.
The UK population is now thought to have exceeded two million deer.
This huge population has had a significant impact on woodlands and wider habitats, with deer grazing preventing ground flora from surviving, stripping the bark of mature trees and browsing saplings so that new trees cannot establish and grow.
The strategy outlines the need to undertake landscape-scale control measures to reduce deer and/or grey squirrel grazing in woodlands, to reduce their negative impact on woodland ecology from overgrazing.
Without management, deer populations will continue to increase and impacts on woodlands and adjacent habitats will worsen and deer populations must be brought back to sustainable levels and non-native species should be controlled as far as possible.
The draft for the Local Nature Recovery Plan for Berkshire can be found here.
(Much of the information about drove roads has been drawn from East Ilsley Local History Society’s booklet ‘Far famed for sheep and wool – a history of East Ilsley’s markets and fairs’ by Nigel Wardell (2006).)
