When
I first moved to South Manchester, in the early 1970s, I soon discovered the
Mersey Valley – particularly the Chorlton Ees and Ivy Green areas on either
side of Chorlton Brook, and Hardy Farm (collectively referred to locally as
‘Chorlton Meadows’). At that time I was developing an interest in botany and
was amazed at the richness of this area’s flora. It soon became a favourite
Sunday afternoon occupation of mine to take a field guide down to the Meadows
and try to identify as many plants as possible. I soon realised that many of
the plants that I was finding were of the ‘semi-natural grassland’ type, and I
was aware, even then, that semi-natural grasslands are the richest habitats
for wildlife in England, supporting more priority species than any other; a
fifth of all priority species are associated with grasslands. I was also aware
that grasslands are now among our most endangered habitats – mainly due, in the
wider countryside, to agricultural intensification.
Since 1940 we have lost 97% of our English meadows and pastures and
there are only 8000 ha left 1.
There were once extensive ‘water meadows’ in the Mersey Valley. Local
Farmers deliberately flooded these meadows in the winter months in order to
deposit a layer of rich silt which, in turn, produced abundant grasses which
were cut for hay in late summer. Such a system would have a required an
elaborate and sophisticated system of sluices and drains in order to get the
water first on to and then off of the meadows. This system has been almost entirely
lost. The local name for a water meadow was ‘ees’. Chorlton’s historian, John
Lloyd, wrote that:
“Those who tilled the fields in those past ages were well aware of the
need to control the flood waters in the ees and of the benefit of the layer of
rich silt left by the receding water. Within the memory of people still alive
[in the late 1960s?] the farmer who last tenanted Barlow Hall Farm commented
that the sluice gates in the banks were never opened for the first flood of the
year for this brought down the rubbish, but the second flood brought down the
rich mud 2.”
A more recent local historian, Andrew Simpson, has added more detail on
the operation of water meadows:
“[Meadows consist of] grassland that is kept damp by the use of ditches
(called carriers) that are worked by sluice gates fed by a river. The land is
fed with water up to an inch in depth from October to January for about fifteen
to twenty days at a time, before water is run off into the drainage ditches.
The land is then left to dry out for five or six days, so the air can get to
the grass. The early watering took advantage of the autumnal floods, which
brought with them a mix of nutrients and silt which enriched the land 3.”
Andrew also tells us that this was a very skilled job, which the owner
of the land, the farmer, tended to undertake himself rather than delegate it to
some employee. It required constant vigilance to ensure that, “the water was
evenly distributed and that there was no accumulation of weeds.” The farmer
also had to beware of hard frosts which “could turn the meadow into ‘one sheet
of ice which will draw the grass into heaps which is very injurious to
meadows’”. Nevertheless, an early 20th century farmer, Alfred
Higginbotham, annually flooded one of his meadows so that the people of the
local community could skate on it (there are still local ancestral memories of
skating on the Meadows in the winter).
The next important task was haymaking during the summer. The grass was
first cut and then left for a few days to partly dry. It was then turned and
left for a few more days to complete the drying process. Finally, it was loaded
into carts, taken off to be stored in barns and then used, during the winter
months, to feed farm animals with. Haymaking was also a highly skilled job and
was very labour intensive.
In the course of the research for his book, Andrew came across a mid-19th
century haymaker named John Gresty. John lived in a cottage on The Row (now
Beech Road) and probably hired himself out to local farmers at the appropriate
time of year. John’s most precious possession was almost certainly the key tool
of his trade – his scythe. This consisted of an artfully crooked pole, about 5
½ feet long, with two projecting side handles and a 3 foot long, curved steel
blade at the ‘business end’; one of John’s essential skills would have been
knowing how to use a whetstone to keep this blade razor sharp. He, and any
fellow haymakers, would have swept their scythes through the grass in long arcs,
keeping the blades parallel to and close to the ground. The blades were swept
from right to left depositing the cut grass on the left.
As a result of this annual management regime, probably acting over
several centuries, a distinctive type of meadow evolved (hence the term
‘semi-natural’). According to the National Vegetation Classification scheme 4
our meadows were of the ‘Alopecurus-Sanguisorba’ type (code MG4). This means
that they were distinguished by the presence of the grass Meadow Foxtail (Alopecurus pratensis) and the tall herb
Great Burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis).
The following ‘constant’ species were also present in such meadows (I have
indicated the grasses with a ‘g’) 5:
Common Mouse-ear (Cerastium
fontanum)
Crested Dog-tail (Cynosurus
cristatus) g
Red Fescue (Festuca rubra) g
Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria)
Yorkshire Fog (Holcus lanatus)
g
Meadow Vetchling (Lathyrus
pratensis)
Autumn Hawkbit (Leontodon
autumnalis)
Perennial Rye-grass (Lolium
perenne) g
Meadow Buttercup (Ranunculus acris)
Common Sorrel (Rumex acetosa)
Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale
agg.)
Red Clover (Trifolium pratense)
White Clover (Trifolium repens)
It’s interesting to note that all of the species on this list are still locally
common. In individual meadows, other grasses and grassland species, not on the
core list, could often be found.
It’s important to note that MG4 grasslands are now quite rare and tend
to be confined to certain river valleys in central England.
From the late 19th century until the late 1970s agriculture
was gradually displaced from the Mersey Valley and what was deposited on the
ees was not “rich mud” but the growing city’s effluent in the form of sewage
works and rubbish dumps. Nevertheless,
when the Mersey Valley Countryside Warden Service was established in 1978 there
were still some reasonably good examples of semi-natural grassland left on both
the Chorlton and Sale sides of the river (although, alas, these were no longer
subjected to winter flooding). Sale Ees was particularly interesting because it
was still visibly a reasonably good example of an MG4 meadow. On Chorlton Ees
there is still a colony of Adderstongue Fern – a curious, and increasingly
scarce little plant generally considered to be an indicator species of
unimproved grassland (and probably corresponding to the colony recorded from
the area by the Manchester botanist, Richard Buxton in his Flora of 1849 6).
After 1978 the management and conservation of these meadows (together
with a few more, further west and east) should have been, in my opinion, an
absolute priority – but tree planting and the encouragement of ‘informal
recreation’ took precedence. At the very
least these areas needed to be cut in late summer and the hay crop taken off,
and indeed this happened for a few years. The hay crop was sold to local
livestock owners but eventually, for reasons which are obscure, this form of
management ceased. Soon the meadows began to deteriorate. Although some Great
Burnet still grows on Sale Ees the area is dominated by coarse grasses and is
succumbing to natural succession and trees and shrubs are taking over. Chorlton
Ees has begun to go the same way but it has been further damaged by a
pyromaniac who for a number of years has set fire to it every spring; now it is
dominated by Rosebay Willowherb – a plant which readily colonises burned
ground. These precious few acres of
historic, local semi-natural grassland are now very severely degraded and could
be lost in a few years. I must give credit, though, to the Environment Agency
who cleared rank vegetation from two key areas earlier this year.
In 2013 Natural England gave the
Greater Manchester Ecology Unit £8820 for a 2 year project to investigate the
decline of Mersey Valley grasslands. Now GMEU has a plan to restore many of these
grasslands. The plan has been written by GMEU ecologist, David Dutton 7.
David’s plan is meticulously detailed and fully costed and is presently the
subject of a Manchester Clean City grant application. Nevertheless, if this
application is unsuccessful other sources of funding will need to be sought and
additional funding could be necessary at some future date.
David’s discussions with Wythenshawe
Farm Centre have revealed that they are currently short of hay to feed their
livestock in winter and would be interested in taking hay from our grasslands
once they have been brought into a mowable condition. Initial costs include
establishing this mowable condition, purchase of agricultural machinery and the
provision of additional livestock and barn space.
If successful, this project should
radically improve the biodiversity of our area, enhance its attractiveness,
re-introduce active management and generate income and jobs for the locality
through the production of local food.
The project will also provide baseline
information on the feasibility of the re-introduction of controlled winter
flooding, increase the financial viability of Wythenshawe Farm Centre and act
as a template for the sustainable management of similar sites across
Manchester.
Forty years ago I was afforded just a
glimpse of an ancient landscape; a landscape dominated by flowery grasslands.
The green shades of the tall grasses were augmented by the yellows of
Buttercups, Dandelions and Common Catsear and the reddish haze of Sorrel.
Around the margins of these meadows and on the river banks were great patches
of pink Bistort, the creamy, frothy flowers of Sweet Cicely and Meadowsweet and
the huge leaves of Butterbur. These precious, beautiful remnants of a, once
more extensive, landscape were a tribute to the skill, knowledge and dedication
of local farming dynasties such as the Baileys and the Higginbothams and the
back-breaking toil of men like John Gresty and his nameless workmates. Then,
for decades, I had to watch them degrade and occasionally to watch them being
destroyed by people who didn’t understand their significance (and probably
didn’t even care). These ‘jewels in the Mersey Valley’s crown’ are presently
very faded - but now there’s hope that they can be restored.
- The
Grasslands Trust Website (http://grasslands-trust.org/current-situation)
- Lloyd, J.M., ‘The Township
of Chorlton cum Hardy’, E.J. Morten, 1972
- Simpson, A., ‘The Story of
Chorlton-cum-Hardy’, The History Press, 2012
- Joint Nature Conservation
Committee (JNCC), Habitat Account – Natural and semi-natural grassland
formations, 6510 Lowland hay meadows (Alopecurus
pratensis, Sanguisorba
officinalis) (http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/protectedsites/sacselection/habitat.asp?FeatureIntCode=H6510)
- Wikipedia article on
British NVC Community MG4
- Buxton, R., ‘A Botanical
Guide to the Flowering Plants, Ferns, Mosses and Algae, Found Indigenous
Within Sixteen Miles of Manchester’, Longman And Co., 1849
- Dutton, D., ‘Chorlton
Meadows’, ‘Clean City Grant Application’, Greater Manchester Ecology Unit,
June 2014
Postscript: Sadly, this blog thingy appears to have been "improved" in such a way that I can no longer add photos. Anyone know how to do this?
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