Long Mead Profile
Soil: clay, gravel, river silt
Landscape: river, floodplain, hay meadow, reed bed, island, oxbow, coppice, orchard
Climate: cool damp microclimate affected by Wytham Hill and the River Thames Long Mead is a County Wildlife Site and is in the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme
History
Long Mead is mentioned in the fourteenth century as one of the demesne meadows belonging to Eynsham Abbey, where villagers grazed and made hay on the land in strips and paid their dues to the monks. It lies along the River Thames and floods every winter when the waters rise. If you look up towards Wytham Hill, you'll see the track that used to be the main road from Wales to London. Historical records tell of the highwaymen that hid in the ancient oaks of Wytham Wood. The civil war came close to Eynsham. During Victorian times, the ditches, sluices and streams on Long Mead brought water from the Thames to allow barges, transporting coal to the west and Cotswold stone to London, to turn at the wharf that once stood by the Talbot Inn.
Environment
Long Mead County Wildlife Site forms an important link in the broken chain of Thames water meadows, which are of great concern to environmentalists today. Only 2 per cent of these vital habitats remain. It contains a rich diversity of meadow flora with almost one hundred different species including the extremely rare adder's tongue fern, early marsh orchard, sneezewort, devil's bit scabious and the uncommon slender tufted sedge. It is an important site for invertebrates including many meadow butterflies. Long Mead is home to 58 different species of bird, including ten species on the the government's Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) target list of birds: Cuckoo, Yellowhammer, Bullfinch, Starling, Song thrush, Lapwing, Curlew, Skylark, Reed bunting.
The River Thames oxbow on Long Mead provides a breeding ground for a wide range of fish as well as offering one of the few reaches of quiet water where they can escape the fast currents in winter. Otter have been recorded recently and a new otter holt has been built. The area is also a nursery ground for amphibians and reptiles including BAP target species such as grass snakes. It provides a habitat for a huge diversity of dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies and other insects and invertebrates.
Management
Catriona Bass bought Long Mead in 2000. She lives on an island in the River Thames and generates her own electricity from the sun and wind. She heats in winter with wood from Long Mead. In 2001, she was instrumental in getting Long Mead made a County Wildlife Site. In the same year, she began to manage it in accordance with conservation strategies: the meadow is cut for hay in July to allow birds to finish nesting and flowers to set seed. It is grazed by cattle in autumn that fertilise the land with their cowpats and 'plant' the flowers' seeds with their hoofs. The hay is taken by a local farmer on Boar's Hill who supplies organic pork to Wolvercote's Farmers Market.
The ancient willows are pollarded to preserve them. Catriona has recently planted a fuel copse of hazel and ash and a traditional orchard to perpetuate old varieties of English apples. These include the once famous Eynsham apples - Eynsham Dumpling, Old Fred, Jennifer Wastie... The trees are grown tall as they used to be to provide habitat for a wide range of wildlife. There is also the apple tree that inspired Isaac Newton to develop his theory of gravity, the apple that the Romans brought to Britain and Malus Sieversii from Kazakhstan, which scientists discovered in 2009 (when they unravelled genome of the domestic apple) to be the mother of all apples.
Catriona combines farming with writing and photography.
Soil: clay, gravel, river silt
Landscape: river, floodplain, hay meadow, reed bed, island, oxbow, coppice, orchard
Climate: cool damp microclimate affected by Wytham Hill and the River Thames Long Mead is a County Wildlife Site and is in the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme
History
Long Mead is mentioned in the fourteenth century as one of the demesne meadows belonging to Eynsham Abbey, where villagers grazed and made hay on the land in strips and paid their dues to the monks. It lies along the River Thames and floods every winter when the waters rise. If you look up towards Wytham Hill, you'll see the track that used to be the main road from Wales to London. Historical records tell of the highwaymen that hid in the ancient oaks of Wytham Wood. The civil war came close to Eynsham. During Victorian times, the ditches, sluices and streams on Long Mead brought water from the Thames to allow barges, transporting coal to the west and Cotswold stone to London, to turn at the wharf that once stood by the Talbot Inn.
Environment
Long Mead County Wildlife Site forms an important link in the broken chain of Thames water meadows, which are of great concern to environmentalists today. Only 2 per cent of these vital habitats remain. It contains a rich diversity of meadow flora with almost one hundred different species including the extremely rare adder's tongue fern, early marsh orchard, sneezewort, devil's bit scabious and the uncommon slender tufted sedge. It is an important site for invertebrates including many meadow butterflies. Long Mead is home to 58 different species of bird, including ten species on the the government's Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) target list of birds: Cuckoo, Yellowhammer, Bullfinch, Starling, Song thrush, Lapwing, Curlew, Skylark, Reed bunting.
The River Thames oxbow on Long Mead provides a breeding ground for a wide range of fish as well as offering one of the few reaches of quiet water where they can escape the fast currents in winter. Otter have been recorded recently and a new otter holt has been built. The area is also a nursery ground for amphibians and reptiles including BAP target species such as grass snakes. It provides a habitat for a huge diversity of dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies and other insects and invertebrates.
Management
Catriona Bass bought Long Mead in 2000. She lives on an island in the River Thames and generates her own electricity from the sun and wind. She heats in winter with wood from Long Mead. In 2001, she was instrumental in getting Long Mead made a County Wildlife Site. In the same year, she began to manage it in accordance with conservation strategies: the meadow is cut for hay in July to allow birds to finish nesting and flowers to set seed. It is grazed by cattle in autumn that fertilise the land with their cowpats and 'plant' the flowers' seeds with their hoofs. The hay is taken by a local farmer on Boar's Hill who supplies organic pork to Wolvercote's Farmers Market.
The ancient willows are pollarded to preserve them. Catriona has recently planted a fuel copse of hazel and ash and a traditional orchard to perpetuate old varieties of English apples. These include the once famous Eynsham apples - Eynsham Dumpling, Old Fred, Jennifer Wastie... The trees are grown tall as they used to be to provide habitat for a wide range of wildlife. There is also the apple tree that inspired Isaac Newton to develop his theory of gravity, the apple that the Romans brought to Britain and Malus Sieversii from Kazakhstan, which scientists discovered in 2009 (when they unravelled genome of the domestic apple) to be the mother of all apples.
Catriona combines farming with writing and photography.