Reserve News
Spring 2000
Tollesbury Wick Marshes
Abbotts Hall
- A New Trust Reserve -

Essex Wildlife Trust has spearheaded the joint venture to purchase Abbotts Hall, a 700 acre farm, just 4 miles north of Tollesbury on the Salcott Channel. This visionary project is of National and European significance. Its success will be the central piece in the conservation jigsaw which will link together over 25 km of the Essex coast from Tollesbury Wick in the south to Fingringhoe Wick in the north. Other key landowners include the National Trust, RSPB and Ministry of Defence.

It has been a major undertaking costing over £2 million and the Trust has pulled together support from an impressive range of conservation partners, including World Wildlife 
Fund-UK, Heritage Lottery Fund, English Nature and the Environment Agency. Central to the purchase has been the generous legacy of Miss Joan Elliot. The site will be known as the Joan Elliot Visitor Centre at Abbotts Hall Farm.

There are three major initiatives for the Trust at Abbotts Hall:

1.
Why is the Trust buying a large arable farm? Two of the biggest problems facing wildlife throughout Essex at present are firstly the demise of farmland wildlife on arable farms that form 80% of the Essex countryside. It is so serious that the Trust has decided that it must engage the farming issues directly. The plan will be to farm over 350 acres in as wildlife friendly way as possible by restoring hedgerows, field margins, ditches, copses, headlands etc. We aim to show how birds like Skylark, Lapwing and Song Thrush can flourish alongside profitable arable farming. These ideas are already attracting interest from national policy makers and local farmers who would like to farm in a more wildlife friendly way if only we can get the farm subsidy systems modified.
2.
The second biggest problem facing Essex wildlife is the rapid loss of coastal marshland and all the wildlife this supports. Essex estuaries have lost up to 60% of their salt marshes due to rising sea levels and coastal squeeze and over 90% of our grazing marshes have been lost to arable land and development. With the help of the Environment Agency and WWF-UK, the Trust will aim to create over 300 acres of salt marsh, saline lagoons and grazing marsh on what is at present arable land. The broader picture is to look towards a more sustainable coastline with Abbotts Hall's 2.5km of coast forming the central part in the management of the larger estuary.

3.
There are substantial buildings at Abbotts Hall and these will be modified to provide 
visitor facilities and the new headquarters of the Trust. With so much work to do the farm 
will not be open to visitors until 2001. However, local people can look forward to being able 
to walk around more than one square mile of coastland that has formerly been inaccessible to 
the public.

The Trust succeeded in getting support for all but the last £60,000 for this important purchase. We really need every member and supporter to donate what they can. Please support the appeal for Abbotts Hall.

John Hall
Director, Essex Wildlife Trust
 

Essex Wildlife Trust