It is hoped that this newsletter will help clear up any misunderstanding about the terms on which the Chiltern Society was able to acquire the Watercress Beds site in November 2000, which now govern the way it is managed.
We appreciate that some people would have preferred that activities on the watercress beds could have been confined simply to restoring the beds to their ‘original’ state. However, in order to raise sufficient funds for the purchase and restoration of the site we had to make a persuasive case to public funders to show how the Chiltern Society’s ownership would benefit the wider as well as the local community. This meant allowing public access to the site and providing public information about the heritage and the wildlife. Knowing this, the three aims of the project, agreed with the funders and publicised widely from the outset, have always been to restore and manage the cress beds for their heritage, wildlife and landscape value.
The heritage value of the site resides in local recorded knowledge about the watercress industry and in the artefacts such as the remains of the burnt out mill and the hard structures that were constructed in the late 1800’s by George Smith to control the water flow for growing watercress on a commercial scale. These hard structures have been rebuilt using old records and the memories of local people.
The wildlife value of the site is in the diversity of species which it supports, which in turn depends on the variety of different habitat types on the site, some of which are nationally rare, e.g. a chalk stream. Following the Rio Conference of 1992, at which the maintenance of biodiversity on the planet was recognised as vital if it was to continue to support mankind, all UK land-owners were asked to manage their land to encourage biodiversity of both flora and fauna. Public bodies and projects supported by public funds (such as the Ewelme Watercress Beds and Local Nature Reserve) were required to do likewise. This did not require any alteration to the historic structures used in growing watercress but it does mean that some aquatic plants needed by wildlife are now tolerated which would have been eliminated by the watercress growers.
A wide variety of both flora and fauna abounds on the site, but the cress beds, with a constant temperature of 10°C - 110°C, do not favour amphibians such as frogs and toads and aquatic insects such as dragonflies and damsel flies, which need still water and warmer water in summer. Hence some of you may have heard about the proposal to make some small ponds on the Top Meadow in order to increase the biodiversity of the site. This area was never owned by the Smith family during their 80 years of operating the beds. It was bought by Chevasse and Austin in 1967, a year after they acquired the watercress beds from the then occupants of ‘Brownings’ (Mr and Mrs Le Bailey – The Ed.), to turn into a market garden, using polytunnels. This venture was later abandoned and the area left to grow wild.
It has no historic significance in relation to the watercress beds and, as the ponds will increase the range of plant and animal species and not noticeably change the landscape, there are very good reasons to consider building them. Detailed plans will have to be produced in order to apply for planning permission and an opportunity for anyone to comment on them will be provided before the application is finalised. Information about this will, as always, be available from any member of the Management Committee listed below.
(Full contact details available from the Ewelme website)
* Appointed annually by the Executive of the Chiltern Society
** Elected members of the Chiltern Society Executive
The aim of the Chiltern Society, through the local Management Committee and with the support of the Friends of Ewelme Watercress Beds, is to try to satisfy all three objectives of the project as best we can. Given the constraints on our resources we will continue to manage the site for its heritage, landscape and wildlife value. In doing this the Chiltern Society realises that we may not always be able to please everyone.
Robin Peirce, Chairman **