Landscape Conservation Action Plan

RESTORING THE HERITAGE OF THE LOWER SEVERN VALE LEVELS Landscape Conservation Action Plan Contents A FORGOTTEN LANDSCAPE: RESTORING THE HERITAGE OF THE LOWER SEVERN VALE LEVELS Contents Executive Summary 1 Introduction 5 1. Understanding A Forgotten Landscape Scheme Area 11 1.1 Landscape 1.2 Heritage 1.1.2 Biodiversity 1.2.2 Geology 1.2.3 Archaeology 1.2.4 Built Heritage 1.3 The History of Landscape 1.4 Context 1.5 Existing Management Information 2. Statement of Significance 33 2.1 Natural Heritage 2.1.2 Biodiversity 2.1.3 Geology 2.2 Archaeology 2.3 Sense of Place 2.4 Transport 2.5 Changes in Landuse 2.6 Audience Development 2.7 Other Projects 3. Risks and Opportunities 53 3.1 Natural and Historical Environment 3.1.1 Loss of Wetland Habitat 3.1.2 Loss of Saltmarsh Diversity 3.1.3 Los of Habitat due to changes in agriculture 3.1.4 Loss of Archaeological Features 3.2 Lack of Knowledge 3.2.1 Loss of Archaeological Features 3.2.2 Loss of Traditional Skills 3.2.3 Loss of Recording and Identification Skills 3.3 Forgetting the Past 3.4 Climate Change 3.5 Anti-social Behaviour 3.5.1 Fly Grazing 3.5.2 Vandalism 3.6 Risks to the Partnership 3.6.1 Partners not fulfilling their roles 3.6.2 Partners leaving the project through redundancy 3.6.3 Communities not engaging 3.6.4 Project Officers leaving before end of project 3.7 Avonmouth / Severnside Enterprise Area A FORGOTTEN LANDSCAPE: RESTORING THE HERITAGE OF THE LOWER SEVERN VALE LEVELS 4. Aims and Objectives to Deliver the Landscape Partnership Scheme Outcomes 63 4.1 Vision 4.2 Aims and Objectives 4.3 Audience Development 4.3.1 Existing audiences and community involvement in the heritage 4.3.2 Who is involved with the heritage now? 4.3.3 How many are involved with the heritage now? 4.3.4 Audience Development – aim and objectives 4.3.5 Who is the audience? How can they be grouped? 4.3.6 What do the audience value about heritage? 4.3.7 What do present audiences already know about the heritage? 4.3.8 Barriers to participation 4.3.9 Who is the audience that is special to the Scheme and who should be targeted? 4.3.10 Who does not take part and why? 4.3.11 Developing new audiences 4.3.12 Existing and new audiences that will be targeted 4.3.13 H ow have the activities been designed to engage with differerent sectors of the audience? 4.4 Programme A 4.4.1 Natural Heritage 4.4.2 Built and Archaeological Heritage 4.4.3 Resolving Conflict between different types of Heritage 4.4.4 Meeting Conservation Standards 4.4.5 Management and Maintenance 4.4.6 Managing Information about the Heritage 4.4.7 Climate Change 4.5 Programme B 4.5.1 Target Audiences 4.5.2 Involving People – Opportunities for Volunteering 4.5.3 Involving People – Decision Making 4.5.4 Management and Maintenance 4.6 Programme C 4.6.1 Improving Access without Damaging Heritage 4.6.2 Design of Physical Access Improvements 4.6.3 Improving Access to Heritage 4.6.4 Opportunities to Learn and Understand Heritage 4.6.5 Management and Maintenance 4.7 Programme D 4.7.1 Training in skills and traditional techniques 4.7.2 Who will benefit from training A FORGOTTEN LANDSCAPE: RESTORING THE HERITAGE OF THE LOWER SEVERN VALE LEVELS 5. Scheme Plan and Costs 87 5.1 Scheme Costs Summary 5.2 Scheme Income and Match Funding 5.3 Round 2 Detailed Project Costs 5.4 Summary of Projects 5.5 Individual Projects 5.5.1 Programme A – Restoring and Conserving 5.5.2 Programme B – Increasing Community Participation 5.5.3 Programme C – Access and Learning 5.5.4 Programme D – Training and Skills 6. Sustainability 153 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Mid-Term Legacy Strategy 6.3 Programme A: Conserve and Restore 6.4 Programme B: Community Participation 6.5 Programme C: Access and Learning 6.6 Programme D: Training and Skills 6.7 Programme E: Overheads 6.7 Delivering the Legacy 7. Evaluation and Monitoring 161 7.1 Evaluation and Monitoring Approach 7.2 Draft Evaluation Framework 7.3 Development of the Detailed Evaluation Plan 7.4 Evidence Gathering and Involving Project Beneficiaries and Partners 7.5 Learning from the Evaluation 7.6 Evaluation Outputs and Communicating / Acting on the Results 7.6.1 Partnership Management Board Meetings 7.6.2 Mid-Term Review 7.6.3 Final Evaluation Report 7.7 Evaluation Budget 8. Adoption & Review 169 1 Executive Summary A FORGOTTEN LANDSCAPE: RESTORING THE HERITAGE OF THE LOWER SEVERN VALE LEVELS 3 Executive Summary Big skies; a sense of light and vast open Within this story of a landscape is another space with two colossal white bridges smaller-scale one: the story of man, his skills spanning the silt-laden tides of the Severn and ingenuity and how he adapted to and Estuary: expanses of windy saltmarsh used the landscape for food and shelter – and mud grading into lush, flat pasture and how he crossed it. dotted with remote farmsteads, villages and narrow lanes apparently meandering The area is plentiful in archaeology, from nowhere – the area of A Forgotten footprints in the mud when Mesolithic man Landscape Scheme is full of dynamic, foraged across the forests of the Estuary dramatic beauty and panorama. before the sea came in, through to Roman sea defences to protect villas, property and It is a landscape used by tens of thousands farming. of migratory waterfowl which arrive from Northern Europe each winter, roosting and The landscape provided a source of food, feeding on the Estuary’s saltmarsh and including salmon. All along the coast are the mudflats and filling the coast’s cold air with distinctive remains of the methods used to raucous babble. catch the shoals migrating up the Estuary. It is a landscape full of geological clues to its Because of the river, docks built for trade past – the red cliffs at Aust rising out of the were then enlarged and with it came saltmarshes are rich with the fossils of the industry. There are other stories - the land plesiosaurs and insects which populated the has a goddess, it has a murdered saint landscape when the area was transformed whose blood can still be seen at a spring. from a hot arid desert to a warm tropical sea It has inspired poem and song and has its approximately 200 million years ago. own gooseberry tart. It has local vocabulary – ‘warths’, ‘pills’ and ‘rhines’. 4 A FORGOTTEN LANDSCAPE: RESTORING THE HERITAGE OF THE LOWER SEVERN VALE LEVELS This special and distinctive landscape, Initially born out of local people’s aspiration however, with all its history, is under for a series of wetland reserves, through threat. A large part of its flat coastal plain consultation with the Heritage Lottery is rapidly being developed out by two Fund, communities and a variety of other industrial and commercial business parks organisations, a Landscape Partnership – key components in driving a buoyant Scheme slowly emerged with a clear and local economy. There has been a slow but varied suite of heritage projects as part of massively significant shift from traditional it. The project will restore or create areas of farming practices to more intensive habitat which are characteristic of the area, agricultural regimes. Rising sea levels are such as wetlands, orchards, hay meadows threatening the roosts of the Estuary’s and ponds. It will increase opportunities waterfowl and causing the phenomena of for people to get involved with their local ‘coastal squeeze’. The land – once linked environment; teaching old traditional skills to and forming part of a larger area of associated with the area such as hedge- wetlands - ‘the Levels’ – has become cut off laying and pollarding as well as the social and isolated from its better known sisters and cultural history of the recent and distant in Somerset by the city of Bristol and the past. It will actively promote the area, using industries and infrastructure around the sustainable transport such as the community mouth of the Avon. It has also become railway to bring families and sightseers into isolated from the rest of Bristol and South the area to boost the local economy; and to Gloucestershire, boxed in by a network thereby enable people from farther afield to of motorways. Although not ‘forgotten’ by understand more about the area’s unique the people who live there, it is little known and distinctive heritage. In doing so, it is and little visited by the wider communities hoped that more and more people come to outside. And as time passes and people cherish and value this singular and beautiful pass on, so the memory of the area’s landscape - the bridges, flat lands, vast heritage and history will pass away too. waters and big skies - and will help ensure that it is passed on in perpetuity for future A Forgotten Landscape Scheme aims to generations to come. counter at least some of these threats. 5 Introduction A FORGOTTEN LANDSCAPE: RESTORING THE HERITAGE OF THE LOWER SEVERN VALE LEVELS 7 Introduction This document forms the Landscape Richard Aston and Chris Giles – SGC Conservation Action Plan (LCAP) for A Streetcare Community Spaces Officers Forgotten Landscape – Restoring the Steve Poole – Professor of History University Heritage of the Lower Severn Vale Levels of the West of England (UWE) Landscape Partnership Scheme. Following the work carried out in the The project area covers an expanse of development phase, Paul Driscoll and Steve coastal floodplain immediately alongside the Poole will join the Partnership Board for Severn Estuary (including part of the Estuary the delivery phase.

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