Warham Camp is an excellent example of an Iron Age fort. Free entry, great place for an educational wander and a picnic. On top of being a scheduled monument, it is also a SSSI specifically due to the tightly grazed chalk grassland and the rare flowers and butterflies that thus thrive.
In short; it delivers lots of Public Good.
Visited recently for the first time in a couple of years. What a mess. Waist high ragwort and thistles. There was a couple of families there but they were gaining little from it; the features of the fort are indistinct due to being obscured by overgrowth and there was no point leaving the path for a sit down as the thistles would have got you. A five minute walk through the jungle and back to the car. Good luck to whichever rare flora and fauna it is that needs a short sward.
In short; it desperately needs grazing.
The interpretation board says that the camp is part of the Holkham Estate, so I am sure that there is a management plan in place and we just happened to visit on a bad day.The point I want to make is a bigger one. There are thousands of such sites throughout the UK, and they all depend on being grazed.
As cattle and sheep head down the same dead end road as pigs and poultry – less units, concentrated in specific areas – so it will become ever more difficult for the guardians of heritage sites to find some mug farmer to keep it grazed. We have to reverse this trend before it gets past the point of no return, by encouraging new entrants and by rewarding the smaller farms that are more inclined to see a few acres of awkward ground as being something worth taking on. Critical Mass. Once you lose it, bloody difficult to get it back.
In short; all area based SFI money needs to go to Permanent Pasture, with a weighting in place such that the first xHa on any holding gets a far higher payment than the rest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warham_Camp
In short; it delivers lots of Public Good.
Visited recently for the first time in a couple of years. What a mess. Waist high ragwort and thistles. There was a couple of families there but they were gaining little from it; the features of the fort are indistinct due to being obscured by overgrowth and there was no point leaving the path for a sit down as the thistles would have got you. A five minute walk through the jungle and back to the car. Good luck to whichever rare flora and fauna it is that needs a short sward.
In short; it desperately needs grazing.
The interpretation board says that the camp is part of the Holkham Estate, so I am sure that there is a management plan in place and we just happened to visit on a bad day.The point I want to make is a bigger one. There are thousands of such sites throughout the UK, and they all depend on being grazed.
As cattle and sheep head down the same dead end road as pigs and poultry – less units, concentrated in specific areas – so it will become ever more difficult for the guardians of heritage sites to find some mug farmer to keep it grazed. We have to reverse this trend before it gets past the point of no return, by encouraging new entrants and by rewarding the smaller farms that are more inclined to see a few acres of awkward ground as being something worth taking on. Critical Mass. Once you lose it, bloody difficult to get it back.
In short; all area based SFI money needs to go to Permanent Pasture, with a weighting in place such that the first xHa on any holding gets a far higher payment than the rest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warham_Camp
.....why didn't you pop in for a cuppa yer miserable fekker
