Wildlife / Conservation on the Estate

Gawdy Hall Estates Ltd is part of DEFRA's ELS Scheme and has its own conservation policy. Virtually all headlands now have a six-metre grass strip between crop and hedgerow and also areas of unsprayed crop margins where no fertiliser or agro chemicals are used on the first six metres of crop, which gives cover for young birds and a bank of insects for food.

The Estate also has designated Environmental Sensitive Areas (ESAs). Careful management of such areas is helping to increase wild bird population - skylarks, wild grey partridge, lapwings and barn owls are a common sight on the Estate.

There are 56,000 metres of hedgerow and ditches throughout the Estate which are trimmed and maintained well before birds start to build their nests.

There are 50 hectares of woodland, including the 32 hectare Gawdy Big Wood which is an Ancient Woodland Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and houses a wild array of flora and fauna, from delicate yellow primroses and cowslips, to the ancient oak trees, to even the stinging nettles in the summer which provide a habitat for a host of butterflies and valuable shelter in which the Muntjac deer give birth and hide their fawns.

If you are lucky, you might catch a glimpse of the herd of Red Deer as they walk through the Estate or the families of Buzzards that have decided to make Gawdy Hall Estates their home.

The magnificent 0.647 hectare lake in the heart of the Estate has recently been dredged to improve water quality prior to restocking with carp. The lake and its surroundings provide ideal habitats for the resident herons, Egyptian tree geese, newts, frogs, toads and dragonflies, plus thousands of species of bugs and mini-beasts. Often referred to as the moat, the lake once ran round three sides of Gawdy Hall. It was extended and altered to give the appearance of a river in the mid 1700s.