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The Eye Brook community heritage project

Much of our research is carried out within the farm boundary, but many issues can only be addressed at the wider landscape scale, often involving the local community.

For example, our game management influences, and is influenced by, what others do in the area around us and the trade in game meat is dependent on a rural network of supply and demand. The issue of damage to rare woodland plants by introduced muntjac deer can only be addressed at the landscape scale. Wood fuel for our heating system is best sourced with the collaboration of other local land managers. Almost by definition, stream water quality and aquatic ecology must be considered at the level of the catchment. The management of a wild trout population is an example. The catchment in which Loddington is located is the Eye Brook, an area that is greatly valued by local people as an attractive landscape in which to live and work.

Cultural factors such as values attached to landscape can often be significant motivators for environmental management. Such values are embedded in historical processes and local knowledge of those processes. An increased awareness of landscape history can therefore enhance our interest in, and ownership of, environmental issues and landscape management.

The Eye Brook Community Heritage Project is a collaboration with village history societies, naturalists, farmers and other rural workers with wide-ranging knowledge and expertise. The Heritage Lottery Funded project (which runs from 2006 – 2010) documents the evolution of land use within the catchment, the management and use of natural resources associated with it, and the underlying ecology. In this way, the project combines the hard science carried out by the Allerton Project and its research partners with the local knowledge of the catchment community.

Further information about the project is contained in the issues of The Eye, the project’s annual publication. A book has also been produced, Exploring a Productive Landscape: The Eye Brook Catchment. This is available from the GWCT shop or The Allerton Project at a cost of £10.00 plus postage, e-mail allerton@gwct.org.uk, telephone 01572 717220. You can also download a copy in PDF format.