Chilterns farmer achieves Local Wildlife Site status for Manor Farm

It is very unusual for farmland on such a large scale to be designated – it’s more common for specific fields or smaller areas on farms to gain designation so the scale of this award in Buckinghamshire is unprecedented.

A tenant of the National Trust on the Bradenham Estate, Andrew first began working with his father on the process of reverting a good deal of their arable land back to chalk grassland. More than 20 years on, the farm has become one of the biggest and best sites for species rich grassland, a habitat that has suffered a 97% loss in the last century.  It also supports a fine assemblage of arable plants, including the diminutive Venus’s-looking-glass, just one of several threatened plants found in the arable field margins at Manor Farm. What’s especially impressive is that Andrew has achieved such a high level of diversity of plants, birds, butterflies and even reptiles whilst running a commercially viable working farm.

In summer 2020, the Chilterns Conservation Board and Buckinghamshire & Milton Keynes Environmental Records Centre carried out botanical surveys across the farm – made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Funded, Chalk, Cherries and Chairs Landscape Partnership. They found no less than 280 species of plant. The farm has four different species of orchids and a very large population of the increasingly uncommon Chiltern Gentian.

Wildlife on the farm also includes breeding barn owls, common lizards, and breeding corn buntings – a locally scarce and endangered farmland bird. 35 species of butterfly have been recorded at Manor Farm including Duke of Burgundy, Chalk Hill Blue, Adonis Blue, Dingy Skipper, Grizzled Skipper and the Silver-washed Fritillary. The impressive Great Green Bush Cricket has also been found on the farm!

The survey findings were submitted to a panel of local ecologists and other experts on the Local Wildlife Site Panel who awarded the designation set against strict criteria.