Ryton Pools Country Park
| Site of Special Scientific Interest | |
| Area of Search | United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Grid reference | SP373725 |
| Interest | Wildlife |
| Area | West Midlands |
| Notification | 1995 |
Ryton Pools Country Park is a country park one mile (1.6 km) south west of the village of Ryton on Dunsmore in Warwickshire, England. The park occupies an area of about 100 acres (0.40 km2) and contains four pools, the largest of which covers approximately 10 acres (40,000 m2). Ryton Woods, situated next to the country park, is a Site of Special Scientific Interest nature reserve owned by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust that is also open to the public. Professional park rangers are employed to look after the varied flora and fauna of the park as well as the general maintenance of pathways and buildings.
The park is run by Warwickshire County Council with half in Rugby Borough and half in Warwick District boundary.
The area of the park containing the pools is reasonably flat and suitable for wheelchair access. However, there are steeper gradients in the Ryton Wood nature reserve which, combined with the rougher tracks, make it less suitable for wheelchair users.
The park was a set of fields until 1965 when the land was purchased and used as a landfill site for the nearby towns of Leamington Spa, Rugby and Coventry. Waste was dumped there for 27 years until 1992 when work started on developing part of the site into a country park, which included the flooding of the pits. The park officially opened in 1996 with over 2,500 trees and shrubs being planted. In the late 1990s the remainder of the landfill site was filled in and new pools were created, as well as the provision of several portable metal cabins to act as information centres. These were superseded by better and more permanent wooden ones in 2002, although the metal ones are still in use.
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