Yardley Chase
| Site of Special Scientific Interest | |
Barnstaple Wood
|
|
| Area of Search |
Northamptonshire Buckinghamshire |
|---|---|
| Grid reference | SP 846 543 |
| Interest | Biological |
| Area | 357.6 hectares |
| Notification | 1984 |
| Location map | Magic Map |
Yardley Chase is a 357.6 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest, mostly in Northamptonshire, with a small area in the south of the site in Buckinghamshire. It is in two areas of woodland, pasture and parkland, south-west of Yardley Hastings in Northamptonshire, and north-west of Olney in Buckinghamshire.
This Chase has diverse semi-natural habitats, and its value for invertebrates has been enhanced by military use of the site, which has resulted in a long absence of intensive agriculture. There is woodland and unimproved grassland, and 30 breeding butterfly species have been recorded.
Much of the site was originally a Norman Hunting Chase and is now woodland, pasture and parkland. More recently, military use over a large part has left a series of railway tracks, grassland glades and open pools in the forest. The value of these habitats, particularly for invertebrates, is enhanced by their long isolation from intensive agriculture and by their presence over a large area.
There is documentary evidence in the form of early maps and estate plans to indicate a long history of woodland on the site, although much of the former ancient semi-natural woodland has been replanted or modified. This has created a range of woodland types including plantations of oak, mixed broad-leaves such as ash and conifers. The integrity of the woodland blocks as a whole is essential to their nature conservation importance, but the relatively unmodified areas are of particular significance.
In addition to the ancient trees dating back to the civil war, Yardley Chase was also home to the oak tree which provided the inspiration for William Cowper's poem "Yardley Oak" and the area is described as having been a favourite walk of Cowper's.
Yardley Chase contains some large concrete huts, about 12 metres (39 ft) long, and about 6-8m (20–25 feet) wide, which were used during World War II to store bombs. They continued in use after the war as a bulk explosives depot, until the 1970s when the Ministry of Defence shut them down when it became obvious that they would be useless in a nuclear war. The site was served by a branch of the Northampton-Bedford railway line and evidence of revetted tracks are still visible around the site which is only a few miles east of the former depot of the Northamptonshire Regiment and later Royal Pioneer Corps at Simpson Barracks in Wootton. The site also has numerous small bunkers within it and is criss-crossed by barbed wire fences once past the main perimeter. It has several tracks that lead to the various bunkers and fair amounts of military debris (mainly used pyrotechnics) scattered around it.
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