Jenny Tweedie, from RSPB Scotland, has this great new blog on arguably our most urban nature reserve - Baron's Haugh.
Scotland’s most urban nature reserve
Baron’s Haugh must be RSPB Scotland’s most urban nature reserve. Sandwiched between Motherwell and the M74, it’s a surprisingly peaceful location, popular with both locals and visitors, who come to catch a glimpse of the reserve’s exciting range of wildlife.
Otter, Ben Andrew (rspb-images.com)
It’s a good place to see otters and a stronghold for nuthatches, still a rarity for much of Scotland. In summer, sand martins and migrant songsters flit over water and trees looking for insects, and in winter, whooper swans hoot out their breathy calls across the flooded meadow.
But apart from its attraction as a home for nature, Baron’s Haugh holds something of an important historical legacy. The reserve is part of the Dalzell Estate (pronounced Dee-ell), formally a royal hunting forest, then owned for many years by the Hamilton family before passing to the local authority, which still owns it today. The RSPB purchased the land for Baron’s Haugh in 1983.
The estate as a whole is listed in Historic Scotland’s Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland as a: ‘historic designed landscape of significance’. But through the years, many of its notable features have been swallowed up by time.
In the last few months, a new project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund through the Clyde and Avon Valley Landscape Partnership, has been seeking to re-discover its lost history, and re-invigorate it for future generations to enjoy.
For RSPB Scotland, this meant the involvement of our in-house archaeologist, Jill Harden, who visited Baron’s Haugh last year to carry out surveys before helping to plan the restoration works that would take place on the reserve.
Re-digging the old curling pond
The most spectacular part of this to date has been the re-digging of an old curling pond near the banks of the River Clyde, which had almost completely dried up and disappeared through years of disuse.
The work also involved planting trees in the designed parkland, including several old avenues, most notably the reserve’s ‘chestnut walk’, where new sweet chestnuts went in to replace the old non-native horse chestnuts -sadly the victim of disease.
Much of the work was carried out by volunteers, who spent many hours constructing sturdy wooden fences around the young trees to protect them from the reserve’s cattle. Children from local schools also became involved, helping to re-plant an ancient orchard, while learning more about their area’s history.
Volunteers constructing sturdy wooden fences
Now complete, the restoration project has added just one more dimension to the visitor experience at Baron’s Haugh. As well as a glimpse of that elusive otter, it’s now also possible to get a glimpse back in time: to imagine Baron’s Haugh before the motorway, and think how it might have been when the calls of the whoopers were matched with the calls of the curlers, enjoying a game not played at the site for maybe a hundred years.