90 years of care for Cley Marshes

by Nick Acheson
In 2012 the last unprotected coastal marsh between Blakeney and Kelling came up for sale. It was a private place, tucked between world famous nature reserves, and had been managed for generations as a wildfowl shoot. At once Norfolk Wildlife Trust launched an appeal for the money required to buy the marsh and restore it, thus completing the plans of a visionary man in 1926.

This man was Sydney Long, a doctor at the Norfolk and Norwich and Jenny Lind Hospitals and one of the leaders of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society. His passion was birds and when Cley Marshes was advertised for sale in March 1926 he galvanised a group of similarly-minded friends to buy it. The following week the same friends agreed to form a trust to preserve the marsh ‘as a bird-breeding sanctuary for all time’ (Eastern Daily Press, 15 November 1926).

Billy Bishop

Since the formation of Norfolk Wildlife Trust (originally Norfolk Naturalists Trust) one North Norfolk family has cared for Cley Marshes. Robert Bishop was appointed the nature reserve’s first Watcher in 1926, charged with preserving its habitats and breeding birds and – a compatible aim to early 20th Century conservationists – managing the winter duck shoot which persisted here until 1966.

This precious place has been in good hands with Norfolk Wildlife Trust and the Bishops these ninety years

In January 1937 Robert’s grandson Billy became Warden. His appointment, he recalls in his book Cley Marsh and Its Birds, received help from an unlikely quarter after a dispute over a pair of mallard. ‘I said that I had shot them on public ground and Joe swore I had shot them on Captain Barker’s land. […] much to my surprise, when I went for the interview with the late Dr Long, then Secretary of the Norfolk Naturalists Trust, I was informed that this self-same hotel manager, Captain Barker, had given me an excellent testimonial. […] “Captain Barker says that you’re the biggest poacher in Blakeney, so he reckons you should make an excellent keeper.” There’s a lot in that, I thought, gratefully accepting the job.’

Among Billy’s achievements in his first year as Warden was finding Cley’s first recorded bittern nest. The species was then rarer even than it is today and Billy recalls that ‘Dr Long arrived at Cley in the shortest possible time it took to get from Norwich to confirm my discovery.’

At Billy’s side throughout his many years on the marsh was his wife Joyce. Their son Bernard, himself Warden since his father’s retirement in 1978, remembers how much of the job fell to his mother. Before the days of visitor centres and mobile phones she was the reserve’s hub, answering the telephone and the cottage door, and signalling to Billy to come home from the marsh with a white sheet draped from an upstairs window.

Until the 1970s boom in birdwatching Cley Marshes remained a quiet, intimate place. Each day perhaps a half-dozen visitors would meet Billy outside his hut to be guided around a marsh which had pools only among the reeds by the East Bank. The scrapes and hides were added much later, funded by local people whose names they still bear, to create a reserve which today is hugely popular with birds and people.

Bernard Bishop, credit Elizabeth Dack

In those early days, Bernard recalls, members of the royal family often visited and would change in Watcher’s Cottage after shooting on the marsh. Much later His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales rang Bernard at home, asking for a guided visit. He came on a day of snow and, seeing Bernard’s nephew and son sliding on fertiliser bags down the concrete slipway by the Dick Bagnall-Oakeley Visitor Centre, insisted on having a go himself. Bernard also remembers a kindness shown to him by the royal family. In 1986 his mother Joyce had a stroke, which led eventually to her death. While she was in hospital Lord Buxton invited Bernard to shoot at Sandringham and, after lunch, introduced someone who wished to speak to him. It was Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother who warmly shook his hand and asked after his mother.

The old Visitor Centre, from which Prince Charles slid on a fertiliser bag, took its name from the geography master at Gresham’s School, who brought generations of pupils to explore Cley Marshes and, with Lord Buxton, pioneered wildlife film-making in Norfolk. Just as Joyce had stood by Billy for decades and helped him on the marsh, for twenty-five years Bernard’s wife Shirley managed the Dick Bagnall-Oakeley Visitor Centre, took shifts protecting rare nests from egg-thieves and supported work on the reserve. When in 2007 Norfolk Wildlife Trust opened its award-winning new Visitor Centre, Shirley joined the team here and stayed until her retirement.

For ninety years the Bishop family has represented Norfolk Wildlife Trust at Cley and Salthouse Marshes, witnessing floods, wartime defences, twitches, egg-thieves, habitat creation and the return of rare species. In Bernard’s words, ‘No one could see the changes I’ve seen here in the past sixty years.’ From a quiet place of wildfowl shoots, under Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s care the nature reserve has grown to become one of the best-loved birdwatching sites in Europe, visited each year by more than 110,000 people. Its fame is justified: in addition to the avocets and marsh harriers which have been coaxed to breed, and the thousands of pink-footed and brent geese which visit in winter, Cley Marshes regularly attracts A-list rarities. Bernard recalls the visit of Norfolk’s only Pacific swift: ‘the twitcher’s didn’t park cars’ they abandoned them.’ A Ross’ gull, a spring-plumaged pair of slender-billed gulls, a little whimbrel, a lustrous female Wilson’s phalarope: they and countless other rare birds stand in his memory.

But Bernard’s heart lies with the common species that he, his family and Norfolk Wildlife Trust have nurtured here for ninety years. Indeed often he sits in the hides with no binoculars, simply enjoying the wildness of the place. He loves the bearded tits he sees when his son and nephew harvest reed with him in winter. Most of all he loves the lapwings which he watches on Cricket Marsh each spring, sitting on a seat which he himself placed on the reserve on becoming its warden. At first his father Billy upbraided him over this: ‘What did you put that there for? People don’t want to sit on a seat; they want to get to the hides.’ In his later years, as his health declined, Billy took to sitting on it too, and Bernard, who visited daily after work to report on the marsh, took to teasing him that no one would want to sit there. On the seat today there is a plaque in memory of Joyce, who in her time watched the lapwings from her door as she signalled Billy home from the marsh.

This precious place has been in good hands with Norfolk Wildlife Trust and the Bishops these ninety years. For a while though the future of the reserve looked in doubt. When, after the flood of 1996, the Environment Agency decided no longer to shore up the shingle ridge, and plans were made to create the Hilgay reserve to mitigate habitat loss at Cley, Bernard felt the reserve was finished. ‘But twenty years on,’ he says, ‘we’re bigger and better, with a new Visitor Centre, the Simon Aspinall Wildlife Education Centre, the new land.’

And as for the future? With a cheeky wink, as he sits looking out over the marsh that he and his lapwings call home, Bernard replies, ‘I wouldn’t want to see any changes, because I’ve got everything right.’ Then, more seriously: ‘It makes me very proud to sit here, looking at hides we built and scrapes we designed. It makes me very proud.’