Claylands - Wilder Connections

Making the Connection events

Image credit - M Watson

An ancient landscape

The South Norfolk Claylands form part of the East Anglian Plain - a distinctive landscape found on a belt of boulder clay that lies over chalk and runs through Suffolk and south-east Norfolk. Land use in the South Norfolk Claylands is predominately arable, with scattered woodlands. It is an area noted for its ancient landscape, characterised by high hedges, open fields, pollarded trees and unenclosed commons.

The Claylands area is a relic of glaciation, when, about 480,000 years ago, an ice-sheet moved south across eastern England, eroding chalk and Jurassic clays along its path. The ground up deposits left by the ice form a chalky boulder clay soil, interspersed with areas of fine sand and gravel. This variation in soil can be seen in the flora of grasslands and in woodlands that are home to a number of key species, such as the sulphur clover and turtle doves.

Over time habitats have changed. Ancient meadows have been converted to arable fields; trees, hedgerows and ponds have been removed to make way for more intensive farming and development. Relict habitats remain, yet they are patchy in their distribution across the landscape. Habitat loss and fragmentation can reduce the size of populations and hinder the movement of individuals between increasingly isolated habitats, threatening their long-term viability.

Key to reversing these trends is improving and restoring connectivity between relict patches of habitat. By improving our understanding and then taking targeted action to restore features such as ponds, hedges, meadows and woodland, so we can create new 'stepping stones' of habitat and wildlife corridors. In turn these will allow species to more easily and safely move through our countryside, improving their long-term prospects for survival.
 

Between October 2021 and March 2023 Norfolk Wildlife Trust ran the Claylands Wilder Connections project – see About the Project page for details.

A key part of the project was the production of a wide range of resources to help landowners and communities survey, plan and manage their land within the landscape. For information on habitat management, creating management plans and more, look at our pages on Supporting Nature’s Recovery.



This project was funded by the Government's Green Recovery Challenge Fund. The fund was developed by Defra and its Arm's-Length Bodies. It was delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England, the Environment Agency and Forestry Commission.