Smithills Estate RRC Member Site Visit

Last week I attended an RRC Member site visit to the Smithills Estate in Bolton. The visit was lead by Umar Awan (Woodland Trust), Mike Norbury (Mott MacDonald) and Dave Brown (Environment Agency) who have all been involved at some stage of this project. The sun stayed shining on us the whole day, as a large group of 24 attendees made their way around the site.

We were shown a stretch were a stream had been deculverted/daylighted to open up the channel. Whilst the channel was still narrow and incised, this helped reconnect the stream with the surrounding landscape.

The group were also shown several living leaky dams, vegetated with willow. These structures are a good way to slow the flow and hold back water in the uplands of the catchment.

After a quick lunch in the sunshine, the group headed on a second walk to see more living leaky dams, and a bund and basin measure. Here, an earth bund has been built up and a valve system has been put in place to control the amount of water flowing under the adjacent road, and flowing out into the field. Attendees were interested to see how the measure worked, and how the valve helped provide flexibility in how you operate in NFM techniques.

Thank you very much to Dave, Mike and Umar, as well as Alistair Maltby (Woodland Trust) and Neil MacDonald (University of Liverpool) for providing insight into these works at Smithills. Thanks to all the curious delegates who attended!

To find out more about the Smithills Estate visit - www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/woods/smithills-estate/