On Thursday 17 September attendees from as far afield as Devon and Northumberland visited the River Mease catchment in Leicestershire to see some of the river restoration work being led by the Trent Rivers Trust. The River Mease project was awarded the Nigel Holmes Trophy in the UK River Prize 2026 in recognition the achievements of 13 years of river restoration work on this lowland Midlands river.
The Mease is an interesting catchment with numerous challenges such as habitat loss, flooding, drought and pollution, particularly from phosphate. There is also significant development pressure in the area. Lessons learnt from the Mease are likely to be relevant for many other lowland rivers across the country.
Work on the Mease has included:
Work is now underway to bypass the last remaining weir on the River Mease, delivering full longitudinal connectivity to the entire river for the first time in hundreds of years.
The RRC site visit focussed on two key sites in the catchment. Firstly, we visited a new wetland area created at the confluence of the River Mease and the Gilwiskaw Brook where land has been lowered by about 600mm to create pools and new channels in a corner of fields that were already subject to regular flooding in winter. The vegetation in these wetlands will help trap phosphates.
As a new RRC team member, Susan John saw first-hand how the river had lost its natural flow and how, without intervention, parts of it could be lost altogether. “It was a real eye-opener and gave me a much greater appreciation of the challenges facing our waterways.”
When we visited an area at Culloden Farm, a large dairy enterprise, where very heavily modified and straightened ditches have been redirected to create new channels. This area features in a farm walk created as part of farm diversification with a series of new bridges allowing access to meadows adjacent to the new channel.
The drought conditions this year did mean that some of the new channel sections were completely dry at the time of the visit but this allowed us to walk along the new bed and to see how much gravel has already deposited from high winter flows and how the newly created channel is starting to mature as vegetation becomes established.
Expert or not, this site visit was a great opportunity to learn about river restoration. As Susan says, it can give attendees "a completely new understanding of the importance of river restoration and the positive impact it can have for wildlife, local communities, and future generations".
Many thanks to Alan Graham from the Trent Rivers Trust and Adam Noon from the Environment Agency for showing us around and answering lots of searching questions from those attending the visit. We were overwhelmed by the passion, knowledge, and commitment of the project team members (and other attendees), all of whom are dedicated to protecting and restoring out natural environment. Their determination to preserve the beauty of nature and improve the health of our rivers is truly inspiring.
The work, funding and delivery have been supported by a range of organisations in the Mease partnership, which was formed in 2019. Further information on the Mease project, including a link to the video produced for the UK Rivers Prize entry, is available on the Trent Rivers Trust website.
Work on the Mease also featured in a recent edition of BBC Countryfile broadcast on Sunday 27 September (World Rivers Day) and now available on BBC iPlayer.