Greenham Common was described by the SPNR as ‘typical heath and sedge vegetation, scenically beautiful and rich in brambles.’ Its subsequent use as a US air base during World War II transformed the heathland, and the Nature Reserve Investigation Committee of 1942 regarded it as ‘ruined’. Thirty years later local naturalists succeeded in ensuring the woods outside the airfield perimeter fence were saved as nature reserves. In 2000 the air base was finally closed and the land was returned to the public. Greenham Common is now managed by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust as part of the West Berkshire Living Landscape.
(Above) the original SPNR survey documents for Greenham Common
In the mid-1990s ecologist Peter Marren commented in his book Time and Fragile Nature: Rothschild’s Reserves and what became of them that it would have been heather-covered with areas of acid grassland, bracken, wet hollows and possibly small woods of birch and alder. Nightjar and stone curlew nested on the uninhabited heath which was crossed by two unsurfaced roads. ’Had it survived in that form, we would speak of Greenham Common in the same breath as the New Forest and the Purbeck Heaths’ wrote Marren.
Subsequent use as an airfield during and after the Second World War transformed the heathland, and the Nature Reserve Investigation Committee of 1942 regarded it as ‘ruined’. Thirty years later local naturalists succeeded in ensuring the woods outside the airfield perimeter fence were saved as nature reserves and some, like Bowdown Woods, are scheduled as Sites of Special Scientific Interest.
Greenham Common is now managed as part of the West Berkshire Living Landscape area.
More information on Greenham Common
Visit the BBOWT website for more information on the West Berkshire Living Landscape
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