River Bollin Riverlands Project at Dunham Massey

7 March 2025

Stop, snap and share: help us track habitat changes

Join in with a citizen science project that will help us to better understand the Bollin landscape and track changes in its habitat. As a dedicated visitor or someone local to Dunham Massey, you may have seen many changes in the landscape over the years. Next time you visit, please stop, snap and share pictures from the fixed-point photography points that have been installed in the landscape at Dunham Massey.

The fixed-point photography point is in Henshall. At Henshall we are creating a shallow pond to contribute to a good habitat for birds. Ponds are amazing freshwater habitats and provide a home for a variety of plants, insects and animals. They’re also vital in making the environment more resilient to drought and flooding during extreme weather events by holding water on the land for longer.

21 January 2025

Findings from the Pond Mapping project

In 2023 the National Trust, Natural England and TEP began a study to look into existing and historical pond locations to help inform future pond restoration and creation opportunities.

We looked at 73,000Ha of land across the Bollin catchment and beyond in south Manchester and north Cheshire. We identified 6,087 ponds, 2,246 of which date back to c.1836-51. Unfortunately the study also showed that 7,239 ponds no longer exist in our landscape – a decrease of between 42% and 53% over the past 200 years.

However, we identified a further 674 possible new pond locations in the area. Using this data, we will support our landscape, wildlife and help fight the effects of climate change on our habitats and communities by restoring c.60 ponds as part of the Government’s Species Survival Fund, delivered by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) on behalf of Defra.

Working in partnership with others, small interventions such as felling selective trees to let more light in, deepening areas of ponds and fencing out livestock will increase the biodiversity of these historic and natural landscapes.

30 December 2024

Broadoak Woodland: Peatland restoration

The National Trust, in partnership with Lancashire Wildlife Trust, has recently carried out restoration work on Broadoak wood, to breathe new life back into the thin peat soils beneath the woodland. This work includes rewetting the ground by building water retaining ‘walls’ to store the precious rainwater that feeds bogs and replanting lost bog plant species.
 
Our restoration work will create an absolute haven for wildlife. Standing water, saturated ground and the diverse plant communities will provide habitats for amphibians, dragonflies and other invertebrates. This will attract birds and mammals and transform a wildlife poor woodland back into a thriving mix of habitats, a genuine oasis for people and nature.

What is a peat bog?
Peatland has many names; moss, mossland, mire, bog. Birthed after the last great ice age left the landscape of Britain a clean slate for new habitats, peat soils spent the last few thousand years accumulating in lakes and pools left behind by the retreating ice sheets. Peat is formed when dead plants rot down in waterlogged conditions, creating layers and layers of carbon-rich soil, forming some of the most important and nature-rich habitats: peat bogs cover only 3% of the world’s land surface but store nearly 30% of the world’s soil carbon.

1 May 2023

Help us to find the lost 'ghost' ponds at Dunham Massey

We’re researching the locations of ponds that have been lost over time and we need your help to do it.

We're looking for help to locate any ponds that have been lost or filled in over the years. Known as ‘ghost’ ponds, they may have been slowly lost over the last 100+ years, and while some of them show up on historic maps, many do not. 

By understanding what was there in the past, we can improve the landscape for the future. Ponds are amazing freshwater habitats and provide a home for a variety of plants, insects and animals. They’re also vital in making the environment more resilient to drought and flooding during extreme weather events by holding water on the land for longer.

Where the conditions are right, we want to restore these historic ponds and put them back into our landscape - this is where we need your help.

As a dedicated visitor or someone local to Dunham Massey, you may have seen many changes in the landscape over the years. Follow this link to our map where you can add your pin to where a pond used to be.