The Wykehamist
90 Years of the Fallodon Nature Reserve
On Domum Day in the Cloister Time of 1935, the Natural History Society proposed an ambitious scheme to found a nature reserve on the school water meadows. The idea had captured the imagination of the society’ s then-president E. Lucas, who subsequently appealed to the Governing Body and was granted use of the land rent-free. Having earned immediate support from the then Headmaster Spencer Leeson, the project swiftly gained traction as word spread among Old Wykehamists who shared Lucas’ sentiment.
With an aim to raise £ 100( approximately £ 6200 today), the society managed to acquire the sum of £ 123 from their sponsors. The estimated expenditure shown below was published in the 815th edition of The Wykehamist in 1936.
The reserve, which many of us walk past daily, was initially named the Viscount Grey Nature Reserve but is better known today as the Fallodon Nature Reserve. Sir Edward Grey of Fallodon was educated at Winchester College and was an avid ornithologist, which led him to establish the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at Oxford University. Alongside his career as an influential politician, Grey was also the president of the Natural History Society of Northumbria for nine years.
Fallodon is an SSSI( Site of Special Scientific Interest) and spans roughly two and a half acres of water meadows, where the River Itchen threads between surrounding low-lying floodplain. It is found just beyond Meads playing pitch, thus affectionately referred to as Water Meads, and is flanked at its far end by the Itchen Navigation.
Upon securing the reserve, the NHS was particularly concerned with encouraging ground-nesting birds and set out to fence the water meadow in order to keep out livestock that could trample nests and collectors that might attempt to steal eggs from the site. From Cloister Time of 1936 to Common Time of 1937, the society toiled through wind, rain, and the harshest elements to dig up and prepare the land, frequently turning up as much water as possible to keep the ground dry. Their efforts were not in vain. Records from the Natural History Society’ s observation book show sightings of twentythree Sedge Warbler nests in 1944, a goldfinch’ s nest parasitised by a cuckoo in 1945, and the return of the grasshopper warbler in 1946. The society had provided an indispensable locality attracting a variety of bird species and promoting an ecologically complex network of organisms.
During the summer of 1954, the NHS established the popular, non-native Himalayan Balsam plant in the River Itchen. Although unknown at the time, the species turned out to be a fast-growing, highly invasive weed and has become a substantial problem for many of Britain’ s watercourses. To top it off, the NHS would go on to introduce several bamboo species to the area that were similarly invasive. Despite this, constructive management efforts have since helped to alleviate the issue.
For almost a century, the reserve has remained a sanctuary for wildlife, conserved
Redwing— Credit Freddie Matthews( Coll:, 2022-)
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