The River Wey Trust - Allees Meadow

Allees Meadow

Unlike most of the locations where the Trust carries out work, ALLEE’S MEADOW (off Tunbridge Lane in Bramshott) is also owned by the Trust.
No ‘managed’ water supply survives but the lower areas generally lie fairly wet.

It is a typical upper Wey watermeadow with sloping grassland valley sides – once fed by the watermeadow system – and a more complex ‘ridge-and-furrow’ irrigation layout on the valley floor (now managed as wet meadow).
The irrigation water for the meadow originally came from a sluice three-quarters of a mile upstream: after crossing the London Road, it was carried over the main river on an aqueduct (Radford Aqueduct) and then contouring along the valley side—gaining height relative to the river—before terminating above Bramshott Mill (having travelled more than a mile).

The diagram shows the irrigation system that fed Allee's Meadow. For 300 years until the 1930s, hay was made here with as many as three crops taken in a good year. Today the upper reaches of the meadow is managed as grassland and the lower level as wetland.

Allees Meadow has a haircut

Scrubbing-up is what happens when grassland and other open land is left more or less to its own devices. It's certainly what's been happening along the southern Wey, and Allees Meadow – in its modest way – has been no exception: the Valley has steadily been transforming itself from open grassland (with trees just along field boundaries and – especially – alders on the river banks) to woodland, with alder 'carr' on the wetter areas. Not a lot wrong with that, but it has perversely led to a loss of diversity of historic landscape and of habitat.
So, Allees has been scrubbing-up steadily for most of the time since the Trust has owned it; occasional efforts to get graziers to use the land have fizzled out.

In 2011, we took the bull by the horns and (using money raised by the 2010 Bramshott Open Gardens) had a pretty radical 'go' at the small trees and shrubs that had taken over the major part of the level watermeadow area.
We left a few of the potentially more interesting trees, but it now looks much closer to its 'historic' landscape, with more of its watermeadow layout identifiable and – importantly for us – much more accessible for machinery to maintain it.

Himalayan Balsam

The invasive non-native ‘garden escape’ is a growing problem for us, as it is for many locations on the Wey and elsewhere. The explosive seed heads scatter if cutting is left too late, and they hitch a ride in the river to land and colonise further downstream. Although an annual, the seed persists, and when it grows it suppresses almost everything except brambles—leaving a ‘sterile’ understorey where even when the balsam is (apparently) gone it takes time for the native plants to re-establish.
Where it has been cleared it soon shows regrowth ... and not a lot of competition.