Caring for our countryside

Creamy-grey walled cottages, with natural slated roofs, dry-stone walls, the rolling hills - all these are distinctive features of the Cotswold landscape and the Conservation Board for the area has the responsibility to ensure they remain so.

A five-year project, Caring for the Cotswolds, has recently recently been completed and half the funding came from the National Heritage Lottery in one of the first pioneering 'landscape-scale' projects that the fund has supported.

The £2.8m project is helping to ensure that the Cotswolds Area of Natural Beauty is conserved for future generations. Significant funding came too from the Rural Development Service and Natural England.

The project has covered a wide spectrum of conservation work, from using conservation grazing to ensure that wildflower grassland sites flourish, to offering courses to encourage more people to learn the skill of repairing dry-stone walls.

The chairman of the Cotswolds Conservation Board, Niel Curwen, said: "When you walk or drive through the Cotswolds landscape and take time to reflect upon the characteristics that make the area unique, it is worth remembering that, although they appear to have been there for ever, the features that catch your eye may well have been carefully cared for and tended recently.

"Very often, we see a view that pleases and find ourselves appreciating it for its timeless beauty, but the satisfying balance and composition of some of the most stunning vistas in the area has very often been given a helping hand in the recent past by farmers, land managers and conservationists."

In drawing up its project prgramme, the Cotswold Conservation Board paid special attention to four areas: dry-stone walls that are a distinctive feature of the AONB; the limestone grasslands that were greatly reduced in number a few decades ago, due to intensive farming but which are being restored to provide a rich habitat for plants and wildlife; conserving the field-patterns, hedgerows, trees, towns, villages and buildings; developing a major interpretation project to help the public enjoy the Cotswolds.

The Conservation Board began its work on dry-stone walling by carrying out a survey in 76 parishes to restore some 20km of walls. Course fees for more than 60 trainees were subsidised and there have been opportunities for apprenticeships. A grant scheme provided half the costs.

A series of two-day courses led to more than a thousand people gaining the skill and knowledge to take a hand in restoration.

Over a three-year period, a total of 2,442m of wall were restored, enabled by grants totalling £82,373. One scheme included work on the Cornbury Park Estate, in the area of the Wychwood Forest in West Oxfordshire, one in Charlbury's Nine-Acre Recreation Ground, and another in Ascott-under-Wychwood.

As a means of encouraging interest, the board holds an annual competition, in collaboration with the Dry-Stone Walling Association.

In looking at how best to conserve the flower-rich sites of Jurassic limestone grassland spread across the area of the AONB, the Conservation Board introduced a grazing project.

Stonesfield Common has been area to benefit, with cattle being loaned by a farmer to graze on and remove the coarser growth, thus enabling the more fragile wild flowers to flourish. The greater abundance of these flowering plants in turn gave benefit to other forms of wildlife, including a number of species of butterfly.

Over half of this country's Jurassic limestone grassland sites are now found in the Cotswolds, important ones for the range of species they can support - more than 100 different wildflowers, and up to 25 butterfly species.

Conservation of these sites was of great importance, for the intensive farming of the 1970s and 1980s led to the destruction of much of this grassland. In the 1930s, some 40 per cent of the Cotswold region was covered by grassland. The drop has been dramatic - down to fewer than 3,000 hectares, just 1.5 per cent, today.

To redress this, the Conservation Board has been working with landowners, farmers and graziers to encourage flower-rich grasslands at more than 90 sites.

Landowners are also being encouraged to enter Government agricultural schemes to help long-term sustainability.

The flower-rich grasslands are profitably integrated with the promotion of rare breeds, both cattle and sheep, as they are suited to rough grazing. Lighter breeds such as Dexter cattle are ideal.

The Local Distinctiveness element of the programme aimed to prevent the loss of unique local characteristics.

A particularly eye-catching one is close to the Oxfordshire border, where the Compton Abdale Crocodile - a water conduit of carved stone, which channels spring water from the limestone hillside into the River Coln - is once again using its gaping jaws to deal with the water flow. A local stonemason, his skills partly funded by one of these grants, has restored the carving which had become worn over time.

Visitors come to the area of the Cotswolds not only to enjoy its attractive scenery but to learn more about it, and they can now do so at three interactive kiosks and at the 'portable' exhibitions which will be visiting venues throughout the AONB.

The Rollright Stones in West Oxfordshire is illustrated in one of the interactive kiosks. These house an educational video game suitable for seven to 11-year-olds, to introduce them to life in the Cotswolds. The travelling exhibition aims to inform and to encourage, explaining how its viewers can play their own part in helping to conserve this area.

The team of project officers involved did so with a recognition that this is a "living, working landscape" and their work with the people who live and work in it has been a major part of its success.

"The AONB will benefit from the conservation efforts made during the Caring for the Cotswolds project for many years to come," said Niel Curwen.

"We would like to thank all who took part, whether officers, voluntary wardens, partner organisations, landowners or members of the community. We are truly grateful for their dedication to the aims of the project and invite them to share in the knowledge that this is a job well done."