This large, hilly country park contains extensive grassland as well as a small pond, copses of planted trees, tall herbs, scrub, trees and hedgerows. Much of the plant life has been planted, but in spite of its artificial beginnings, the site is important for the numbers of birds and insects here, probably because of the variety of plant species present.
Local Wildlife Site
Accessible Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation
Chapel Lane Pastures
Borough: Hillingdon
Grade: Borough Grade II
Access: Free public access (all/most of site)
Area: 21.08 ha
Description
Wildlife
The grasslands include perennial rye-grass, barren brome, couch, creeping bent and Yorkshire fog. A large variety of flowers occur within a number of sown wildflower meadows including oxeye daisy, meadow vetchling, wild carrot, musk mallow and hairy tare. The copses are made up of silver birch, wild cherry, lime and white willow trees. There are also hedges of hazel, dogwood and blackthorn amongst others. London plane and horse-chestnut trees are scattered across the site. The pond supports dense common reed, reed sweet-grass, common club-rush and flowering rush.Reed warblers nest in the reed bed. The site is good for insects including the localised species Roesel's bush-cricket. Other species include meadow brown, gatekeeper and holly blue butterflies. There are also a number of dragonflies and damselflies such as emperor dragonfly, brown hawker and the common blue damselfly.Facilities
Information; car parking. The London LOOP crosses the site.
Oxeye daisies © Mathew Frith
Roesel’s bush-cricket © Mike Waite
Feedback
Have a question or a comment for this site, or notice anything missing or out of date? Please contact us.