Downs Banks

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Downs Bank National Trust Reserve is an area of open countryside, located two miles (3 km) north of the town of Stone in Staffordshire, and four miles (6 km) south of the city of Stoke-on-Trent. It is owned and managed by the National Trust. The Reserve was also known as 'Barlaston Downs' in earlier times.

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[edit] Area and habitats

The Reserve covers 166 acres (0.67 km²), and consists of a glaciated valley with a stream running the length of the property from North to South. Other habitats include woodland and heathland.

[edit] Management

The heath has been subject to a restoration project by the National Trust, which resulted in the re-introduction of summer-grazing cattle on the hillsides of the property in 2005. The cattle help to keep bracken and scrub birch trees under control, and to allow a variety of old grasses, heathers, plus bilberry, gorse and broom to regain habitat. It is hoped that this will encourage snakes and lizards to return to the area.

The footpaths and bridleway are becoming seriously eroded at 2008, and annual National Trust volunteer summer work camps are required to repair them.

The stream through the property was seriously polluted with diesel oil in April 2008, originating upstream from beyond the Reserve.

[edit] Access and activities

There is a small car park at the southern end. At 2008, there are no rail services to the nearby train stations of Barlaston or Stone, these stations having effectively closed - although from January 2009 there should be a new Stoke-on-Trent to Lichfield train service that will stop at Stone station.

The site is 'open access' on foot to all. As well as footpaths there is also a waymarked bridleway which may be used with care by horse riders and cyclists in dry weather.

The site is popular with dog walkers, and owners are encouraged to 'scoop' droppings left on footpaths and verges.

The site is sometimes used by the Potteries Orienteering Club, and before them by the Walton Chasers since the 1950s. The Club has made a large scale-map of the site, at 1:10000.

[edit] Monuments, history and customs

In the 18th century a farm on Downs Bank grew hops for Joule's Brewery, who rented it from Viscount Sidmouth. The area was well known to the author Mary Renault, whose parents moved to live nearby in the early 1930s.

Hop growing on Downs Bank continued until the 1940s, and there was also cattle grazing until 1950. The area was subject to purchase with the help of a public subscription and it was given to the National Trust by John Joule in 1950, as... "an offering for victory in the 1939-45 War, and as a memorial to those who died" - apparently on the grounds that it had originally been common land, and should thus be open again to local people. However, after 1950 the lack of grazing caused its characteristic heathland to decline, as bracken and birch were allowed to invade.

There is now a Millennium Viewpoint stone at one of the highest points, with a toposcope (a disc of metal sight-lines/landmarks) embedded in the top of it.

The area is part of the route of the annual New Years' Eve Barlaston Wassail, in which a torchlit procession walks from the nearby village to the Downs Banks and back again.

[edit] External links