About the reserve

Walk that chalk

Chalk, quarried here between 1919 and the 1940s, gives this reserve its thin soil and characteristic flowering plants, in turn attracting butterflies including marbled white, dingy skipper and small heath.

The glorious wildflower display includes the yellows of cowslip, rough hawkbit, mouse-ear hawkweed and bird's-foot trefoil; purple wild thyme and clustered bellflower; pink restharrow and blue common milkwort. Look for common spotted, pyramidal and bee orchids in June and July. This is also one of the few Wolds sites for thistle broomrape which parasitizes woolly thistle. The endangered red hemp-nettle has been introduced from nearby populations along with small-flowered buttercup on the quarry face.

The west of the reserve, where spoil was deposited, is now dominated by coarse grasses and hawthorn scrub. Several species of grasses can be found including cock’s-foot, meadow and false oat-grasses, red and sheep’s fescues, and quaking grass. Glaucous sedge is widely distributed.

In order to maintain the succession of plants, areas of the floor have been periodically scraped back to the chalk. To prevent the succession from open flower-rich sward to dense coarse grasses and hawthorn scrub, the quarry floor is grazed with the Trust’s Hebridean sheep in winter and parts are mown in late summer.