The River Teme, the course of only 80 miles, flows through Powys, Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcester on its way from Bryn Goch, the Red Hill, to the River Severn. Half way it rushes through the incomparable Downton Gorge. Downton probably exemplifies more of the components of the history of the development of the English landscape than anywhere in the UK. To do it justice you would need to write a book*.
This part of the Welsh Marches was where ice sheets of the last glaciation ended. Often their impact on the landscape is quite subtle – a certain rolling of the landscape holding landlocked glacial lakes in parts of north Herefordshire, or the glacial tills that form the gravels of the River Wye’s bed and floodplain. At Downton the evidence is much more dramatic. The ice impounded a great lake near Wigmore, and the waters overflowed through what is now the spectacular Downton Gorge, where they cut through and exposed a long sequence of rock strata making the area of particular value for early geologists. There is much of archaeological and historical interest in this area, from hill forts such as Croft Ambrey to the castles of the Marcher lords, and the woodlands that still have traces of their origins in prehistoric wood pastures, medieval peasant-farming landscapes and royal hunting forests. Then from about 1600 the Gorge developed into an iron working centre, soon producing 40% of the national pig iron output and 60% of the national wrought iron output. For a couple of hundred years this was a vibrant industrial centre making use of the waterpower of the River Teme, the heat energy of charcoal from the local forests, iron ore from Titterstone Clee, ten miles away, and local limestone. The woods and trackways would have been vibrant, noisy and smoky with charcoal burners, woodcutters and pack-horse trains carrying materials to the blazing furnaces and forges and carrying away the product. The woodlands here may have been preserved partly because regularly coppiced woodlands were such valuable sources of fuel for the furnaces.
When the iron industry ended in the early 1800s the Knight family, the original Downton ironmasters, had become rich enough for their sons to go off on the Grand Tour and move towards becoming landed gentry, building Downton Castle and buying up enough land to create a gentleman’s seat and a sporting estate, where they could showcase their wealth and their good taste. One of them in particular, Richard Payne Knight, became an arbiter of taste and a leading exponent of the theory and practice of creating country estates according to the principles of the Picturesque landscape movement for which several Herefordshire estates became noted, Downton most of all. For many centuries it thus provided outstanding examples of stages in the development of the classical English landscape. More recently, since the war in particular and also the sale by the Knight family of both the estate and of the Castle, it has continued to exemplify other perhaps less welcome trends in our landscape history. Even now the land of the estate around the Gorge, with its woods and prolific hedges, is still regarded as exceptionally beautiful, though to the discerning countryman it is clear that it is just as nature-depleted as the rest of the British farming landscape, and its beauty is therefore somewhat hollowed out.
Downton Gorge is a National Nature Reserve (NNR), of which there are only three in the whole county of Herefordshire. Recently I walked alongside another NNR, Moccas Park, glad that the Woodland Trust owns land alongside it where one can walk, because the owners of Moccas Park, like those of Downton Gorge, won’t let you in, NNR or no. I always look out for birds and animals when I visit nature reserves, ever hopeful that there will actually be some left, maybe delighted to hear a raven beating along overhead cronking to itself about how its day was going. The next day I walked between an ancient common and an oakwood, near a north Herefordshire church where some of those early ironmasters lie under stabs not of stone but of the iron that enriched them. Looking out as usual for sounds of life, I walked in the direction of one of the other two National Nature Reserves, Downton Gorge. For once the woodland beside me was alive with sounds, scratching, rustling, a muted roar of creatures brevetting about in the leaf litter of the wood.
It was, of course, not wildlife at all, but pheasants. The wood was fair sniving wi’ ‘em, as we says round ‘ere. The Downton estate that leases the Downton Gorge NNR to Natural England runs a major pheasant shoot. To provide game for the ‘guns’ who in 2022 were paying £45 for every pheasant shot, plus £35 for lunch, plus VAT, they release tens of thousands of pheasants and red-legged partridges every year, using 18 release pens, four of which are in or adjacent to the NNR.* Shoots in the UK release around 31.5 million pheasants and 9.1 million red-legged partridges annually. These are actually invasive alien species often imported from Europe and the USA, a trade which has become quite controversial in conservation circles and even more so when our wildlife (and our poultry industry, if that bothers you too) have been threatened by avian flu. The organisation Wild Justice has been challenging Defra about aspects of the release of gamebirds, which can each September attain a peak national biomass of pheasants at 41,250 tonnes, calculated to be 1.63 times the total biomass of wild birds in spring. The shooting industry and shooting magazines run vigorous campaigns to justify their industry and to attempt to portray it as a part of the world of nature conservation, while simultaneously vilifying and even slandering genuine conservationists. This is a powerful lobby that portrays shooting as part of a land management style that, in its view, preserves the very best of the English landscape and what they like to see as the quintessential English countryside lifestyle.
It is easy to see the charm that this vision has for some. Being invited to shoot on someone’s estate was long a sign that one had been accepted into the country gentry set, and shooting was part of an ancient culture war, the starving peasant poaching to feed his family counterpoised by the sporting gentry who since the enclosures had taken over the entire countryside as the location of their sporting theatrics. The setting for this theatre of the aristocracy was comfortable too, reassuringly expensive, redolent of old but good leather and tweed, log fires, hip flasks, and tweedy people standing around in fields of winter wheat with very expensive shotguns, gundogs, and not too far to walk to the nearest 4x4. And yet the countryside where manly men can sport does not really have any wild game to speak of, so utterly domesticated has the landscape become. In order to find targets and supply an industry, gamekeepers have to raise or import vast quantities of what are little more than domestic poultry, and frighten them into the air just in time for the punters to shoot them with guns that send out such a hail of lead shot that it is hard to miss so long as you point your gun in roughly the right direction. By now the ‘guns’ are mainly punters, paying for their sporting day out at so much a pheasant, happily tired at the end of a day out of the office playing the country gent. As for the pheasants, mostly they get shoved into a stink-pit in some corner of the estate.
A recent book about Downton* includes a discussion of the pros and cons of pheasant shooting written by an eminent local conservationist whose work I much admire. When I first read it I felt a little chastened, aware of my own intolerances and impressed by the seemingly reasonable and balanced way in which the writer discussed the pros and cons of pheasant shooting. But I am also well aware of the technique long used by the tobacco and the asbestos industries, and the fossil fuel industry, which is to appear to support scientific research into the damage allegedly caused by their industry, positing that there is a need for much more evidence, and for much more research, often to be carried out by scientists sponsored by the industry. Meanwhile business continues as usual. Shooting supports organisations such as the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust which seems to me to operate to greenwash the shooting industry, and the author’s view on pheasant shooting might come straight from the prevarications of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust playbook. His handling of the pros and cons of pheasant shooting is worth quoting verbatim, as he discusses all the research that needs to be carried out before it is even possible to begin to criticise pheasant shoots.
“Are shoots inadvertently sustaining unnaturally high numbers of predatory birds and mammals? To what extent is the feeding of pheasants incidentally sustaining Ravens, deer and Grey Squirrels too? Does the feeding of pheasants near the woodlands affect the soil chemistry therein, favouring plants of richer soils such as Common Nettle? Does it lead to increased nitrogen in the air to the detriment of some lichens and bryophytes? To what extent do Pheasants predate invertebrates and indeed small vertebrates, notably reptiles (Grass Snake, Common Lizard and Slow-worm…)
On the other hand, what about the positives of game management..? Gamekeepers control Carrion Crows, Magpies, Foxes, Stoats and Weasels, all of which are known predators of ground-nesting birds. Grey squirrels which cause damage to young broad-leaved trees are killed too. The … game crops planted each year provide nectar sources in summer for bees and other insects. In winter they act as cover and a significant source of food for large numbers of small birds; these feed too on the grain put out for the Pheasants and Partridges. And the profitability of the shoot provides the income and labour for woodland and river management.
So (here) as elsewhere there are actual pros and cons. The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust urges shoots to carry out biodiversity audits [fat chance!]so that the positive and negative impacts of shooting can be assessed, and hopefully, through the enhancement of the pros, and the mitigation of the cons, net gain can be achieved.”
All the ‘positives’ of pheasant shooting listed above would very obviously be far better achieved by converting to nature-friendly farming and ending pheasant shooting. The supposedly beneficent effects of game crops could be replaced by restoration of all the destroyed (improved) grasslands on the estate, and nature friendly farming would provide more healthy feed sources than pheasant feeders, which are a potential spreader of bird diseases. The culling of Carrion Crows, Magpies, Foxes, Stoats and Weasels is not a positive and it is astonishing that a conservationist should recommend culling native species in a nature reserve. The only acceptable culling would be of alien species such as Muntjac deer and Grey Squirrels, and maybe pheasants. Any necessary management of native species in a nature reserve of all places would need to be much more considered than the habitual ‘vermin’ shooting of gamekeepers. As for the shoot subsidising maintenance of the river and the woods, the owners really are exceptionally wealthy and can afford to pay for that from their small change, supposing the river and the woods even need maintenance, an odd idea in an age of rewilding. They own other estates in Normandy and the Irish Republic and have spent huge sums on repairing and restoring buildings in order to realise their vision of an English sporting estate. Their vast wealth comes from the fossil fuel extraction industries, so it would be entirely appropriate for them to spend some of it on the restoration of natural environments that might help to mitigate climate change.
These discussions of the pros and cons of pheasant shooting seem likely to be based on the premise that pheasant shooting is part of the fabric of rural life, and therefore that it is futile to question it. This view, coming from within the conservation establishment of government organisations like Natural England (NE) is not surprising. Natural England appears very understanding of the viewpoints of the landed interest even where they conflict with nature conservation. NE is heavily compromised by its licensing of the badger cull and its less than vigorous reaction to raptor persecution and muirburn on the grouse moors. Indeed Tony Juniper’s own words in the context of the badger cull describe the lack of independence of Natural England’s work and “the extent to which it sits within a wider Government policy decided upon by Ministers, rather than by our Board or Chief Executive”. There is a perception that the views of the landed interest, the rich and powerful, are given more weight in official circles than those of conservationists, who are unlikely to invite ministers for a day’s shooting or to have gone to the same public school. Meanwhile the campaigning group Wild Justice has been making quiet progress in challenging the legality of the release of gamebirds on or near protected sites (Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation) in England, and Defra has been doing all it can to obstruct regulation of gamebird releases near such sites. Downton Gorge could hardly be a more extreme case of such a site, a fragile sliver of habitat surrounded by a very active shoot and completely hemmed in by pheasant release pens and high-input farming. Estates like Downton now have to apply for permission to release pheasants near sensitive sites, as a result of the work of Wild Justice, but even if NE decides to advise against it the decision to make recommendations on particular pheasant releases to the Secretary of State lies with a secret Defra committee thought to include at least one pheasant shooting MP and representatives of the shooting industry. And if a licence were refused, there is literally no mechanism of enforcement and therefore nothing to stop the estate ignoring the regulations.
The Downton estate is owned by the Primat family, based in Geneva; their wealth is part of the Schlumberger fortune, derived from a concern that is both the world's largest offshore drilling company and the world's largest offshore drilling contractor by revenue. Since buying the estate in 1986 they have turned it into a major sporting estate. They have also spent large sums on renovation and restoration of property. They own other estates, one in Normandy and another in Co Kerry. This estate is being profitably degraded by industrial farming and pheasant shooting, by people who could well afford to restore it to something of its former ancient richness should they choose to do so. Originally 750 acres of the estate was designated as an Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in 1952; after the sale to the Primat family in 1986 this was reduced to a mere 165 acres in 1988. I have no idea whether this was because it was by then too damaged by farming and coniferization to merit SSSI status, or because of resistance by the new owners. Whatever the causes the SSSI is now a mere fragment of the previous matchless landscape of the vale, and the riches of the gorge must be at risk, lacking the buffering effect of a surrounding nature-rich landscape.
Since the government created the Forestry Commission following the1919 Forestry Act, they have been able to acquire large areas of land for forestry, by compulsory purchase if necessary, often enabling them to replace existing ancient woodlands with conifers, such as those that have destroyed priceless fragments of the ancient wood pasture of Bringewood Chase on the Downton estate and killed ancient oak and chestnut pollards on the nearby Croft Ambrey. The government enthusiasm for forestry, born of war, has never been matched by any enthusiasm for procuring land to safeguard nature. There are only three National Nature Reserves in Herefordshire; all three of them are leased, not owned, by Natural England, and two – Downton and Moccas – are on shooting estates with little or no public access. In both cases there have to be serious compromises between conservation and estate interests, particularly when the lease has to be renewed, which in the case of Downton Gorge was in 2022. Unfortunately I have not found out how that went, but you can be sure that English Nature could not negotiate from a position of strength. In 2004 a Conservation Management Plan was produced for the Gorge, not the whole estate, with the involvement of English Heritage, Herefordshire Council, Natural England and other interested bodies, to “reconcile and engage the various interests of nature conservation, historic environment conservation, river management and estate management in a way that maintains and enhances the conservation interest of the Gorge while also maintaining the flexibility and economic viability of the estate’. The estate did not endorse this plan, probably because one of the conditions attached to financing the research and writing of the plan was that public access to the Gorge should be reviewed and proposals made for enhanced access…
Should you be tempted to visit this ‘matchless vale’ your best chance of enjoying it is to be a shooting enthusiast with a few hundred quid to spare, as illustrated above.
If you want to visit because you are interested in conservation, or geology, or history, or ornithology, botany, bryophytes or lichens, or simply want to enjoy a place which deserves to be more widely known and celebrated as of unrivalled significance in the history and development of the English landscape….. Or if you believe that the rich should not be able to deny you access to the land that their wealth allows them to dominate and exploit… All I can really say is, good luck with that!.
*”Downton Gorge: the Matchless Valley”, ed. Tom and Gisèle Wall, available from the Castle Bookshop, Ludlow. This is a magnificent achievement, an assemblage of essays by people who have studied various aspects of the history, geology and natural history of the area, and a tour de force by Tom and Gisele Wall, who edited and published it as well as contributing essays. I feel very uncomfortable at having challenged Tom Wall’s attitude to pheasant rearing on the estate. I thought long and hard and chose my words carefully and I would like to think that he might privately concede that I may have a point.
Very pleased to see you enjoying browsing a few posts! RF
I have been to Downton Gorge twice, once in the 90's with my husband. We drove to a bridge over the Teme and then walked across a field below the Castle, followed by sheep and then walked along the Gorge as far as the "tunnels" taking photos and enjoying the river as it ran through the rocks. We saw Otter scat on a rock, and dippers, etc. We sort of ignored the signs
The second time was with The Border Poets as part of our Along the Teme project 2007, when we had a guided tour.
What a shame it's not accessible.