100 - Herefordshire Lowlands : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

The Herefordshire Lowlands National Character Area (NCA) lies almost entirely within Herefordshire, with small areas to the north and east in Shropshire and Worcestershire, and in the south-east in Gloucestershire. It is bounded by the Clun and North West Herefordshire Hills NCA and the Black Mountains and Golden Valley NCA to the north and west, the Malvern Hills, Herefordshire Plateau and Teme Valley NCAs to the east and South Herefordshire and Over Severn NCA to the south.

The rivers Wye, Lugg and Frome flow through the NCA in wide, fertile valleys eroded into mudstone and glacial deposits and provide a physical and ecological link with Wales and the Black Mountains and Golden Valley, the Clun and North West Herefordshire Hills and the Herefordshire Plateau NCAs upstream and the Herefordshire and Over Severn NCA downstream. The Wye flows in from the west, from Wales and the Black Mountains and Golden Valley NCA, and then from Hereford into the South Herefordshire and Over Severn NCA. The River Lugg flows through the Clun and North West Herefordshire Hills, crossing into the NCA from the west. It flows through the town of Leominster and south of here it is joined by a tributary, the River Arrow. The River Frome flows southwards into the NCA from the Herefordshire Plateau NCA, west past Yarkshill to Hampton Bishop south-east of Hereford, where it joins the Lugg. The River Teme crosses the northern tip of the NCA as it flows south from Ludlow before turning east to enter the Teme Valley NCA at Tenbury Wells.

Old Red Sandstone rocks underlie most of the area, linking with the neighbouring Black Mountains and Golden Valley NCA, and the Teme Valley and Herefordshire Plateau NCAs. There are widespread coverings of glacial deposits. There is an inlier of older marine Silurian rocks in the Shucknall Hill area.

Recreational opportunity is offered by long-distance trails connecting this NCA to others include the Wye Valley Walk which links to the Shropshire Hills and the Herefordshire Trail which connects the market towns in Herefordshire. Views can be expansive across to neighbouring NCAs, looking west to the Black Mountains, north to the Clun and Shropshire Hills, and east to the Malvern Hills and Woolhope Dome.

The area includes several nationally designated areas for landscape, geology and nature conservation importance. Small areas of both the Malvern Hills (773 ha) and the Wye Valley (130 ha) Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty fall within this NCA. In addition, 430 ha of the River Wye Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and a small (42 ha) part of The Flits and the Moccas Park National Nature Reserves fall within the NCA.

Main transport links in the area are the A roads linking Hereford and Worcester, Hay-on-Wye and Leominster. Rail links run from the south through Hereford and on to Ludlow, and from the east between Worcester and Hereford, passing through Ledbury.

The Herefordshire Lowlands today

Lying almost entirely within Herefordshire but with small areas to the north and east extending into Shropshire and Worcestershire, and in the south-east into Gloucestershire, this is a rural lowland landscape bounded by the Herefordshire Hills and the Black Mountains to the north and west, the Malvern Hills and Bromyard plateau to the east and north, and the Wye Valley to the south. Three of the largest five towns in the county – Hereford, Leominster and Ledbury – fall within the NCA. The county town of Hereford lies on the River Wye, west of the confluence with the River Lugg. It is a cathedral city, and many of the buildings are made from rich pink-red stone, brick, clay tile and slate (traditional building materials), giving the city a soft, warm character. The remains of Hereford Castle are still visible, an important historic site as it is one of only four pre-Norman castles in the country. There are a number of smaller castle sites in the area, one with Roman fortifications, and smaller manor sites. Queenswood, the only country park in Herefordshire, falls within the NCA and is a popular visitor attraction.

The county of Herefordshire shares a boundary with Wales and there is a sense of a border landscape with a history of fortification that has left small castles and earthworks. Much of the area is lowland fertile farmland with an undulating topography and wide flood plains, punctuated by a number of often wooded hills such as Dinmore and Wormsley rising steeply from them. The gently undulating mudstone lowlands are crossed by the wide river plain of the Wye with the rivers Frome and Lugg also meandering across the fertile plains. The higher areas were once part of a continuous plateau, but the hard cap has been eroded in many places, creating groups of hills, such as those at Wormsley where Merry Hill, Credenhill and Nupton Hill are separated by steep-sided, small valleys.

The Upper Silurian Raglan Mudstone Formation, the lowest of the Old Red Sandstone rocks, underpins the low-lying land. It is composed of red and greenish-grey silts and mudstone with some sandstone and calcrete limestone bands. The hills are underlain by Lower Devonian St Maughans Formation strata consisting of alternating beds of siltstone and sandstone containing nodular calcrete limestones formally known as ‘cornstones’. The Old Red Sandstone gives rise to the fertile cultivated land with rich red soils that characterise the area. In the Wye Valley there are extensive spreads of glacial deposits. Gravels were formerly extracted in pits such as those at Belmont and Stretton Sugwas. These superficial deposits include kettle moraines, a hummocky topography with pools in hollows which have no exit for drainage. Fine examples of kettle holes are seen west of Hereford near Kenchester in the Wye Valley and in a belt from Kington to Orleton in the north of the NCA. Kettle holes are formed in superficial material deposited as the glacier melted. They show the places where blocks of ice, buried under the moraine, finally melted and the gravel above them collapsed. In some parts of the river valleys, the mudstone is overlain by fertile alluvium. Sub-alluvial gravel beds also occur in the Lugg Valley area. These were formerly extracted at Bodenham and are still being worked at Wellington.

The plain is drained to the west by the River Wye, entering the area at Hay-on-Wye, in the south-west. The rivers Frome and Lugg converge just north of Hampton Bishop and then a mile further south meet the Wye at Mordiford. The River Arrow is a tributary of the Lugg, joining it just south of Leominster. The River Teme flows southwards into the area from Ludlow and then turns eastwards at Woofferton to enter the Teme Valley proper at Tenbury Wells. The River Teme formerly flowed south and was a tributary of the Lugg. Its course changed during the ice age and now flows east to join the River Severn.

All of the rivers have wildlife interest, particularly for higher plants and mosses. Aquatic plants include water crowfoot, pondweed and yellow water lily with bankside vegetation composed of species such as water avens, great pond sedge, yellow flag and marsh speedwell. Kettle hole ponds in glacial moraines form an important habitat with rare and endangered species, some remnant from periglacial times. The sediment accumulated in these ponds gives a record of the changing plant and animal species as the climate changed over tens of thousands of years.

The NCA contains more than 6,000 ha of woodland which amounts to around 7 per cent of the total area. Around half of this is ancient woodland, largely of ash and field maple or oak and bracken types supporting a ground flora that is often rich in herbs such as wild daffodil, bluebell, dog’s mercury, wood anemone and violet. The remainder has many coniferous elements of productive woodland of spruce, Douglas fir and larch.

Running south-west from Hope-under-Dinmore to Staunton-on-Wye in the centre of the NCA are the most wooded parts with ash, field maple and dog’s mercury woodland as well as oak, bracken and bramble woods. Both types are well represented at Wellington Wood Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) near Dinmore. This is one of the largest and most biologically rich ancient semi-natural woodlands in the NCA. These woodlands were traditionally managed as coppice, which has declined significantly, leaving only a few woodlands still managed in this way. Traditional orchards were once extensive across the area but now are now found mainly at the edges of the hamlets and around farmsteads.

Remnants of wet woodland also remain along the river valleys and wet grassland is very restricted. Isolated examples of previously extensive areas can be found, including Lugg and Hampton Meadows SSSI on the outskirts of Hereford, one of the largest surviving meadows of this type in the country. Many of the hedgerows are over-trimmed and gappy. Across most of the lower-lying areas they are of 19th-century enclosure origin and are limited in diversity. Thicker, more mature, species-rich hedgerows are found on the rising ground and steeper slopes of the hills and adjacent areas.

There is a high concentration of medieval parks, and numerous designed landscaped parks. Many hill tops are marked by iron-age hill forts, such as Credenhill Camp and Sutton Walls Camp. The parks, along with traditional orchards, often support very rich invertebrate fauna, particularly species associated with mature timber and deadwood.

Arable cultivation is concentrated in the Wye, Lugg and Frome river valleys, with mixed agriculture elsewhere. Although the agriculture is highly commercial and productive, the farms themselves are still relatively small, the majority being below 20 ha in the mid-19th century and in 2000 68 per cent of businesses operating on less than 50 ha. The area is nationally important for soft fruit production, much of which is now grown in polytunnels, with potatoes as another important crop. Many original field boundaries have been removed to create large fields for agricultural purposes. This open character is broken by orchards and occasional hop fields, often with high shelterbelts around them. Smaller pasture fields and numerous hedgerow trees are to be found on the higher ground. Occasionally there are poplar shelterbelts along the valley bottoms where the surviving permanent grassland is now found – a survivor of the formerly much more extensive Lammas meadows on the flood plains of the Wye, Frome and Lugg.

Timber-framed buildings are common, including a high proportion from the 16th century or earlier. Weatherboarding is a common form of cladding for timber-framed buildings, particularly barns, and is often associated with tall, stone plinths and gable walls. Old Red Sandstone and greyish-yellow Downton Stone are also frequently seen in older buildings. There are converted hop barns and cider houses (distinguished by wide doors). The settlement pattern across the NCA is dispersed with nucleated villages along the river valleys and small market towns such as Ledbury. This tranquil rural area offers opportunities for walking on local and long-distance footpaths as well as recreation on the many rivers. The many SSSI, the Wye SAC and a network of semi-natural habitats exist within a commercially farmed environment.

The landscape through time

The oldest rocks in the NCA are found on Shucknall Hill where Silurian limestones and siltstones have been up-folded into an anticline adjacent to a long-distance fault line, the Neath Valley Disturbance which follows the line of the Frome Valley adjacent to Shucknall Hill. These rocks were formed in warm seas. The rocks of most of the area are Old Red Sandstone, the oldest of which are Upper Silurian in age and the later Devonian, laid down on a large landmass formed when two tectonic plates of the Earth’s crust collided and pushed up the Welsh mountains. Softer mudstone rocks with some sandstone bands (Silurian Raglan Mudstone Formation, Upper Silurian in age) underlie the major river valleys. The Raglan Mudstone Formation formed on a coastal plain occasionally flooded by the sea. Fine sediment formed mudstones with some sandstones, which now underlie the lowland of central Herefordshire.

Limestone is found on steep slopes where the land rises from the lowlands to the hills. About 400 million years ago, the climate was hot and arid, causing lime-rich groundwater to be drawn to the surface where it evaporated. Concentrations of calcium carbonate were left as a nodular limestone layer, the Bishop’s Frome Limestone. Later, coarser material was deposited by seasonal streams, forming mainly sandstone with some mudstones, the St Maughans Formation, which now underlies the hills rising above the Herefordshire plain.

There is a rare example of a dolerite igneous rock, the Bartestree Dyke, which formed when molten material intruded into a crack in the Earth’s crust in the Permian Period. This hard, crystalline rock was formerly worked in a quarry near St Michael’s Hospice.

The ice age had a great effect on the area. There are hummocky moraines with kettle holes both in the Wye Valley and in a band stretching from Kington to Orleton in the north of the NCA. A series of terminal glacial moraines crosses the Wye Valley to the west of Hereford. To the east of the limit of the Devensian Glaciation, which reached Hereford and roughly the line of the A49 north of Hereford, isolated patches of older Anglian glacial deposits are found on the top of ridges. The rivers Teme, Lugg, Wye and Leadon have a series of remnants of river terrace deposits which date to the last interglacial period.

Across the area there is extensive evidence for prehistoric activity and settlement in the river gravels, including cropmarks of the late Bronze Age and Iron Age. There are some good examples of Romano-British farmsteads and iron-age hill forts such as at Credenhill and Sutton Walls Camp.

Roman development of the landscape has been an important influence. There are a number of Roman roads including Watling Street, a large Roman settlement at Kenchester (Magna), a Roman villa at Bishopstone and a crossing of the Wye at The Weir. Offa’s Dyke was rebuilt but the original course of the dyke (around 780) ran from Hereford to Lyonshall and beyond. The establishment of a border between England and Wales set the context for the ‘marches’ landscape with historically the feel of a ‘frontier’ county. Defended manors, mottes and moated sites are found in just about every settlement and even the characteristic separated church bell tower suggests defensive intent. This is also linked to the fertility and productivity of the landscape which makes it very valuable. The market and mercantile influence on the landscape is also important with centres at Ledbury, Pembridge and Eardisley. From this also comes the rise in the fortunes of the gentry and the establishment of many medieval and Tudor gentry houses with attached parkland (also the parklands of the nobles and particularly the Bishop of Hereford). Later the agricultural wealth of the lowlands also fuelled the establishment or redevelopment of houses and parkland. The predominant settlement pattern of the area is dispersed but most of the villages and hamlets were established by the 11th century. Nucleated villages developed along river valleys at crossing points and defensible locations. Arable cultivation was historically concentrated in the Wye, Lugg and Frome river valleys with mixed agriculture elsewhere, and orchards for cider making appearing in the 14th century. Extensive watermeadow systems along the wide river valleys developed from the 12th through to the 18th century and were often paid for by wealthy landowners to ‘improve’ agricultural productivity.

During the 17th and 18th centuries the central Herefordshire plain was primarily a corn-livestock region with wheat being the main cereal grown. Cattle and pigs were often kept in the cider orchards. The farms in the area were generally small, the majority below 20 ha in the mid-19th century and in 2000 68 per cent of businesses still operated on less than 50 ha. Historic designed landscapes are linked to the agricultural affluence of the area. A good example is Garnons, a Repton landscape next door to Foxley, seat of Uvedale Price, one of the first proponents of the picturesque landscape movement.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries farmsteads tended towards loose courtyard plans with large threshing barns. Cider houses, distinguished by wide doors, and hop kilns were incorporated into 18th-century farmsteads – some of these buildings have earlier timber-framed cores or recasings in stone of earlier timber buildings.

The predominant field pattern is of multi-period enclosures. Open fields, some organised on two- or three-field rotations, probably developed from small common arable cores after the late 11th century around larger nucleated settlements in the Lugg and middle Wye valleys. Around these communal fields, there lay a complex intermingling of assarted fields, common land and common arable. Enclosure was generally complete by the 18th century. Since then there has been a significant process of boundary removal in arable areas, particularly in the third quarter of the 20th century. The slopes to the higher land are characterised by smaller fields subdivided principally for stock management and have suffered less hedgerow removal. In the latter part of the 20th century larger fields became a major element of the landscape east of Hereford. A very late connection to the rail network contributed to the retention of the rural character of the area. Expansion of the cider and fruit producing industries in the late 19th century established the commercial orchard character as opposed to the traditional orchard landscape. Fruit production resulted in the location of Robertson’s jam factory at Ledbury, linked to more recent soft fruit production under polytunnels. The Robertson’s site was redeveloped by Universal Beverages Limited, processing vast amounts of bulk fruit for the drinks industries (in 2011 they processed 117,000 tonnes of apples).

The area has been dominated by commercial agriculture for the past few centuries with small areas of semi-natural habitat and a dispersed rural settlement pattern. It is a relatively undeveloped area which has escaped the pressure of modern development with some pressure to accommodate further growth around the urban centres of Hereford and Leominster, both of which have already grown far beyond their historic cores.