Old Sneed Park Nature Reserve
Tucked away behind the houses in Old Sneed Park and Glenavon Park is a small steep sided valley, eroded into Red Sandstone which is 370 million years old. This rock has soils which are red and nutrient-poor, a characteristic enabling many wild flowers to grow.
This quiet place, only 6.6 hectares in extent, is all that remains of a great deer park, established in 1274, to provide venison for the Bishops of Worcester, who owned extensive lands in the area before the diocese of Bristol existed. Later the land become a country estate after it was claimed by Henry VIII and given to one of his friends, Robert Sadler.
As the land was originally parkland it still has many of the characteristics of an old country estate, with open meadowland, big trees, deer fencing and an ornamental lake. As with many such places, Old Sneed Park provides important refuge for wildlife.
Old Sneed Park Lake
Towards the end of the 19th century a small stream with it's ponds was dammed to form a lake. A stream once flowed into a tidal area of the Avon, but when the railway was built, the stream was culverted and the tidal area became grassland.
Frogs, toads, minnows and sticklebacks live in the lake and their presence attracts the kingfisher and the heron. Mallard ducks and moorhens are often seen swimming in the lake, sometimes with their broods of youngsters. The larvae of midges provides food for the ducklings. Dragonflies can be seen flying over the water and moths and midges over the lake attract bats during the summer.
In the 1990's The Friends of Old Sneed Park was formed. At the time the park was derelict from decades of neglect with burnt-out cars and rubbish strewn everywhere. Over the years the group have worked tirelessly to transform it into the nature reserve you see today. The biggest project was the lake, which was cleared, dredged, repaired and the bridge and dipping platform were built. This was funded partly with Heritage Lottery funding.
The Little Bridges series was started by Stanthews in 2009 to highlight small footbridges in remote parts of Wiltshire. Since then, the series has been expanded by others all over the country and starting to spread fast. There is a stats listing, so you can see how many Little Bridges you have found, you can find it here: - Little Bridges Geocaching Series (littlebridgesseries.co.uk). If you would like to add to the series, please go to this site, on the tab Get Involved click number request and fill in the form. To qualify, the bridge must be a foot bridge too small for vehicles, please make sure your title exactly matches “Little Bridges # xxxx then the name” including spaces so it will get picked up and added to stats list.