Nature in Orleton

Wildflower meadow

Use the month links on the right to see the Orleton nature gallery for that month. The most recent month is shown first. With thanks to Barbara Mark, Liz Howard, Sue Brown and Christina O'Neill for the photos.

If the following interests you then you might also like to visit the Nature's calendar and Herefordshire Nature Trust web sites.

Orleton lies on the front edge of a melted glacier. The melting glacier formed a lake at Wooferton and produced a fertile valley on which Orleton developed. The original settlements were probably on the elongated hill which was left by the glacier as it melted and was built up of glacial moraine, St George's Church being at the northern end of this. The village has a brook which has flooded in the winter for a long time, but it gave a supply of fresh drinking water to the community and even maybe a source of power. The whole area was known to be marshy in winter. In fact in 1424 Thomas Spofford, Bishop of Hereford, allowed Orleton to bury its dead in the village because the walk to Eye, which was the mother church then, was too marshy to walk over.

The hills around gave protection and the woods growing there supplied the Anglo-Saxon villagers with fire wood, timber for building materials, and maybe even deer for food. The Romans were known to have lived in the area as well as one of their main roads through Herefordshire went from Kenchester to Chester through Mortimer's Cross.

Orleton is mentioned in the Doomsday Book but under the name Alretvne, which means 'enclosure of the alders'; alders being a type of tree that grows in damp places. There are still a few alders left along the banks of our stream, Mill Brook, today.

Today, we have a great variety of habitats in and around the village of Orleton. We still have a few marshy places in winter. We have woodland in and around the village and still have a stream. The village is surrounded by farmland, used for both livestock and cultivated for arable use. Orleton has about 332 properties, most of which have gardens, and there are playing fields, road verges and two graveyards. The boundaries of the above are quite often made up of hedges and trees. So there are lots of different habitats for nature to abound.

With climate change and changing farming practices the countryside around Orleton may well be altering. The studies and monitoring of the nature that we shall do on these pages might prove to be an interesting record of the next few years.

We hope this web site will be interesting to everyone young and old. If you want to join us on our studies and recording please email Christina at info@orletonvillage.co.uk or phone Barbara on 01568 780842.