Woodlands and Woodland Management

Estate Woodlands

The College Estate includes four blocks of mixed deciduous woodland.  Catsbury Wood, Rudgeley Wood and Darley Wood are all locally designated ‘key wildlife sites’ of ancient semi-natural broadleaved woodland larger than 2ha, and are listed on the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust register of Sites of Nature Conservation Importance.  Rook Wood is a small woodland to the west of the College lake.

Catsbury Wood

Catsbury Wood (3.5ha) (National Vegetation Classification W8) occupies the southern side of Catsbury Hill.  An ancient woodland site, the majority of the mature trees have been felled and the woodland has been replanted with a mixture of native and non-native trees.  Mature trees are present only at the edges of the wood.  Little deadwood occurs with no standing dead trees, however much of the ancient woodland shrub layer and ground flora remains.  A mixed hedge surrounds the majority of the ancient woodland, separating it from a newly planted (1998 and 1999) 2 ha extension of mixed deciduous native trees.  Notable fauna includes badgers, brown hares, various warblers and other woodland edge birds, and many butterfly species including the speckled wood.  

This woodland is managed and used for pheasant poult rearing and release, as well as having considerable conservation value.

Rudgeley Wood

Rudgeley Wood (7.5ha) (National Vegetation Classification W8) is a part semi-natural, partly cleared and replanted woodland.  Only 2 hectares can be considered ancient, the rest of the woodland is probably secondary woodland on old meadow.  Part of the woodland consists of hazel coppice, but neglect has reduced the value of this area and the hazel has been largely superseded by ash.

Recent management has increased the amount of dead wood, both standing and fallen, and rides have been widened to allow sunlight into the wood and to encourage the early purple orchids and pyramidal orchids that occur in the woodland, together with bluebells, wood anemones, lesser celandines and primroses.

On the south side of the wood is a Forestry Commission trial ash plantation investigating growth rates of ash trees from different provenances.  An active badger sett is present in the wood.

The woodland is managed primarily as pheasant covert and access is restricted during a shoot.

Darley Wood

Darley Wood (2ha) (National Vegetation Classification W8) lies on a gentle west facing slope in the south of the estate.  The wood is mainly of interest for its variety of good ground flora, hornbeam coppice (unusual in Gloucestershire), boundary wood banks and badger sett.  An abundance of lying dead wood provides a good habitat for invertebrates.

This wood is the least managed woodland on the estate, having for many years been used as the release site for recovered animals by the Gloucester Wildlife Rescue Centre.

Rook Wood

Much of this mixed oak and ash wood was felled in early 1990 to build the present damn for the lake.  Since then the remaining woodland to the west of the lake has been tidied up and rides have created to open up the woodland.  A new mixed deciduous woodland has been created adjacent and to the north of the existing woodland on land built up from waste spoil and silt from the lake bed.  This joins Rook Wood to an abandoned Forestry Commission trial sycamore plantation, which is also undergoing improvements by thinning, replacement planting and creation of rides through the plantation.