Oxleas Meadow

This is the first in a series of maps that I’m going to include on the site. This one is taken from the Draft Park Management plan for Oxleas Woods which is well written and includes some excellent history, based on the material put together by PARC when they saved the woods from becoming a bypass.

The document was drafted and released to inform the public consultations, but sadly (for me at least) these ended in September 2008, making me about 9 months too late to suggest the raising of a pavement along the top of crown woods lane. I did at one point have a little talk with one of the parks team about this idea; apparently crown woods lane is a queens highway – I suppose the queen doesn’t have much need for a pavement…

Anyway this little map shows where the drinking water for the hill comes from. Recently I was looking at the meadow above the reservoir and it does seem that the outline of it can be seen by the difference in the plants growing on the surface, so it’s possibly a bit cooler or wetter there, although it’s certainly a lot less marshy round that part of the meadow since it the reservoir was repaired some time in the early 2000’s.
According to the draft management plan:

“The presence of the reservoir means that it is not possible to hold large events or park more than a couple of cars on top of this area, as the weight would break through the roof of the reservoir.”