Salisbury Plain : 

Salisbury Plain has been safe under the guardianship of the Ministry of Defence for the past 100 years.  Today, it is one of the best nature reserves in the country and the largest unbroken expanse of chalk grassland in NW Europe.

Wiltshire is renowned for its open downland landscape with large areas of species-rich chalk grassland.  We are so used to seeing them every day that we do not perhaps realise that these grasslands are of international importance and have been designated as a Special Area of Conservation under the European Habitats Directive. 

Conservation ...

The Ministry of Defence, through its agency, Defence Estates, is taking part in the Salisbury Plain LIFE Project, which is a major four-year conservation management project.  

The LIFE Project  will benefit the chalk grassland and its myriad of indigenous flora and fauna.  Salisbury Plain is home to many endangered species with specialised habitats.  One of the strangest of these is the Fairy Shrimp which thrives in the temporary puddles which form in the tracks left by tanks during manoeuvres on the Plain.

History and Archaeology ...
Tidworth's Sidbury Hillfort : restored to its former glory

Sidbury Hillfort, just outside Tidworth, is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, the highest category of protection afforded to an archaeological site under the Ancient Monuments Act 1979.  

Hillforts were dominant features in the Iron Age landscape; they were huge defensive structures - a statement of tribal wealth and power.  By the late first millennium BC, southern England was covered with a network of hlllforts, many of them in the area we know as Wessex.  At Sidbury, as well as the hillfort, there are four Bronze Age linear earthworks which radiate out from the top of the hill.  The presence of these linear earthworks indicates that there were people living in this area at least 4500 years ago - long before the Iron Age.

Hillforts were abandoned after the Roman invasion of 43 AD and most have been left relatively untouched since then, massive reminders of a way of life long past. 

In the 1960s, 40 hectares of mixed conifer and beech trees were planted on the slopes of Sidbury Hill.  Growth in these plantations was poor and the trees have recently been felled by Defence Estates as part of the LIFE Project.  Grassland will return to the slopes by natural regeneration and restore the Iron Age hillfort on Sidbury Hill to its original landscape setting. 

The clearance will benefit many plant species as well as scarce butterfly species such as the Marsh Fritillary, for which Salisbury Plain is a European stronghold, and the Adonis Blue.  

Click here to find out more about Salisbury Plain and the work that the Salisbury Plain LIFE Project is doing to improve and protect the Plain and its indigenous flora and fauna ...

Click here to find out more about the Army on Salisbury Plain

Click here to return to the Local Stories Index