Guardians Heritage Walks
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Norbury Park and Mole River heritage walk
​Norbury Park is located opposite Box Hill, on the other side of the Mole Valley, near the town of Leatherhead in Surrey. This beautiful woodland area contains a site known as Druid's Grove, where you find some of the oldest yews in Britain. Local legend has it that this place was used by Celtic people for ceremonial purposes. To this day, the giant yews of Norbury are veneered and paid respect by visitors who leave offering in their hollow trunks.
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During the second half of the 20th century, pollution in the Mole River were high. Fortunately, water quality has improved in the last decade. The Mole now boasts the greatest diversity of fish species of any river in England. Twelve Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) are found in the area, including wetland habitats located within the Mole catchment area. The stretch of river through Leatherhead has been designated a Local Nature Reserve, while The Mole Gap forms part of a Special Area of Conservation and is an SSSI of European importance.
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Great North Wood heritage walk
The Norbury Yew, believed to be one of the oldest trees in Britain
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​The Great North Wood, which stands between Camberwell in South East London, and Croydon, is the nearest ancestral woodland to any capital city in Europe. It is divided into many fragments of Woodland including Dulwich Woods, Sydenham Hill Wood, One Tree Hill Reserve, Nunhead Cemetery, Camberwell Old Cemetery, Kingswood, Low Cut Wood, Gorm Wood, Devonshire Road Reserve, Lower Sydenham Woods, Crystal Palace Park and woodland, Norwood Park, to mention but a few.
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The historic Great North Wood is a unique urban natural heritage, home to rare species like the Jersey Tiger Moth, wood anemone, whitebeam and several species of bats. ​
Some of the oldest and most iconicveteran and ancient trees in the capital can be found in the arGreat North Wood, including the ancient oak in Stambourne Woods, William's Blake Angel Oak in One Tree Hill, the Vicar's Oak a lost veteran named after the legendary Vicar of Lewisham, the Oak of Honour (named after Elizabeth I), the Guardian of Beulah Heights, thought to be the oldest living oak in London, the boundary oaks of Wood Vale and Dulwich Park, to mention but a few.
The area is also home to some of the most extraordinary boundary woodland in London, some of which stands from the 18th century. The owners of the local milk farmsteads that spread along the foothills of the Norwood ridge allowed trees and hedges to grow on their boundaries to demarcate fields, parishes and wards.
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Leo introduces visitors to the history of Dawson Hill at the site of an old bricks works, as part of the Great North Wood heritage walk, September 2022