Top 7 Natural Monuments around Stratford Upon Avon

The Welcombe Hills and Clopton Park offer delightful walks through grassland and woodland. Woolly thistle, quaking-grass and the diminutive adder’s-tongue grow in the grasslands where ant hills created by yellow meadow ants are a distinctive feature. The woodland contains oak, horse-chestnut and beech with English elm. Birds are plentiful, with great spotted woodpecker, sparrowhawk, little owl, treecreeper and finches enjoying the woodland where ravens breed in spring. Brimstone butterflies are numerous in the spring sunshine. History of the Welcombe Hills: a Shakespearean tale The reserve may have got its name from a historic well found here with its inscription 'SJC 1686'. Margaret, daughter of William Clopton who died in 1592 supposedly drowned here. It was around this time that Shakespeare was writing his famous play, Hamlet, and its believed that this tragic event provided the inspiration for his 'Ophelia' and her lonely death.

National Trust property with expansive grounds and deer park.

Bloody steep! But worth it

Great day out good for a picnic

History of Oakley Wood There has been woodland here since way back in the 16th Century but much of it was replanted with Scots pine. There are now large areas of conifer with some broadleaf trees and scrubland mixed in. Warwickshire Wildlife Trust have longer term plans to restore the wood back to native broadleaf trees.

Standing at 856 feet (261 m), Ebrington Hill is the highest point in Warwickshire. From the summit, you can see Birmingham’s skyline to the north and the grand ridge of the Malvern Hills to the west. The hill is topped with radio masts and pleasant crop fields.

Lobbington Meadow is an unimproved species-rich hay meadow which faces north east on the banks of the River Dene and exhibits ridge and furrow topography. The meadow overlies Lias clays and shales which have given rise to a calcareous soil. This is reflected in the herb-rich vegetation which is the lady’s bedstraw Galium verum variant of the crested dog’s-tail Cynosurus cristatus-common knapweed Centaurea nigra grassland. This grassland type was once widespread and common in some parts of Britain, particularly the Midlands, but due to agricultural improvement it has declined severely during the twentieth century. In several counties in the East Midlands it has almost disappeared and in Warwickshire very few sites are known. The meadow has an exceptionally herb-rich tight sward and the density of herbs is very striking. Among the wide range of grass species present, characteristically none appear dominant. The most abundant species are crested dog’s-tail, red fescue Festuca rubra, common bent Agrostis capillaris and sweet vernal grass Anthoxanthum odoratum. Yellow oat-grass Trisetum flavescens, quaking grass Briza media and meadow barley Hordeum secalinum are also frequent. Herbs characteristic of this type of grassland and found in abundance in this meadow include common knapweed and lady’s bedstraw and locally abundant, spiny restharrow Ononis spinosa, salad burnet Sanguisorba minor and pepper saxifrage Silaum silaus. Cowslips Primula veris are frequent and dwarf thistle Cirsium acaulon, is occasional. County rarities present m the meadow include dropwort Filipendula vulgaris and green-winged orchid Orchis morio. 4.68 ha Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)

The Lucy family owned the land since 1247. Charlecote Park was built in 1558 by Sir Thomas Lucy, and Queen Elizabeth I stayed in the room that is now the drawing room. Although the general outline of the Elizabethan house remains, nowadays it is in fact mostly Victorian. Successive generations of the Lucy family had modified Charlecote Park over the centuries, but in 1823, George Hammond Lucy (High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1831) inherited the house and set about recreating the house in its original style. Charlecote Park covers 185 acres (75 ha), backing on to the River Avon. William Shakespeare has been alleged to have poached rabbits and deer in the park as a young man and been brought before magistrates as a result. From 1605 to 1640 the house was organised by Sir Thomas Lucy. He had twelve children with Lady Alice Lucy who ran the house after he died. She was known for her piety and distributing alms to the poor each Christmas. Her eldest three sons inherited the house in turn and it then fell to her grandchild Sir Davenport Lucy. In the Tudor great hall, the 1680 painting Charlecote Park by Sir Godfrey Kneller, is said to be one of the earliest depictions of a black presence in the West Midlands (excluding Roman legionnaires). The painting, of Captain Thomas Lucy, shows a black boy in the background dressed in a blue livery coat and red stockings and wearing a gleaming, metal collar around his neck. The National Trust's Charlecote brochure describes the boy as a "black page boy". In 1735 a black child called Philip Lucy was baptised at Charlecote. The lands immediately adjoining the house were further landscaped by Capability Brown in about 1760. This resulted in Charlecote becoming a hostelry destination for notable tourists to Stratford from the late 17th to mid-18th century, including Washington Irving (1818), Sir Walter Scott (1828) and Nathaniel Hawthorn (c 1850). Charlecote was inherited in 1823 by George Hammond Lucy (d 1845), who married Mary Elizabeth Williams of Bodelwyddan Castle, from whose extensive diaries the current "behind the scenes of Victorian Charlecote" are based upon. GH Lucy's second son Henry inherited the estate from his elder brother in 1847. After the deaths of both Mary Elizabeth and Henry in 1890, the house was rented out by Henry's eldest daughter and heiress, Ada Christina (d 1943). She had married Sir Henry Ramsay-Fairfax, (d 1944), a line of the Fairfax Baronets, who on marriage assumed the name Fairfax-Lucy. From this point onwards, the family began selling off parts of the outlying estate to fund their extensive lifestyle, and post-World War II in 1946, Sir Montgomerie Fairfax-Lucy, who had inherited the residual estate from his mother Ada, presented Charlecote to the National Trust in-lieu of death duties. Sir Montgomerie was succeeded in 1965 by his brother, Sir Brian, whose wife, Lady Alice, researched the history of Charlecote, and assisted the National Trust with the restoration of the house.