STOKE HOLY CROSS JUBILEE MEADOW
The Swifts are back. Find out more about our new community project "Helping our Swifts"
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Where is Jubilee Meadow?
Jubilee Meadow is found between the football pitch and Harrold Place by following the tarmac footpath at the corner of the Pavilion car park on Long Lane and then it's immediately on your left
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Although it's very much a 'work in progress' and there's not much to see yet, you can visit Jubilee Meadow at any time. The meadow will be most colourful in Spring & Summer but it will be a haven for wildlife throughout the year
You can access Jubilee Meadow from the Playing Field car park on Long Lane
The nearest postcode is NR14 8LY
What3Words: forge.roofs.backward
Why make a wildflower meadow?
Meadows, other species-rich grasslands and hedgerows are an intrinsic part of the UK's natural and cultural heritage. Largely as a consequence of intensive farming methods, the UK’s remaining meadows now cover a minute fraction of the area they once covered. There were once natural wildflower meadows in every Parish but it’s estimated that we have lost a staggering 97% of all wildflower meadows since the 1930’s and 50% of hedgerows since the Second World War
Meadows and hedgerows can support a wide range of wildlife including wildflowers, fungi, bees, flies, beetles, spiders, moths , butterflies, reptiles, amphibians as well as small mammals, bats and birds
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The loss of these habitats has contributed to 40% of the UK’s pollinating insects, including 50% of our butterfly species, now being at risk of extinction
A flourishing wildflower meadow at High Ash Farm in Caistor St Edmund (photo by Dave Jones)
History of the Meadow
Jubilee Meadow has been cultivated farmland for centuries. Looking at the maps and aerial images available on Norfolk County Council's Historic Map Explorer website, the field that includes the Meadow and what is now Harrold Place is shown on the 1844 Tithe map of the village. Using the Historic Map Explorer site you can also see how the field looked from the air on the RAF's post WWII aerial photographic survey and again in 1988 when the County Council repeated the survey. You can view these together with contemporary map and other historic map layers on the Historic Map Explorer website which gives a fascinating view of Norfolk's changing landscape by visiting
A portion from the Ordnance Survey 25 inch First Edition map surveyed in 1880 & published in 1882 with the approximate area of the meadow highlighted. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/index.html
Jubilee Meadow is a section across two earlier agricultural fields that are shown on the 1882 Ordnance Survey (OS) map reproduced above. By the 1926 revised OS map these fields were amalgamated and in the 1988 aerial photo are shown as a being planted as a single unit. The tree lined hedge still separating the Meadow from the playing field is shown on the 1882 OS map as a boundary hedge with trees. The angled kink in the hedge at the NW corner of the Meadow possibly indicates an earlier layout where adjoining but unaligned fields had been incorporated into a larger field and then enclosed by a boundary hedge
Other changes to the fields since the 1882 OS map are the construction of the row of houses on Long Lane in the 1930's and more recently the development of Harrold Place in 2018 that has given us the opportunity for this project