Pond Restoration for Wildlife and Education

The project will restore the large barn ponds for aquatic life by desilting, creating open water for the first time in decades, and an improved, more diverse range of habitats. We will create new stone paths and bridges, allowing access for the less mobile for the first time, and a lateral platform so that more children can experience, learn and value the natural environment through supervised pond dipping and other activities.

Hill End welcomes many thousands of schoolchildren and other visitors from Oxfordshire each year to take part in outdoor education. They learn and explore our aquatic habitats in ponds and streams and many of our regular schools are very local, including Cumnor, Botley and Eynsham primaries.

We will open the wildlife area to our local community in the school holidays, after school and at weekends, which see many thousands of local people visit our site.