Cuttle Brook Nature Reserve
What is Cuttle Brook?
The nature reverse is a unique piece of ‘semi-wild’ countryside free from roads but just a few minutes walk from Thame Town Centre. Meandering right through the reserve is a tributary of the River Thame called the ‘Cuttle Brook’, which springs to life in the Chilterns. Within the reserve you’ll find meadows, woods, wetland areas, plenty of wildlife and a family picnic area. Every visit to Cuttle Brook is an adventure, each season offering its own mystery and variety – the first flowers of spring, the meadows in a summer haze, the colours in the autumn and the frosts of winter.
Used over centuries for grazing there are also signs of the mediaeval ‘open field’ ploughing system, with its ‘ridge and furrow’ humps and bumps. The site was purchased by Thame Town Council in 1978. To protect the nationally scarce flood-plain of wet grasslands, the area became designated as a Local Nature Reserve in 1995.
It is now managed for nature conservation, much of the work being done by ‘Cuttle Brook Conservation Volunteers’.
How to help
The Cuttle Brook Conservation Volunteers meet twice monthly (at 10am on the 3rd Sunday and last Wednesday each month) to share hands-on tasks such as mowing paths, improving access for all, building or maintaining boardwalks and bridges, creating seats, ‘laying’ hedges. For the less physical tasks, there are plenty of opportunities for bird-watching, making surveys of plants and wildlife, and taking photographs and videos.
How to find us
The area is open at all times, with nine entrances. It’s on the west side of Thame, Oxfordshire, between the Southern Road Recreation Ground, St Joseph’s School, Lord Williams’s Upper School and The Phoenix Trail. Free parking is normally available by the Scout Hut off Southern Road.
Postcode OX9 2DZ, OS Map Ref 702 075