Wild places

This site includes 120 acres of young woodland in amongst a popular nature discovery centre. The National Forest Charitable Trust is the Trust that owns Conkers has the wider objective of reclaiming derelict industrial landscapes, planting trees, creating recreational forests and parkland for the local and regional communities. 

Traditional meadows across several fields, bounded by tall hedges. Parts of the reserve are wet which brings a greater diversity of plants.

Cossington Meadows covers 86 ha and is the largest of the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust's six nature reserves in the Soar valley. The area was quarried for gravel during the 1980s and 1990s, the pits then being filled and the area relandscaped, with several deep holes in the north of the site filling with water to form lakes. The Trust has created new wader scrapes and grazes the grassland areas.

The Church of St Mary was originally built in the 14th and 15th century but has been extensively restored and altered.

This verge is being managed to improve biodiversity as part of the County Council/Parish Council verges biodiversity trial. It was surveyed in 2021 by NatureSpot volunteers but we would welcome additional wildlife records from the community, whether plants, animals or fungi.

Designated a Local Wildlife Site in 2005, the verge is located on the track running up to the entrance to Cottesmore Airfield by Thistleton village, and is 394 metres in length. The main habitat is mesotrophic grassland.

Ancient woodland covering 43.2 hectares, though largely planted with conifers. The wood lies just to the east of Cottesmore.

This verge is on the western approach into Cottesmore on the B668.  It is backed by a mature hedge (mainly Hawthorn, Elder and Blackthorn). Three sizeable trees are located along the verge, two Pedunculate (English) Oaks and a Sycamore at the eastern end.

The verge is being managed to improve biodiversity by managing it as a wildflower meadow so it can support a much greater variety of wildlife species.

This area of public open space, a rectangle of roughly 0.6 hectares, is located next to Main Street. It has been regularly mown for many years but the intention is to now establish a meadow strip of approximately 3-4m width around the periphery to improve biodiversity by managing it as a wildflower meadow so it can support a much greater variety of wildlife.

Mixed habitat including some 4 hectares of deciduous woodland with areas of open grassland leading onto  approximately 1 hectare of the Flood Retention area to the west. Sketchley Brook flows along the full southern length of the site plus an additional inflow from the north feeding the permanent wetland, sloping from north to south.

This thin strip of woodland is squeezed between the houses and Covert Lane. A path runs through the spinney providing easy access. It is believed to be a long-established woodland and part of the former Scraptoft Hall estate.

This woodland was once part of the Scraptoft Hall estate and is believed to be long-standing. Within the woodland there is a ruined grotto known locally as the witches cave.

A public footpath traverses the centre of the woodland and the site is well visited by local people.

This Woodland Trust woodland is just under 4 hectares and comprises a mixture of parkland and wooded areas, with a number of mature trees as well as the newly planted areas. It is located on the west of Croft village and sits between two other excellent wildlife sites - Croft Quarry and Croft Pasture.It was formerly the village cricket pitch.

Croft Hill stands 128m high in a largely flat area of Leicestershire. The Hill provides a number of habitats including broad-leaved woodland, scrub land, acidic grassland and two other distinct areas of grassland.

This Wildlife Trust reserve was glebe land, and is mainly unimproved grazing, with the exception of the south eastern corner, which has been top-dressed at some time in the past. The River Soar runs northwards and eastwards across the reserve, and was excluded from the improvement when much of the upper Soar was deepened and canalised in the early 1970s. Habitats include running water, river bank, and neutral and siliceous (sandy) grassland.