Sevenoaks Greensand Commons

In the years since the Development phase of the Project started, we have carried out extensive consultation with local people and organisations; we have brought together the main partners in the projects, visited other similar sites, talked to regular users of the Commons and introduced many more to the Commons, and carried out ecological surveys of all the sites. 

Please see the bottom of the page for downloads of the Ecological Scoping & Outline Nature Conservation Management Plans for the project sites.

We have delivered a number of projects and activities that have actively engaged people in finding out more and learning about the Commons and physical works to enhance nature conservation and access. 

People Engagement

Since entering its delivery stage, the project has seen remarkable success in engaging with local communities. Our engagement with residents of Sevenoaks, Westerham and Seal has been wide-ranging and has included events that are free, accessible via public transport and inclusive of underrepresented groups.

Kent Libraries

An exciting calendar of arts and crafts events has been delivered in local libraries, including pottery painting, card making and clay sculpture.

British Science Week Pot Painting and Oak Lifecycles, Sevenoaks Libraries

British Science Week 2022 promoted the theme of ‘Growth’. Our team celebrated this national event by hosting a free ‘Paint Your Own Plant Pot’ event at Sevenoaks Library for families, equipped with educational resources that helped children to learn about the lifecycle of the mighty oak tree!

Clay Sculpting and Food Chains, Kemsing Library

Kemsing Library provided a venue for the project to deliver a morning of free clay sculpture for families. Children were given clay and tools to help them build hedgehog and slug figurines. After building their hedgehogs and slugs, they were able to roleplay a food chain!

Butterfly ID and Painting at Westerham Library

Westerham Library helped the project to deliver a free ceramic butterfly painting event to families, which featured free educational resources for local sites, such as minibeasting hunts on Crockham Hill Common. The session also gave us the opportunity to promote our heathland restoration work and to highlight rare butterfly species that rely on the Commons.

Education and Employability

The project is networking with schools and colleges to provide assemblies, classroom activities and employability sessions. Our team have produced a menu of activities for schools, featuring activities that cover the habitats, plant and animal species of the Commons, the history of the Commons and information about their management. Local colleges have also received several employability skills workshops, with one-to-one tuition from our team on how to reach their conservation career goals.

Our team have also visited local Employment Fairs to promote volunteering opportunities in West Kent, and to raise awareness of careers in conservation and how to access them. In 2022, the project is collaborating with West Kent Housing Association to deliver virtual employability skills classes to local communities, encouraging nature-based careers.

Charity Collaborations

Several local charities have collaborated with the project, including The Prince's Trust and Arts Without Boundaries. Young people from The Prince’s Trust have joined the project for a day of holly thinning, sapling pulling and teambuilding exercises at Bitchet Common. The project has also collaborated with Arts Without Boundaries throughout 2022, providing educational and inclusive arts activities, such as a wildlife photography course and a woodland identification workshop that featured printmaking and a guided woodland walk (see below).

Care Homes

The project has worked extensively with Weald Heights Care Home in Sevenoaks to host a variety of educational talks and activities. These have included a ‘Bird Life of the Commons’ talk, followed by bird feeder making, and a ‘Butterflies of the Commons’ talk, followed by ceramic butterfly painting. Our team are also due to deliver activities soon to Forget-Me-Not Café in Westerham, to support local families caring for a loved one with dementia.

Conservation and Access

The project has worked closely with landowners, land managers and statutory bodies such as Natural England when planning works. Work has been delivered by a combination of contractors and a hugely dedicated group of volunteers. The National Lottery Heritage Fund requested a level of volunteer input which had a value of £60,000. We have met that target, so a huge ‘thank you’ to everyone who has contributed their time, knowledge and experience to the project. In turn, we have been able to support volunteers through training either informal or formal, including providing them with opportunities to gain Emergency First Aid, First Aid at Work, brush cutter and chainsaw certificates. Additionally, we provide some specialist walks and talks as a further ‘thank you’ for our volunteers.

One example of this work is the Bringing Back Bitchet Common Restoration Project, involving the restoration five-and-a-half hectares of heathland by removing rhododendron and birch, exposing the seeds from native heathland plants and allowing them to grow. 

Find out more here

The heathland habitat that can be found at the Commons is rarer than Amazonian rainforest!

The Commons contain some unusual and rare habitats for Kent, and while much of the area is dominated by woodland, there are significant sections of acid grassland and heath habitat which is of high biodiversity value.

Valued Habitats

The project sites sit at the centre of Kent’s Biodiversity Opportunity Area (BOA) for the Greensand Heaths and Commons. Kent Nature Partnership’s BOA Statement highlights the importance of their acid grassland sites and “species of acid woodland and heathland which are otherwise scarce in Kent”.

Sites of Special Scientific Interest

Species of Note

It is the mosaic of the Commons’ heathland habitat which provides a home to some less common plants and animals. For example, bilberry, wavy hair-grass, and ling can still be found in our Commons, but these plants, along with bird species such as nightjar, stonechat, woodlark, tree pipit and redstart have declined significantly as the more open habitats have been encroached upon.

The Commons still supports a huge variety of wildlife such as green and great spotted woodpecker, buzzard, sparrowhawk and many small mammals including dormice and hedgehogs – animals which are “declining at a rapid rate” (British Hedgehog Preservation Society).

The slug Tandonia rustica is only found here, alongside nationally scarce species of snails Acicula fusca and Rolph’s door snail, and Bitchet Common is the only known Kent site for the bristletail Dilta hibernica. Soft rush, greater bird’s foot trefoil lotus, red campion, hemp nettle, common fleabane, slender St. John’s wort and several fern species are found here, including lady fern.

We know that many of these species are still present in suitable habitats locally, but are no longer frequent on the commons. 

Discovering the Butterflies of the Commons

Citizen science plays an important role in the project. In the summer of 2020, butterfly transects were set up at Hosey Common and Crockham Hill Common using the methodology of the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme.

Prior to the surveys, there were very few butterfly records for either of the Commons. In total, our volunteers recorded 20 species across the two sites, with 18 recorded at Crockham Hill Common and 12 at Hosey Common.

The White Admiral – a priority species - has been seen on both Hosey and Crockham Hill Commons. They fly from mid-June to mid-August and lay their eggs on honeysuckle that is in dappled shade.

The improvement works the project is undertaking on the Commons will encourage more native wildflowers to grow and provide a food source for both the butterflies and their larvae. The adults like open glades, therefore clearing along paths will produce a corridor to encourage them to move around to discover other food sources.