A shower of rain finds Nipstone Rock. After days of oppressive heat, there’s a scent released from the heath: peaty earth, heather, glistening stone. Smell is an associative sense and, like a shared memory, we’re returned to a place from an earlier age that is refreshed – innocent yet fiercely “singular”, as Tom Wall, who was the first warden of the Stiperstones national nature reserve (NNR), puts it.
This feeling of restoration is why we’re here. Rain dampens a group of conservationists at the Nipstone Rock, but not their enthusiasm to celebrate new additions to the Stiperstones NNR, tripling its size. Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, says the extended Stiperstones is number 11 of the 25 new NNRs that are being created under the “King’s series” banner. The series marks a change: from 70 years of traditional protection of remnants of wildlife habitats to a focus on the ecological restoration of landscapes and creating a jigsaw of places for communities and the natural world.
This is nature restoration based on the “Lawton principles” of bigger, better, more and joined-up habitats, making them resilient ecological networks. Here, we’re celebrating in particular the inclusion of the Middle Marches Community Land Trust’s new sites at Minsterley Meadows – which hold 5,000 green-winged orchids, and Norbury Hill, a crucial stepping stone between the upland heaths of the Stiperstones and the Long Mynd – in the Stiperstones NNR. A remarkable achievement for a community organisation.
At Nipstone Rock 25 years ago, I reported on a restoration scheme called “Back to Purple”. Then, a plantation of conifers was felled, a horse pulled a hawthorn tree to harrow the blanket of conifer needles, and seed was sprayed by helicopter. The resulting dense swathes of deep heather are wonderful, particularly for the fabulous emperor moth.
I was as fascinated then as I am now about what it is we are restoring. The singularity of the Stiperstones landscape is mysterious and strange, qualities that persist beyond human intervention. We cannot restore its old mining communities; or the novels of Mary Webb, set in this world “betwixt and between” ours and the “world of faery”; or what DH Lawrence described as “the old savage England”. Our obligation now is to the more-than-human. They hold the magic of this place.
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount