Essex BNG at Priors Farm

Priors Farm, Fingringhoe, is a Greenshank-owned site, acquired in 2026, on land worked for sand and gravel since the 1930s. Quarrying stopped around 2020, and the site now sits alongside Fingringhoe Wick, Essex Wildlife Trust's first ever nature reserve, opened in 1961 and still the county's flagship site on the Colne Estuary. This scheme adds a substantial new block of habitat directly onto that existing reserve.

The centrepiece is 24 hectares of open mosaic habitat, created from the site's low-nutrient, free-draining quarry substrate, exactly what this rare habitat type needs.

‍

The site is also becoming a new home for Broad-leaved Cudweed, a little member of the daisy family with downy, grey-green leaves. It's one of Britain's rarest wildflowers, so we're delighted to translocate a new population here.

Alongside this, the scheme brings 33 hectares of woodland, scrub, grassland and ponds into active management, and retains the site's reedbed, hedgerows and saltmarsh within the Colne Estuary SSSI boundary untouched.