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Status:     Site of Nature Conservation Importance (Lincolnshire Trust)

This site consists of a 3ha strip of scrub, rough grassland, willow scrub and reedbed, between the railway line and the Fossdyke Navigation. It has been designated as Basic Natural Stock for the following reasons:

1) The site is one of seven sites in Lincoln consisting predominantly of scrub (approx. 14% of the City's scrub habitat), as well as small areas of grassland and areas of fen and swamp habitat with a small Phragmites bed (area unqualified).   Some of the vegetation may represent remnants of the former Pyewipe Fen.

2) The site provides an important wildlife corridor for movement into the City from the countryside to the west. The site is part of the western Lincoln Green Wedge.

3) The site has an interesting mosaic of habitats that support an assemblage of species uncommon in Lincoln including hedgerow crane's-bill Geranium pyrenaicum. Woodcock, a wader usually found in conjunction with woodland, has been recorded here.

4) The site is a wetland close to Boultham Mere nature reserve and probably supports an overflow population of wildfowl and waders on passage migration and in winter. The site, together with Boultham Mere, Catchwater Drain and Swanpool, is an important complex of wetland sites supporting a large number of winter and passage migrant bird species.

Site includes Pyewipe Junction and land alongside Fossdyke, and Fossdyke Junction SNCIs.

Landscape Value

Area of rough grassland, willow scrub and reedbed between the railway line and the Fossdyke Navigation. Has important role in enhancing approaches to the City by rail and canal, as a component of a proposed Green Wedge, and in providing an interesting mosaic of habitats in the form of a corridor for wildlife movement between open countryside and the City and for proposed footpath/ cycleway/bridleway routes.