Preston Guild City

Nature reserves in Preston: the habitat sites on the river corridor

Six small sites, managed for wildlife, and mostly met by accident from the Guild Wheel.

Preston's nature reserves are a different proposition from its parks. They are small, they are managed for habitat, and several of them have no facilities at all. The paths are rougher, the mowing is minimal or absent, and standing deadwood is left where it falls because that is the point.

Almost all of them sit on the River Ribble corridor or on one of its tributary valleys, which is where the land was too steep or too wet to build on. The practical consequence is that they are strung along the eastern and southern edge of the city, with none in the middle of it, and most people encounter them from the Guild Wheel, not by setting out to visit one.

The six sites

Each carries its own sheet below. They are listed in rough order from the city centre outwards along the river, which is also the order you would meet them walking east from Avenham Park.

What to expect, and what not to

None of these sites is a visitor attraction. There are no facilities and the waymarking is limited. After rain several of them are genuinely muddy, and the word is chosen carefully. Footwear matters more here than anywhere else in the city.

What they offer is the Ribble valley's woodland and grassland habitat at close range, within walking distance of a city centre. Haslam Park is the exception and the easiest introduction, because it sits inside a formal park with paths and a canal towpath alongside.

Access arrangements differ from site to site: they are managed by different bodies and change. The parks and outdoors index covers the formal parks, which are the better choice if you want a surfaced path.

Why the reserves sit where they do

Almost all of them are on the Ribble corridor east of the city, and that is not a coincidence. A river floodplain is the land that was never worth building on, so it stayed unbuilt while the city grew around it, and what was left is now a more or less continuous band of woodland, scrub and wet grassland running from the edge of the built-up area out towards Samlesbury. The reserves are stretches of that band with paths and a name.

One of them breaks the pattern. Haslam Park's reserve is west of the centre, on the Lancaster Canal, and it sits inside a designed park. That makes it the easiest of the six to reach and the least like the others in character: a piece of unmanaged ground with a Victorian park on one side of it.

What the ground is like

These are not surfaced sites. Paths are earth, they hold water, and on the river reserves they can be under it after heavy rain. The corridor is steep in places where the land drops to the Ribble, and the drop is unfenced. None of that makes the reserves difficult; it makes them different from the parks, and the difference is worth knowing before setting out, not on arrival.

An avenue of mature trees beside water in a Preston park
Fig. 01 — the river corridor at the city end, before it narrows into the reserves

Questions about Nature reserves in Preston

How many nature reserves are there in Preston?

Six carry their own sheets here: Fishwick, Boilton Wood, Grange Valley, Hills and Hollows, Pope Lane Field, and the reserve area inside Haslam Park.

Are Preston's nature reserves suitable for a casual walk?

Haslam Park's reserve is, because it sits inside a formal park with surfaced paths. The others are managed for habitat, with rough paths, minimal waymarking and real mud after rain.

Where are the reserves in relation to the city?

Almost all of them sit on the River Ribble corridor or a tributary valley, along the eastern and southern edge of Preston, which is where the ground was too steep or too wet to build on.

Can I reach the reserves from the Guild Wheel?

Yes, and that is how most people meet them. Fishwick and Boilton Wood are immediately off the eastern river section of the Wheel, though neither is signed from the route as a destination.