Pewley Down is a Local Nature Reserve on the southern outskirts of

Guildford Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, England, around south-west of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The nam ...

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

, adjacent to

Pewley Hill Pewley Hill is a hill, and a street so named, near Guildford in England. It links to the open space at Pewley Down and was used as the site of a semaphore station and a defensive fort in the nineteenth century. In the late 19th and early 20th c ...

. It is owned and managed by Guildford Borough Council. The site is on a hill offering views south to St Martha's Hill, Chantry Wood, and beyond.

History

Pewley Down was owned by the Austens, a family of local merchants, from the early 16th century. Following the death of Robert Godwin-Austen in 1884, it passed to

Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS Zoological Society of London, FZS Royal Geographical Society, FRGS British Ornithologists' Union, MBOU (6 July 1834 – 2 December 1923), known until 1854 as Henry ...

. Partly as a result of the Agricultural Depression, his properties struggled financially, and Henry was declared bankrupt in 1898. In 1907, the bankruptcy trustees began to construct a road across Pewley Down in preparation for dividing the land into plots for housebuilding. After local protest, Pewley Down was purchased by the Friary, Holroyd & Healy's Brewery and donated to the town of Guildford on 29 July 1920 to commemorate the conclusion of the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

as a peace thank offering with the condition that it be "preserved for time immemorial as a playground for the people of Guildford". The deed of conveyance was formally handed over to the mayor by Mr Charles Hoskins Master the chairman of directors. The site was designated as a local nature reserve in July 2006. An adjacent set of fields, now known as Pewley Down Meadows, were purchased by the community in 2021 and are managed by the

Surrey Wildlife Trust Surrey Wildlife Trust (SWT) was founded in 1959 as Surrey Naturalists' Trust and it is one of forty-six The Wildlife Trusts, wildlife trusts covering Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man and Alderney. ...

as a local nature reserve.

Nature

This site is an example of chalk downland, and has several species of rare flowering plants, including

pyramidal A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as triangu ...

and Man orchids. Invertebrates include 26 species of butterflies, including the small blue and

chalkhill blue The chalkhill blue (''Lysandra coridon'') is a butterfly in the family Lycaenidae. It is a small butterfly that can be found throughout the Palearctic realm, where it occurs primarily in grasslands rich in chalk. Males have a pale blue colour, wh ...

, and 119 species of bees, wasps and ants.

References

External links

Pewley Down Meadows
{{Local Nature Reserves in Surrey Local Nature Reserves in Surrey