Wild Tolworth
Wild Tolworth, Kingston - London
Running alongside the Hogsmill River, Tolworth Court Farm is Kingston’s largest green space at 106 acres and has the potential to be a pioneering nature reserve. The site itself can be dated back to the Domesday Book in 1086 and its ancient hedgerows that criss-cross the site pre-date the eighteenth-century Enclosure Act.
The species-rich hedgerows support a locally important population of brown hairstreak butterfly. Mammals on the site include wood mice, bats, field voles and roe deer. The north corner consists of a wetland, supporting wildlife such as herons, little egrets and amphibians.
The project is led by Citizen Zoo who recently created a revised management plan and vision for the site that embraces rewilding principles to improve the health and diversity of its wildlife.
Take a tour of the site
Video created by Molly McNamara-Langton
The vision for the site
The vision for the site is to create a dynamic, mixed-mosaic nature reserve to support a more diverse and abundant set of wildlife. To do this, we are exploring the possibility of a mixed grazing regime to restore and enhance the site, while recognising the site’s long-standing cultural heritage.
The site is run in partnership with Kingston Council and The Community Brain, and has received seed funding from the Greater London Authority (GLA) under the Greener resilience fund to deliver a range of activities throughout 2022 to kickstart our efforts to rewild the site.
Community engagement is key to project’s aims, and the site is well set up to host corporates for team days
The project has the potential to highlight how rewilding can benefit the urban landscape and reconnect people with the natural world, while also celebrating its rich cultural heritage. Working with experts and local people this development funding will support the most comprehensive ecological surveys that the site has ever seen, to get a better understanding of the site’s existing ecology.
This exciting new project will help us gain a better ecological understanding of the site and create a long-term plan and vision for the farm with help from local people and visitors as they share thoughts and ideas about the area.
Upcoming Projects
Embracing conservation grazing to instigate a more diverse habitat requires investment in various areas. We are looking for funding to pay for:
Stock (pigs and cows) management equipment
Fees for the loaning of stock
Various items for site management, Inc., on-site storage and tools.
White stork nesting poles to attract white storks
Refugia for reptiles
The site already has a strong variety of species, but we’re aiming for a boost in biodiversity and bioabundance in the coming years
