The Broadland Stakeholders

The Broads is a landscape which has been sculpted over the millennia by water, ice and through changes in sea level.

But over the last few centuries it is people who have manipulated and exploited it for their own needs and purposes which has created a true cultural landscape historically and of the present day.

It is a very subtle landscape but one which attracts thousands of visitors a year. They come to enjoy the opportunity to be on or near to water and wildlife, to experience the open skies, the feeling of being away from it all and to be transported back in time. It is a magnet for photographers, artists and writers alike who are inspired by the seasonal contrasts, the peace and quiet, the play of light on the water, the mystery and history of the area. It has a unique sense of place.

The central connecting landscape features in the Broads have to be the rivers of the Bure, Waveney and the Yare and their associated tributaries. As these main rivers get closer to the sea, their valleys widen and pass through a vast open and flat landscape which encompasses the Breydon estuary and the areas known as Halvergate and Haddiscoe marshes.

This area, with its breath-taking panoramic views of sky and land, was once a vast estuary which offered a rich resource for people. But in order to take complete advantage of it they needed to tame it.

They settled on the edges of the wetland area and constructed buildings to protect the area from unwanted visitors and to provide access to and across the rivers; they used the rivers for transporting goods through the area and beyond our shores; they embanked the rivers so the that land behind was less susceptible to the tidal changes; they devised ways of controlling the water levels on the land to give them access to fuel, food, building materials, fodder and grazing for animals.

This elemental landscape with big skies, mills and marshes has an understated beauty much valued by people. It is a landscape that arouses passion. In the 1970s and 80s there was an outcry by environmentalists who were becoming concerned about the amount of grazing land put under the plough increasingly and the loss of the resulting wildlife. As a result of their lobbying, in 1985 the Broads Grazing marsh conservation scheme was introduced, this being the forerunner to the Environmentally Sensitive Area scheme which subsequently extended across the country.

For when the water levels are kept high and the water quality is good, the grazing marshes and their extensive freshwater dyke networks provide an important economy for farmers and graziers and habitat for wildlife and nationally rare plants.

If you go the Breydon estuary in the winter at low tide you will see thousands of birds feeding on the mud flats and at high tide these migratory birds will be on the surrounding marshes which provide another important habitat. It is a real spectacle.

The grazing marsh dykes are historic landscape features in their own right. The wet soils of the marshland and estuary provide ideal conditions for the preservation of the waterlogged archaeology, much of which lies undiscovered or un-explored as does the way that this wetland area related to the long gone settlements on the higher ground.

And last but not least the drainage mills. These vertical structures which punctuate the un-cluttered skyline of the Broads remind us of how man used to harness the power of the wind to pump water from the dykes.

These are all key features of this landscape which we would all be very much poorer for, if they were to be lost. For, despite its plethora of local, national and international designations it is still a fragile landscape and we hope we can inspire you to work with us to continue to protect it.

So why now ?

You may not be aware of this fact, but Halvergate has the greatest concentration of standing drainage mills in Europe and yet despite the best efforts by organisations such as the Norfolk Windmills Trust, a large number of structures due to neglect, redundancy and lack of skills are a heritage feature in danger of disappearing.

The proposed area is also in the top 10 most important locations for lowland breeding and wintering birds in the UK. The breeding birds rely on just a few sites which mean that all our eggs are quite literally in a few baskets.

And it is a location which has been recognised by English Heritage through research as having a great potential for nationally important wetland archaeology.

so as social and economic and drivers continue to play a big part in the future of the grazing marsh environment, it will be important to ensure that the landscape importance of the area and all those features and elements that contribute to its unique character are looked after for and enjoyed by future generations.

As part of your pack and on the tables in front of you, you will have received a draft matrix document which has been produced as a way of setting out the key themes based on these important landscape features. It incorporates outline aims and objectives and potential outputs. We would like your involvement to further shape the contents. James will now take you through the task we would like you to complete.