Arnside and Silverdale National Landscape

Arnside and Silverdale
National Landscape
The village of Arnside on the Kent estuary, with Arnside Knott behind
Location of the National Landscape in England
LocationCumbria and Lancashire, England
Coordinates54°10′35″N 2°47′29″W / 54.17639°N 2.79139°W / 54.17639; -2.79139
Area75 km2 (29 sq mi)
Established1972
Websitewww.arnside-silverdale.org.uk

Arnside and Silverdale National Landscape (legally and previously known as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty or AONB) in England, is on the border between Lancashire and Cumbria, adjoining Morecambe Bay. One of the smallest National Landscapes, it covers 29 square miles (75 km2) between the Kent Estuary, the River Keer and the A6 road. It was designated in 1972.

Description

The area is characterised by low hills of Carboniferous Limestone, including Arnside Knott (522 feet) and Warton Crag (535 feet), interspersed with grassland. Much of the area is covered by deciduous woodland, in which ash, oak, and hazel predominate. The coastal area contains large extents of salt marsh, although these are under threat from the shifting channel of the Kent Estuary.[1] The Leighton Moss nature reserve, owned by the RSPB, is the largest area of reedbeds in North West England, and is an Important Bird Area.[2] The bittern, one of the resident species, has been adopted as the logo of the AONB. In addition, there are fifteen SSSIs in the area; one of these, Gait Barrows National Nature Reserve, is home to some rare species of butterfly including the high brown fritillary.

Arnside and Silverdale are the main villages in the area. Other settlements include Warton, Yealand Redmayne, Beetham and Storth.

Landscape Trust

The National Landscape is supported by the Landscape Trust, a registered charity with over 1000 members. Its activities include ownership and management of several nature reserves and the production of a journal Keer to Kent.[3]

Principal summits

The following hills within the National Landscape have at least 30 metres of topographic prominence:

Hill Elevation Prominence Grid reference
Warton Crag 163 m (535 ft) 126 m SD491727
Arnside Knott 159.1 m (522 ft) 150.8 m SD456774
Summerhouse Hill 126 m (413 ft) 32 m SD501743
Cringlebarrow Hill 119 m (390 ft) 33 m SD499754
Whin Scar 117 m (384 ft) 93 m SD489790
Haverbrack Bank 109.9 m (361 ft) 44.1 m SD485805
Middlebarrow Hill 91 m (299 ft) 60 m SD463765
Thrang Brow 79 m (259 ft) 42 m SD491766
Heald Brow 74 m (243 ft) 57 m SD468740
Trowbarrow 73 m (239 ft) 33 m SD481760

References

  1. ↑ "Natural Areas: Morecambe Bay". English Nature. Archived from the original on 29 August 2006.
  2. ↑ BirdLife International (2015) Important Bird Areas factsheet: Leighton Moss. Downloaded from "BirdLife International - conserving the world's birds". Archived from the original on 10 July 2007. Retrieved 7 March 2014. on 08/01/2015
  3. ↑ "The Landscape Trust". Arnside and Silverdale AONB. Retrieved 17 January 2019.

Wikimedia Commons logo Media related to Arnside and Silverdale at Wikimedia Commons

This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.