Ebernoe Common National Nature Reserve

LOCATION

BALLS CROSS, WEST SUSSEX

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Our View

The Ebernoe Common NNR is a varied ancient wood pasture with ponds, streams, meadows and reclaimed arable land being converted back to woodland. It is a superb example of a Low Weald woodland with a history of traditional use. For centuries it was wood pasture, where commoners would turn out their cattle or pigs to graze and browse on young trees and scrub, beech mast and acorns, or on the grassy meadows in clearings. Purchased by the Sussex Wildlife Trust in 1980 when much of the woodland was under threat, repeated mowing and raking by volunteers has seen the return of a rich and varied flora which includes devil’s-bit scabious, adder’s tongue fern, many orchids, and the ancient woodland specialist, the yellow-flowered, spiky-leaved butcher’s broom. Other woodland and meadow wildlife found here includes nightingales, woodcock, purple emperor and silver-washed fritillary butterflies, some rare fungi including magpie fungus, lichens, and dormice and bats.

Ebernoe Common National Nature Reserve
Balls Cross

Features

About the area

Discover West Sussex

Divided from East Sussex back in 1888, West Sussex is so typically English that to walk through its landscape will feel like a walk through the whole country. Within its boundaries lies a wide variety of landscape and coastal scenery, but it is the spacious and open South Downs with which the county is most closely associated.

In terms of walking, you’ll be spoilt for choice. Studying the map reveals a multitude of routes – many of them to be found within the boundaries of the South Downs National Park – and an assortment of scenic long-distance trails leading towards distant horizons; all of them offer a perfect way to get to the heart of ‘Sussex by the sea,’ as it has long been known. If you enjoy cycling with the salty tang of the sea for company, try the ride between Chichester and West Wittering. You can vary the return journey by taking the Itchenor ferry to Bosham. 

West Sussex is renowned for its many pretty towns, of course. Notably, there is Arundel, littered with period buildings and dominated by the castle, the family home of the Duke of Norfolk, that dates back nearly 1,000 years.

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