Abbotts Hall Farm

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This coastal farm was bought by Essex Wildlife Trust in 2000. It is the Trust's headquarters, and also a demonstration site for sustainable coastal defence.

The coastal realignment project at Abbotts Hall Farm was designed to recreate lost habitats by allowing sea water back on to the land reclaimed when the seawall was built. The seawall was breached in five places in October 2002 and this has restored 200 acres of mudflat, saltmarsh and coastal grassland, which sheep are now back grazing as in they used to in the past.

The site has a network of surfaced tracks with signposted nature trails, a large freshwater lake with nesting islands and a kingfisher bank, and several ponds. Two bird hides give good views over the developing saltmarsh and the Salcott Channel, and a third over the lake.

For over 30 years the previous cropping regime was dominated by wheat. Now the Trust is growing a wide range of crops, including wild bird seed mixes.

Conditions for wildlife have been improved in other ways by planting and coppicing hedges, leaving uncultivated field margins, and creating beetle banks across the centre of fields to encourage predatory insects.

As a result, the skylark population has increased along with many species of breeding bird, including yellowhammers, whitethroats and wagtails. Overwintering finches and thrushes feed on the food-rich field margins and in the hedgerows. Water voles breed on the stream and round the lake.

Many waders and wildfowl feed on the saltmarsh, and peregrine falcons and marsh harriers often fly through looking for prey. On the freshwater lake you may see water rail, kingfisher and little egret.