Wareham Common: Human Influences on the natural environment

Ancient Origins:

Superficially, looking out over the common from the town walls, it seems a totally natural scene but, like all habitat types in this country, it has been created by human efforts to try and improve it for our benefit. Signs of this ancient fieldwork can still be seen today. 

This active management of the Common goes back to medieval times, possibly even as far back as Saxon times, when the river was encouraged to flood in winter by sluices that were put in place near the river mouth. The river banks were raised so that once flooded the water was retained for a while rather than receding quickly back into the river as the river water levels dropped. This process of managed flooding caused silt to be deposited making the ground more fertile and so encouraging the growth of grasses and rushes for livestock to eat. To counteract the artificially extended winter wet period and to make the common suitable to put the town’s livestock on in the summer months they created several drainage ditches.

Most of the grazing now is by dairy cows but a small number of horses are also present

These people were just trying to exaggerate the natural processes of nature to create a better environment for their stock. Over the hundreds of years since the open pasture areas have continued to be cut in late summer and the cuttings removed to provide feed for the cattle in winter when the Common is, again, flooded. As a result of this management cycle the pastures have, in general, been agriculturally improved and have a fairly limited botanical interest but the drainage ditches remain with minimal disturbance and so are where the main abundance of plant species are found.

When the Common flooded in winter it is meant to be like that and it was encouraged to be like that; clearing the ditches would not stop it flooding and if they were cleared much of the plant life, and invertebrate life for that matter, would be lost. 

Coming of the Railway:

Steam hauled excursion trains to Swanage and Weymouth still occasionally use the line here 

Wareham Common probably changed very little in almost a thousand years but in the 1850s it was subject to a major change when the railway was built. The line out of Wareham towards Dorchester and branch line to Swanage rests on a high embankment and the embankment divided the common in two. Apart from the upheaval during the time of construction, which nature has long since recovered from, the construction of the embankment probably had three major effects.

Firstly, it created a dam restricting the flooding to a more confined area. The flooding tends to start at the seaward end and, as water flows increase during the winter, it then backs up to the higher reaches of the Common. Instead of a fairly shallow flood across a wide area, a much deeper and longer lasting area of flood water now accumulates to the east of the railway. The western side does flood every so often but usually does so later in the winter for a shorter period.

Secondly, up until the coming of the railway the grazing livestock were free to roam over a larger area and would generally move around finding new lush vegetation almost unmanaged. This prevented an area from becoming over grazed and over trampled. Once the railway embankment was in place the livestock had to be moved around from time to time by their owners.

Finally, during the construction of the embankment large amounts of stone and earth had to be brought in from elsewhere and this had the seeds of various plants from other areas in it.

These three factors had a profound effect on the Common and interfered with the established cycle of events. It is likely that breeding populations of lapwing, redshank and snipe were once present, as they often are on other floodplain grazing habitats, but the deeper, longer lasting floods at the eastern end would have swamped their previous nesting grounds. The coming of the railway certainly changed the Common for ever.

More Recent Changes:

Other more recent changes may have affected the ecology Wareham Common in a detrimental way too. 

1. As the land was too wet to plough and sow crops during the ‘dig for victory' campaign in the Second World War the number of animals grazing probably increased and this increased grazing may have continued after the war.  

2. The building of the road bypass which opened in 1973 further reduced the eastern block of the SSSI and increased the gap between it and the western end. Whilst a replacement area of land at Portland Meadow was provided for grazing it is of far less ecological value than the land lost. Wareham town desperately needed a  bypass however so a price had to be paid.

3. Another significant change has been in human usage of the common, especially at the eastern end nearest the town. The common was once a working area but in recent times it has become more of a recreational feature and is popular for dog walking and, in summer, children play in the river.

The effects of these changes are hard to quantify and, indeed, may be negligible but it seems likely that increased agricultural and recreational usage has probably increased disturbance and pollution to the ecology of the Common. By outlining the potential negative effects of these changes I am not being critical but just putting forward possible explanations as to why the Common has lost some of its ecological value in the last fifty years or so and why it is impossible to return it to the way it once would have been.