Hilly Fields is a 37.5 hectare Local Nature Reserve in

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colches ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

. It is owned and managed by

Colchester Borough Council Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colchest ...

. It is also a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

as it is in a late

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

site and Roman

Camulodunum Camulodunum (; la, ), the Ancient Roman name for what is now Colchester in Essex, was an important castrum and city in Roman Britain, and the first capital of the province. A temporary "strapline" in the 1960s identifying it as the "oldest re ...

. The site has diverse habitats of grassland, woods, hedges, scrub, ponds, and marsh. The grassland is grazed by rabbits, and invertebrates include minotaur beetles and

beewolf Beewolves (genus ''Philanthus''), also known as bee-hunters or bee-killer wasps, are solitary, predatory wasps, most of which prey on bees, hence their common name. The adult females dig tunnels in the ground for nesting, while the territorial m ...

wasps. The woodland is mainly oak, ash and hawthorn, and the pond banks have

reedmace ''Typha'' is a genus of about 30 species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the family Typhaceae. These plants have a variety of common names, in British English as bulrush or reedmace, in American English as reed, cattail, or punks, in A ...

and

reed sweet-grass ''Glyceria maxima'' (syn. ''G. aquatica'' (L.) Wahlenb.; ''G. spectabilis'' Mert. & W.D.J. Koch; ''Molinia maxima'' Hartm.; ''Poa aquatica'' L.), commonly known as great manna grass, reed mannagrass, reed sweet-grass, and greater sweet-grass is a ...

. There is access from Sussex Road.

References

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