Gentleshaw Common is an area of common land situated in

Gentleshaw Gentleshaw is a village and hamlet in Staffordshire located about from Lichfield and about from Rugeley, and about north of Burntwood. Although it is now part of Longdon civil parish, it has a Parish Church and a primary school. Population ...

on the northern side of

Burntwood Burntwood is a former mining town and civil parish in the Lichfield District in Staffordshire, England, approximately west of Lichfield and north east of Brownhills. The town had a population of 26,049 and forms part of Lichfield district. ...

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

, England. The area is a

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of ...

as it is an area of globally rare lowland heathland. The common plays host to a series of fun public events throughout the year, including scrub bashing and

countryside In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, ...

walks.

Geography

The site occupies the west flanks of a low hill on the southern slope of the

Cannock Chase Cannock Chase (), often referred to locally as The Chase, is a mixed area of countryside in the county of Staffordshire, England. The area has been designated as the Cannock Chase Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is managed by Forestry En ...

upland plateau. It lies south west of the village of

and overlooks the town of

to the south. It is located in the parish of Longdon in the district of Lichfield in the south of the county of

. The land slopes down from 206m AOD in the northeast to 150mAOD on the southern border. The common is underlain with superficial deposits of gravelly

boulder clay Boulder clay is an unsorted agglomeration of clastic sediment that is unstratified and structureless and contains gravel of various sizes, shapes, and compositions distributed at random in a fine-grained matrix. The fine-grained matrix consists ...

, which in turn is underlain by

Triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period ...

Keuper Sandstone. The geology of the area has provided the site with weathered and impoverished acidic soils which has contributed to the unique flora able to grow on the site. Redmoor Brook rises in the south west flowing eastwards and eventually joining the

River Trent The Trent is the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, third-longest river in the United Kingdom. Its Source (river or stream), source is in Staffordshire, on the southern edge of Biddulph Moor. It flows through and drains the North Midland ...

Flora

The lowland heathland vegetation present at Gentleshaw Common has been classified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a

Site of Biological Importance A Site of Biological Importance (or SBI) is one of the non-statutory designations used locally by the Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Staffordshire County Councils in England to protect locally valued sites of biological diversity which are describ ...

(SBI) as it is one of the largest surviving areas of this reduced habitat in Staffordshire. The floristic character of the site has elements of both oceanic, western and northern heaths, as well as a well-developed transition from dry to humid and wet heath. Most of the site contains free draining soils which support a species-poor dry heath acidic grassland which has been extensively invaded by

bracken Bracken (''Pteridium'') is a genus of large, coarse ferns in the family Dennstaedtiaceae. Ferns (Pteridophyta) are vascular plants that have alternating generations, large plants that produce spores and small plants that produce sex cells (eggs ...

. The main flora present on the site are heather, wavy hair grass,

bilberry Bilberries (), or sometimes European blueberries, are a primarily Eurasian species of low-growing shrubs in the genus ''Vaccinium'' (family Ericaceae), bearing edible, dark blue berries. The species most often referred to is ''Vaccinium myrtillus ...

, mat grass, cowberry and other grasses. Similar flora is found in the

English Midlands The Midlands (also referred to as Central England) are a part of England that broadly correspond to the Kingdom of Mercia of the Early Middle Ages, bordered by Wales, Northern England and Southern England. The Midlands were important in the Ind ...

, however what makes Gentleshaw Common unique is a combination of low altitude and a sunny southern aspect which enables a floristic overlap with heaths typical of the warmer western lowlands of

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

. This floristic overlap is demonstrated by the abundance of

bell heather ''Erica cinerea'', the bell heather, is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae, native to western and central Europe. The plant provides a great deal of nectar for pollinators. It was rated in the top 5 for most nectar produc ...

and

western gorse ''Ulex gallii'', the western gorse or dwarf furzeA R Clapham, T G Tutin, E F Warburg, ''Flora of the British Isles'', Cambridge, 1962, p. 332 is an evergreen shrub in the pea family (Fabaceae), native to the Atlantic coasts of western Europe: sou ...

. In the southern part of the site soil drainage is impeded which has caused a significant area of mixed humid heath and acidic grassland to thrive. The main flora present in this part of the site are

purple moor-grass ''Molinia caerulea'', known by the common name purple moor-grass, is a species of grass that is native to Europe, west Asia, and north Africa. It grows in locations from the lowlands up to in the Alps. Like most grasses, it grows best in acid so ...

cross-leaved heath ''Erica tetralix'', the cross-leaved heath, is a species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae, native to western Europe, from southern Portugal to central Norway, as well as a number of boggy regions further from the coast in Central Europe ...

, degenerate heather, heath rush, compact rush, green-ribbed sedge and

crowberry ''Empetrum nigrum'', crowberry, black crowberry, or, in western Alaska, blackberry, is a flowering plant species in the heather family Ericaceae with a near circumboreal distribution in the Northern Hemisphere. It is usually dioecious, but there ...

. A shallow valley draining into Redmoor Brook in the southeast area of the site has peat soils, which support rare wet heathland species. Species present include; bog mosses, common cotton grass, star sedge,

round-leaved sundew ''Drosera rotundifolia'', the round-leaved sundew, roundleaf sundew, or common sundew, is a carnivorous species of flowering plant that grows in bogs, marshes and fens. One of the most widespread sundew species, it has a circumboreal distribution ...

cranberry Cranberries are a group of evergreen dwarf shrubs or trailing vines in the subgenus ''Oxycoccus'' of the genus ''Vaccinium''. In Britain, cranberry may refer to the native species ''Vaccinium oxycoccos'', while in North America, cranberry ...

and

bog asphodel ''Narthecium ossifragum'', commonly known as bog asphodel, Lancashire asphodel or bastard asphodel, is a species of flowering plant in the family Nartheciaceae. It is native to Western Europe, found on wet, boggy moorlands up to about in ele ...

Fauna

The fauna present on Gentleshaw Common is not as rich as its flora, however

meadow pipit The meadow pipit (''Anthus pratensis'') is a small passerine bird, which breeds in much of the Palearctic, from southeastern Greenland and Iceland east to just east of the Ural Mountains in Russia, and south to central France and Romania; an isol ...

, common lizard and

green hairstreak The green hairstreak (''Callophrys rubi'') is a small butterfly in the family Lycaenidae. Etymology The genus name '' Callophrys'' is a Greek word meaning "beautiful eyebrows", while the species Latin name ''rubi'' derives from ''Rubus'' (bramb ...

have been recorded.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Lichfield District Council: Gentleshaw Common
Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Staffordshire Lichfield District Cannock Chase