LCA5C Upper Test Valley Floor

Landscape Strategy and Guidelines

The Upper Test Valley Floor is a particularly intimate, almost secret landscape, with important historic and ecological features forming an important part of the River Test chalk stream SSSI and containing nationally significant water meadows. The overall strategy is to conserve the remote small scale pastoral character of Upper Test Valley Floor.

Land Management

Landscape Distinctiveness

Reinforce existing local features and conserve intimate and tranquil water meadow and woodland pattern

Maintain the characteristic water channel and drainage ditches, mill streams and pools

Agriculture

Encourage management of traditional water meadows and reintroduce management of farmland as seasonally wet pastures where appropriate

Resist change from pasture to arable

Discourage merging of remaining smaller fields

Hedgerows

Encourage traditional methods of hedge management

Maintain hedgerow field boundaries

Woodland and Trees

Management of the pollards and lines of poplar, which characterise some sections of the valley floor

Encourage the retention of hedgerow trees and individual specimens in the landscape

Conserve valley floor wet woodland and promote good woodland management

Encourage where appropriate new areas of woodland planting to mitigate visual distracters

Biodiversity

Conserve, enhance and manage riparian habitats

Encourage agricultural management that will protect and enhance remnant unimproved grasslands

Protect the water from further damage from pollution, soil erosion and construction projects

Seek opportunities for wetland creation and ditch reinstatement

Historic Landscapes

Protect the surviving water meadow systems including the earthworks and their structural remains

Land Use and Development

Built Developments

Conserve the existing settlement form and settlement free character of the valley floor

Infrastructure

Avoid overhead visually intrusive power lines and individual masts

Avoid increased suburbanisation arising from introduction of highway measures, which conflict with the predominant rural character

Improve the visual and acoustic containment of the A303

Recreation, Tourism and Access

Seek opportunities for additional access to the river for the public

Volume 1: LCA5C Landscape Character Types and Areas