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