News / St Werburghs
Popular beauty spot to be closed off for New Year’s Eve
After almost 2,000 people descended on it for Bonfire Night, the volunteers who look after a popular beauty spot have made the difficult decision to close the area on New Year’s Eve.
Anna Spencer, secretary to the Narroways Trustees, says that the green space also known as the Mound has “become a go-to party place for much of Bristol and the resulting rubbish and destruction risk turning our nature reserve into the waste ground that some party goers think it is”.
This year will be the first time that Narroways, a grassy and wooded ridge in St Werburgh’s dissected by railway lines, will have been closed on December 31.
On Bonfire Night, some revellers broke trees to make fires and brought pallets to burn that left dozens of nails behind among other detritus including drug paraphernalia.
Spencer, part of a group of volunteers who have looked after the area since it was saved from development in 1997, says that they are “fighting a losing battle. The people who have recently been going up there in such numbers call it wasteland, which is what it is becoming.”
Narroways Millennium Green supports a community orchard plus a variety of semi-natural habitats including scrub, hedgerows, wildflower meadow and woodland – photo: Martin Booth
“After November 5, we could have wept,” Spencer told Bristol24/7.
“There was rubbish everywhere, at least a dozen huge bags when collected. The whole place was trampled, grass crushed, mud churned up, trees broken. Local people have said how shocked they were to see the state of the place, and have supported our decision to close it down.
“Narroways is a much loved place of peace usually, a quiet space close to the centre of Bristol for people to walk and spend time. But it won’t survive as a party place.
“We have photos from only a few years ago when the grass grew long and was full of wildflowers. No longer.”
Main photo: Martin Booth
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