Cranham Grasslands and the "Missing Link"

Yesterday, I drove with my wife to meet friends in the picturesque Gloucestershire village of Cranham. It was eventful, as we had not reckoned with the recent new diversions for traffic on the A417. For sure, we had seen before, the extraordinary works going on - the so-called Missing Link development - as we have travelled these Gloucestershire roads many times. But somehow, this time, we found ourselves perplexed and delayed by the new diversions, which were taking traffic to new sections of the development, whilst work could be carried out on the areas familiar to us over time.

The village of Cranham is about 7 miles driving distance, (roughly 14 minutes by car) northwest of the former Air Balloon roundabout area. This is immediately adjacent to parts of the wider A417 Missing Link development boundary. Nearby locations are Cranham Wood and Buckholt Road.

In our visit, when we finally arrived and settled into our time with our friends, we discovered that the common at Cranham at the heart of the village is one of a number of very special “unimproved grassland” commons on limestone soil.

These ancient grasslands are rich habitats for wildflowers, butterflies, bees and many more creatures. In the 1930’s, unimproved limestone grassland covered 40% of the Cotswolds area. Now it covers just 1.5% – which is over half of the UK’s total remaining Jurassic unimproved limestone grassland.   The rich diversity of limestone grassland is lost when they are “improved” for farming by reseeding and fertilising.

When we discovered all this,  I immediately thought of the effects of those extraordinary earthworks on other areas of Cotswolds grasslands.

 The A417 “Missing Link” — What Is Being Built Across the Cotswold Escarpment?

The enormous roadworks visible around the A417 between Gloucester and Cirencester are part of the A417 Missing Link (Air Balloon) project. It is one of the largest road schemes currently being undertaken in the Cotswolds.

What  a bewildering collection of earthworks, new roads, temporary routes and roundabouts! I have discovered that this is in fact the construction of an almost entirely new strategic road across the Cotswold escarpment.

The essential purpose is to replace the notorious single-carriageway section of the A417 with a safer, more reliable and substantially better-engineered route.

So, I have had a look at the details of it all. I try not to be too hasty in condemning the destruction of yet more of the Cotswolds' natural habitats. Although from the outset, it is clear from research that The Missing Link does indeed concrete over some of the Cotswolds' precious remaining calcareous grassland. This includes a significant proportion of the unimproved grassland within the scheme boundary.

In compensation, the project proposes to create a far larger area of species-rich calcareous grassland and to connect habitats through ecological corridors and a green bridge. The numerical biodiversity balance is therefore strongly positive on paper. 

But the ecological question is not simply one of acreage: newly created grassland cannot immediately possess the history, soil ecology, species communities and maturity of established unimproved limestone grassland.

The true success of the scheme will therefore depend upon whether the new habitats survive, mature and become genuinely species-rich over the decades ahead.

When someone walks across these hills fifty years from now, will they see a road that damaged an already-fragmented Cotswold landscape — or a road around which a new and genuinely flourishing limestone-grassland landscape was successfully created?

I plan to expand this piece when time allows.