Why is the Ridge special?
Habitats | Hillforts | Access | Archaeology
The landscape character of the area is dominated by a discontinuous sandstone ridge extending for 30 km from the town of Frodsham in the north to Bickerton in the south, flanked by an extensive area of glacial sands and gravels in the east around Delamere Forest.
Although the Ridge only reaches heights of 123m in the north and 227m at Raw Head in the Peckforton Hills in the south, it is visually very prominent rising sharply from the Cheshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire Plains to the west, south and east, and the Mersey and Weaver Valleys to the north. The top of the Ridge affords spectacular long distance views across Cheshire and beyond into North Wales, the Peak District, Shropshire and Merseyside.
The area is recognised nationally as being distinctive, and largely coincides with Joint Character Area No. 62 originally identified by the Countryside Commission, English Nature and English Heritage. It primarily comprises three separate Landscape Character Area Types in Cheshire's emerging Landscape Character Assessment:
• Sandstone Ridge
• Sandstone Fringe
• Woodland, Heath, Meres and Mosses
It lies within English Nature's Meres and Mosses Natural Area and includes 4 Areas of Special County Value identified by Cheshire County Council.
Research undertaken to define an Ecological Network for Cheshire has identified the Ridge as one of the most important landscapes in the County and an historically and ecologically rich area. Consequently, it has been chosen as the first of three phases to create an enhanced ecological network across Cheshire by 2020.
The area has had a significant impact on the culture, social and environmental history of Cheshire. The drier lands of the Ridge are believed to have been a focus for early settlement in the county. The area contains a wide and diverse range of archaeological sites, many of national or regional significance including a chain of prehistoric hillforts and burial mounds at Helsby, Woodhouse, Eddisbury, Kelsborrow, Beeston and Maiden Castle, and Roman roads, the only known Roman Villa in Cheshire, Anglo-Saxon crosses, Medieval castles and moated sites, deserted villages, historic houses, the medieval forest of Delamere, historic copper mines, canals and railways. In addition to the major sites there are a large number of locally significant features including old quarries, parish and township boundaries.
The settlement pattern today is a mixture of large estates with scattered farms and small villages, predominantly built using red brick, although local sandstone was historically important. Just 2% of the area is urban: the area contains no large towns, the largest settlements being Frodsham and Helsby at the northern end and Tarporley at its centre. The Ridge is bisected by the Beeston Gap which has historically been exploited for transportation routes, including road, rail and canal. Construction sand is extracted from numerous quarries in the Delamere area: their restoration to lakes for recreation and nature conservation having a significant impact on the local landscape. Delamere was a Royal Forest and hunting ground, disafforested in 1812; the remaining Crown woodlands were passed to the Forestry Commission in 1919 and have since been managed for timber production and increasingly recreational access (500,000 visitors annually).
The area is predominantly rural. Grass production, primarily for dairy farming, is the main land use, although increasing amounts of maize and arable are found on the gentler slopes and glacial sands. Some permanent pastures of poorer quality and rougher texture are found locally and support populations of acid-loving wildflowers. There is an historic pattern of hedged fields and locally sandstone walls, more regular in shape than the surrounding plain, with scattered mature hedgerow trees. Small scale features, such as field ponds, are associated with the lower ground.
Habitats | Hillforts | Access | Archaeology