About The Trap Grounds
The Trap Grounds form the last remaining wild open space along the Oxford Canal between the city centre and the northern suburbs. The site lies between the canal and the railway line, immediately south of the Frenchay Road canal bridge (grid ref. SP 503081, nearest postcode OX2 6TF). An information board on the towpath marks the entrance, at the start of a track called Frog Lane.
The site is owned by Oxford City Council and managed for conservation, recreation, and education by the Friends of the Trap Grounds, a group of local volunteers, in partnership with the Council’s Parks & Open Spaces team.
Since 2015 the whole site has been designated as a Local Wildlife Site by Oxfordshire County Council, which registered the land to the west of the stream as a Town Green in 2006, following a historic legal ruling in the House of Lords.
The site consists of three acres of reed bed (a rare fragment of a type of wetland habitat once common around Oxford) and seven acres of woodland and grassland — formerly waste-ground, and now a rich mosaic of wildlife habitats, including five ponds created by the Friends.
History of the Trap Grounds
The Trap Grounds were once far more extensive than they are today. A map of St Giles’ Parish dated 1769 names a large area roughly equivalent to the modern Burgess Field as ‘Extraparochial Lands’; this same area is labelled ‘Trap Grounds’ on the Enclosure Award plan of 1832, which names our little reedbed area as ‘Stone Meadow’. The name may be a corruption of the designation ‘Extra Parochial’, which denoted the site’s exemption from the payment of church tithes; or it may refer to the former practice of trapping fish in channels reaching across Port Meadow from the Thames (before the railway was built in 1850).
For at least 100 years the present site was owned by St John’s College, which latterly used it as a rubbish dump. In 1975 it was acquired by Oxford City Council, as a speculative venture, but it was left undeveloped and gradually became overgrown, but rich in wildlife. By the mid-1990s the reed bed had been invaded by scrub willows and was in danger of drying out, and the scrubland was being used as an unofficial rubbish tip and occasional destination for rough sleepers .The City Council lacked the resources to maintain it. Despite its unsavoury aspects, the site was valued by local dog-walkers and bird-watchers.
In Autumn 1995, a newly constituted group called The Friends of the Trap Grounds mobilised about 50 local volunteers, supported by Oxford Conservation Volunteers, to begin clearing the invasive willows from the reedbed, bringing light and air to the reeds. Tons of rubbish were removed from a filthy swamp; paths and glades were cleared; and snowdrops, primroses, and bluebells were planted along the stream. The first pond was created (close to the Frog Lane entrance) in the year 2000.
The Threat to the Trap Grounds
Soon after that, the City Council announced plans to develop the site with the construction of 45 houses on the scrubland and a road across it, to add to the total of almost 2,000 new houses and flats which had been built or were under construction along a two-mile stretch of the ‘canal corridor’ since 1997. This development would have contravened the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981), providing protection for threatened species including Common Lizards, Slow Worms, Water Voles, and Pipistrelle and Noctule Bats, all resident on the Trap Grounds. It would also have contravened the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (1995), with its commitment to protect Priority Species that included Trap Grounds residents and visitors Reed Bunting, Bullfinch, Turtledove, Song Thrush, Spotted Flycatcher, Buttoned Snout moth, and Water Vole. The development proposals also threatened many of the species targeted for conservation in the Oxfordshire Biodiversity Action Plan, among them Glow-worm and the Banded Demoiselle damselfly (both ‘flagship species’). Much of this rich diversity of wildlife would have been lost if the Trap Grounds woodland and scrubland had been developed.
A Historic Victory
On behalf of the local community, Catherine Robinson (Secretary of The Friends of the Trap Grounds) successfully argued at a public inquiry in 2002 that the Trap Grounds constitute a Town Green under the terms of the Commons Registration Act 1965, which affirmed the right of local people to the continued use of unfenced land for recreation, once it had been thus used as of right for at least 20 years.
Oxford City Council challenged the decision in the High Court, but the objection was rejected. In 2005 the Council appealed to the Court of Appeal, which found in the Council’s favour on a technicality. The court’s restrictive interpretation of the law effectively rendered invalid any future attempt to claim land as a Town Green or Village Green anywhere in the country. The case was therefore referred to the House of Lords. After a five-day hearing in 2006, the law lords ruled in favour of the Friends of the Trap Grounds. It was a historic verdict, in that it clarified the law and opened the way for other groups to claim similar open spaces for community use. (Click on the ‘Town Green’ page for a complete set of definitive texts relating to the case.)
Oxfordshire County Council accordingly registered the scrubland as a Town Green in September 2006. In February 2007 the Executive Board of Oxford City Council acknowledged the registration and voted to work together with local people to manage the Trap Grounds for wildlife and recreation. In June 2007 the campaign to save the Trap Grounds from development was recognised with an award presented by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE).
Since the Town Green verdict the Friends have created five more ponds, installed a boardwalk along the bank of the stream, and constructed a bird hide and an ‘insect hotel’. We have planted hundreds of trees and created new wildlife habitats, and we do regular maintenance work, keeping the paths clear of brambles and litter. And we organise guided walks, such as Dawn Chorus birdsong walks, and family events to introduce children to the secrets of the natural world.
Header photograph credit Nicola Devine