Grafton Wood

56ha
Dog on a lead
Volunteer Group
An ancient woodland that's home to the rare brown hairstreak butterfly and Bechstein's bat.

Location

Nr Grafton Flyford, just north of A422
Grafton Flyford
Worcestershire
WR7 4PG
A static map of Grafton Wood

Know before you go

Size
56 hectares
P

Parking information

Limited parking by Grafton church; this is a private car park, please park considerately and visit at another time if it is full when you arrive. Please make a donation for parking in the honesty box. Approx 1.5 miles walk across fields.

Grazing animals

Cattle and sheep in fields on way to wood

Walking trails

Marked circular nature trail. The Wychavon Way passes through the woodland.

Access

Grass and earth paths; slippery in wet conditions. Access via kissing gate.

Dogs

On a lead

When to visit

Opening times

Dawn to dusk

Best time to visit

All year round

About the reserve

Jointly owned with Butterfly Conservation, Grafton has been at the heart of one of Worcestershire’s great conservation successes.  The wood is the epicentre of the only population of brown hairstreak butterflies in the Midlands.  These elusive butterflies, on the wing in August and September, have been the subject of a long-term project to ensure their survival.  By working with local landowners and encouraging appropriate maintenance of hedgerows, volunteers from both conservation charities have helped the butterflies to increase in range and in numbers.

Grafton Wood is an ancient semi-natural broad-leaved woodland and, until the 1950s was traditionally managed as coppice-with-standards that provided materials for products such as broom handles, pea sticks, hedge-laying, clothes pegs, spars for thatching and firewood.  Our management today aims to replicate this tradition and involves widening the rides through the woodland, coppicing and creating glades.  We also ensure that there are scrubby areas containing the young blackthorn bushes that are vital for brown hairstreaks to survive. The majority of the canopy at Grafton is ash and oak although we also have a small-leaved lime coppice stool that we think must have originally started as one lime tree at least a thousand years ago.  In many places there is a dense shrub layer of field maple, hawthorn and hazel. 

It’s not just brown hairstreak butterflies that visitors to Grafton Wood should keep a look out for.  The wood is also important for other woodland butterflies including silver-washed fritillaries and white admirals.  Notable moths include drab looper, rosy footman, Devon carpet and waved black. Many fungi have been recorded in the wood and it also supports a distinctive flora including herb-paris, adder’s-tongue fern, violet helleborine, spurge laurel and bird’s-nest orchid.  Birds including buzzard, goldcrest, treecreeper, lesser and great spotted woodpeckers are regularly seen in the wood and the adjacent meadows and orchards are important for green woodpeckers.  Bechstein’s bats were recently discovered in the wood and the colony is thought to be the most northerly breeding roost in the UK.  

Contact us

Eleanor Reast
Contact number: 01905 754919

Environmental designation

Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)

Location map

Garden warbler by Chris Gomersall/2020VISION

Garden warbler by Chris Gomersall/2020VISION

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