Turners Spring
9ac/4ha
Grid ref: TL 529 243
Updated 31/12/2023.
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A mixed deciduous woodland, including a strip running alongside the Bourne Brook, plus a meadow with a central wet area of sedge beds. It was given to Essex Wildlife Trust by the Cawkell trustees in 1975.
The main wood contains oak, beech, ash and sycamore, with areas of hazel and hornbeam coppice. Spring brings a fine display of oxlips, violets, dog's mercury and herb paris, with a profusion of naturalised daffodils on either side of the central path.
Cowslip, bugle, salad burnet, agrimony and meadowsweet flower in the meadow.
The woodland strip along the Bourne Brook has carpets of violets in the spring, with some oxlips and scattered wood anemones. Where the water from the sedge beds drains into a deep depression a tufa pile has formed – pendulous sedge grows here.
Over 60 species of bird have been recorded. Butterflies are mostly limited to the commoner species but include the ringlet.
Visiting
Reached via a footpath from the Stansted–Burton End road. The footpath is on the left about 600m beyond the bridge over the M11, marked by a footpath sign beside a black-painted village pump. Cars may be parked on the road nearby.
Accessible at all times.
Spring for wild flowers.
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