RSPB Minsmere

The ruins of Leiston Abbey chapel

The beach with WW2 tank traps

In the Domesday Survey in 1086 Minsmere was known as Menesmara or Milsemere.[6] It is recorded as having six households headed by freemen with one plough team.[7] The manor, which was in the Hundred of Blythling, was held by Roger Bigot.[7]

Ranulf de Glanvill, King Henry II's Lord Chief Justice, founded a Premonstratensian abbey on the marshes at Minsmere in 1182. The area was embanked to protect the abbey from the sea and to reclaim farmland, but still suffered several years of severe flooding in the 14th century. The site was abandoned in 1363, and the stone from the buildings was used to rebuild Leiston Abbey at a new location 3.3 kilometres (2.1 mi) further inland. The remains of the abbey church, fish pond and other buildings can still be detected below ground, but the only visible structure is the ruined chapel of St Mary, built within the nave of the former church.[8] The lower section of the chapel was built soon after the demolition of the abbey in 1363, and the brick upper parts are thought to have been added by former abbot John Green, who lived there as a hermit when he retired from his post in 1527. The site was abandoned in 1537 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the only further construction being a pillbox that was built inside the chapel during World War II. The ruins are a scheduled monument of national importance.[9]

Peat cutting took place at Minsmere from at least the 12th century, and a 1237 description of the coastline describes Minsmere as a port.[10] In a survey of 1587, an early Tudor period artillery battery, constructed sometime after 1539 at Minsmere,[11] was in ruins; the survey recommended that it be rebuilt.[12] A coastguard station operated at Minsmere in the 1840s in an attempt to control smuggling along this stretch of the coast.[13]

In about 1780 a sandbank closed the mouth of the Minsmere River, creating a large freshwater wetland on its inland side. The reeds that grew there were cut for thatching, and access was improved by using sand from the higher alluvial areas to build tracks across the marshes.[14] These marshes were enclosed and drained for agricultural use in 1812 and 1813,[15] following the passing of the relevant Act in 1810,[16] with the main sluice being built to control drainage to the sea.[5] The New Cut, a canal south of the river, was built as part of the drainage works, joining the river again at the sea sluice. The canal was used to transport the thatch crop inland by barge, its bridges being built particularly high to enable the bulky cargo to pass beneath.[14] The drainage was improved after 1846 using steam-powered pumps.[17] These were made by Richard Garrett & Sons of the Leiston Iron Works.[18]

The Eastbridge Windpump at the Museum of East Anglian Life, Stowmarket.

There were four windmill sites on the levels.[18] The Eastbridge Windpump was a smock mill built in the mid-19th century, probably by the millwright Robert Martin of Beccles.[19] It stood north of the New Cut. The mill worked a three throw pump with square pistons. The windpump was working until 1939 and collapsed in February 1977.[18] The remains were rescued by the Suffolk Mills Group in July 1977 and the mill was rebuilt at the Museum of East Anglian Life in Stowmarket in the early 1980s.[20] The Sea Wall Mill stood north of the New Cut but closer to the coast than the Eastbridge Windpump. It was a smock mill built in the early 19th century. The mill worked by wind until it was tailwinded in January 1935, breaking the windshaft and rendering the mill sail-less. The scoopwheel was subsequently worked by a Hupmobile petrol engine, and later by a diesel engine. The mill collapsed in the summer of 1976. A third smock mill stood south of the New Cut and seaward of the ruins of the chapel. Built by the millwright Collins of Melton, it was blown down in the 1920s and a Titt windpump was erected on the site to drive the scoopwheel. This windpump had sails 4.9 metres (16 ft) diameter. Another Titt windpump, with sails 7.6 metres (25 ft) diameter stood 1.6 km (a mile) south of this. Both Titt windpumps were standing in 1938.[18]

The levels were re-flooded during World War II to defend against invasion along the East Anglian coast. Military defences were built at Minsmere and neighbouring Dunwich, including pillboxes, anti-aircraft defences, anti-tank blocks and barbed wire defence lines.[21][22] The Army also used much of the heathland for military manoeuvres, including preparations for the invasion of continental Europe.[23]

Before the war, the Ogilvie family had owned and managed the area as farmland and as a shooting estate, planting many deciduous trees as part of their hunting management plan. After the war, they decided to leave the marshes undrained, realising their ornithological value.[23]

A bird hide overlooking the scrape, with black-headed gulls in the foreground

The RSPB had been considering the Minsmere site, at that time about 600 hectares (1,500 acres) in extent,[5] as a potential reserve from the late 1930s, and a management agreement was signed in 1947. The appointment of Bert Axell as warden in 1959 led to major changes in reserve management, which were in due course also adopted elsewhere. He realised that ecological succession would eventually lead to the loss of important habitats, such as bare ground on the heaths or open water in the reed beds, unless natural plant colonisation was actively prevented. He created the "scrape", an area with shallow water, islands and bare mud, by lowering land levels and managing the water level with new sluices. A circular path led around the scrape, giving access to hides on each of the four sides. In 1977, two years after Axell's retirement, the RSPB purchased the reserve outright.[23]

The Great Storm of 1987 destroyed 3,000 trees in one night. Many areas were reforested, but it was noticed that other badly affected woodlands nearby were colonised by woodlarks, so some recently acquired arable land was acidified and converted to heathland to encourage open-ground species.[23]

Minsmere is one of a small number of UK sites at which bitterns breed. In 1979, nine booming[lower-alpha 1] males were counted but the population at Minsmere has varied over time, reaching a low of only one booming male in 1991.[25] During the 1990s the existing reed beds were managed specifically for bitterns; when grazing marshes known as the North and South Levels were purchased, the North Levels were converted to reed bed and the South Levels to wet grassland.[23]

The Minsmere reserve covers about 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of reed bed, open water, lowland heath, grassland, scrub, woodland, dune and shingle vegetation.[23] The nature reserve, its habitats and wildlife, are protected under UK law as part of Minsmere–Walberswick Heaths and Marshes, which is a Special Protection Area,[26] a Ramsar Site,[27] a Special Area of Conservation[28] and a Site of Special Scientific Interest.[29] The site is also included in the areas covered by the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB)[30] and the Suffolk Heritage Coast.[31]

A bittern

As of 2017, 342 bird species have been sighted at Minsmere, of which 230 are annual and more than 100 have bred. In the 1990s the bittern was in serious decline with only one booming male on the reserve. Creation of ditches and pools and better water-level management led to 9–12 males being present annually, and application of these techniques elsewhere has revived the fortunes of this species in the UK as a whole. The stone curlew has also benefited from the creation of suitable bare-ground nesting habitat, and the reserve's population is now nearly 10 pairs each year, against a single pair in Suffolk in the mid-1990s. The avocet first started its recolonisation of Britain in 1947, four pairs breeding a month after the reserve was acquired by the RSPB. Numbers at Minsmere now vary between 40 and about 140 pairs per year.[23]

In 1971, the only nesting pair of marsh harriers in the UK were at Minsmere. The population of this polygynous species reached 17 nesting females in 2007, up from the more typical 8 to 10. Other important species are bearded tits, woodlarks, nightjars in open habitats, nightingales in the woodlands, and Dartford warblers, which returned to Minsmere's heaths in the mid-1990s, having been lost to the area six decades earlier.[23]

Many wildfowl winter on the reserve, including wigeon, gadwall and teal, and easterly winds can bring in passage migrants, sometimes in large numbers. These may include uncommon species such as bluethroats, wrynecks and dotterels.[23]

Minsmere's east-coast location and range of habitats make it a major site for rare species. Notable recent occurrences include Great Britain's first western swamphen in 2016,[41] a black-browed albatross in 2015,[23] pallid harrier and collared pratincole in 2014,[42] and Audouin's gull and red-flanked bluetail in 2011.[43]

Male silver-studded blue butterfly

Mammals found at Minsmere include a herd of about 300 red deer, otters, badgers and water voles,[23] the last being protected by active control of introduced American mink which have led to major declines elsewhere.[44] Other vertebrates include adders, small numbers of natterjack toads and 13 species of fish, of which common rudd is an important food source for bitterns.[23]

Over 1000 species of moths and butterflies have been found at Minsmere, including a large breeding population of the silver-studded blue. Rare species include the scarce tortoiseshell butterfly and Britain's only record of the moth species Catocala coniuncta, now given the English name of "Minsmere crimson underwing".[23] Threatened moths include the flame wainscot, Fenn's wainscot and white-mantled wainscot.[45] The reserve has been colonised by two insect species that are currently expanding their ranges, the European beewolf and the antlion, and it also hosts the hairy-legged mining bee and the minotaur beetle; the latter large insect is a food item for stone-curlews.[23]

Dead and decaying trees in the woodlands support a wide range of invertebrates and over 1500 species of fungus,[23] including rare species such as moor club, deceiving bolete and lion's mane mushroom.[46] The shingle ridges on the beaches hold a variety of uncommon plants including yellow horned-poppy,[47] red-tipped cudweed and round-leaved wintergreen.[23]