About the reserve

A meadow since Roman times. St Faith's Meadow is a former water meadow on the edge of the Itchen valley in Winchester, bordered along its western side by the Clarendon Way footpath and to the east by the River Itchen.

The site forms part of the River Itchen Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) while the river is also a Special Area for Conservation (SAC). 

St Faith's Meadow forms part of an extensive network of floodplain meadows that border the River Itchen, creating a corridor through the Itchen Valley.

A surfaced path runs along the Lockburn Stream until St Cross Meadows, showing beautiful views across to St. Catherine’s Hill Nature Reserve.

Enjoy a circular walk through St Cross Meadows and St Catherine’s Hill, full of bird song in spring and summer. This was part of the route which inspired Keat’s ‘Ode to Autumn’. 

Special features:

• Following the harvesting of willows and poplars in 2013 and conservation grazing, the SSSI Fen vegetation now boasts marsh marigold, ragged robin, yellow flag iris and figwort which can be seen to the west of the river.
• Listen closely for the ‘plop’ of a water vole disappearing into the river.
• Swallow and swift feed over the meadows and rivers, and if you listen carefully the grasshopper warbler, can often be heard ‘reeling’ in the evenings.
• Southern damselfly may be seen further downstream on the Lockburn stream.