Landscape in progress
After the Devil’s Punch Bowl purchase in 1905, and under Sir Robert Hunter’s leadership (d. 1913), the National Trust enjoyed great support in the area, which expanded the land under NT protection.
Three years later, in 1908, donations and fundraising led to the purchase of Ludshott Commons, through the help of Marion James, who also gifted the Trust Nutcombe Down and Bramshott Chase. Marley Commons was purchased in 1911 and Waggoners Wells in 1919. After the physicist John Tyndall died in 1931 his widow donated what is now Tyndall’s Wood. Highcombe Edge, the western ridge of the Punch Bowl – visible from this spot on the trail – was one of the land parcels near London bought by the Trust in 1937 with the legacy left by a judge, William Robertson, in memory of two brothers killed in the First World War. The memorial erected to them at Highcombe Edge is pictured below. More land was to follow.
At Hindhead, to help preserve the heathland, rangers have looked backwards. One reason for the huge decline in UK heathland in the twentieth century was that commoners such as George Mayes ceased to exercise their rights to graze stock, causing scrub woodland like pine and birch to return. So animals have been reintroduced. Several Exmoor ponies and around 40 Highland cattle live in the Devil’s Punch Bowl.
Meanwhile, since the old A3 closed in 2011 there have been ongoing efforts to reunite Hindhead Commons and the Devil’s Punch Bowl on either side of the road. It’s been re-seeded with heather, and the scrub on either side has been cut away so there are fewer barriers between the two commons for reptiles and insects, and more space for ground-nesting birds such as the woodlark and nightjar.
