Beacon Hill Conservation Park, located near Newark is one the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust’s 43 nature reserves across Nottinghamshire and was donated to the Trust in 2001 by British Gypsum (now part of Saint-Gobain) - a long-standing business supporter of the Trust.   

This year welcomes 20 years of the park being open to the public to enjoy and thanks to Saint-Gobain’s generous funding we have celebrated this by installing a new Welcome sign at the park on Beacon Hill Road. 

Over the years Saint-Gobain companies British Gypsum and Formula (which operates the Newark quarry and factory sites) have helped with maintaining the reserve through employee volunteering and donating new benches for the public to use.  

Adam Garbutt, Mine Technical Engineer at Saint-Gobain Formula’s Bantycock Quarry near Newark said: “Saint-Gobain has enjoyed a positive working partnership with Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust for many years and it is a pleasure to celebrate this Beacon Hill anniversary in such a practical way.  We hope many people continue to come and enjoy this haven for nature in Nottinghamshire.” 

Welcoming the continued support of Saint-Gobain Formula, Wayne Ball, the Trust’s Head of Nature Recovery (South) said: “Beacon Hill Park is a great place for wildlife and local people and 20 years on from it first being open to the public, the new sign supported by Saint-Gobain will mean more people will be aware that it is open as a place for people to connect with nature on their doorstep.”

Beacon Hill Conservation Park 

The 19-hectare nature reserve consists of an extensive network of habitats of significant wildlife value including scrub, woodland, hedgerows, and grassland. The large central area of the reserve was previously a landfill site and has been restored as a wildflower meadow with a wood gulley at the southern edge. The reserve is home to a wide range of biodiversity with notable species found on the site are fox, grey squirrel, buzzard, kestrel, tree creeper, rabbit, skylark, meadow pipit, ash, field maple, hawthorn, pedunculate oak, sycamore, cow parsley, field horsetail, hedge woundwort, hoary ragwort, primrose, red clover, white clover, wild clematis, wild parsnip, yarrow and moth species such as Fern, Haworth’s pug, marbled coronet, cream wave and scorched wing. 

The area was originally owned and mined for gypsum by British Gypsum in the first of part of the last century.  Newark Town Council and Nottinghamshire County Council later used the excavations as a landfill site. When the land filling operations were completed part of the original site was sold and transformed into the Industrial Estate which is adjacent to the reserve.  British Gypsum were aware of the environmental value of the remaining area of the site and employed EMEC Ecology, the consultancy company of the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, to make a full assessment of the area's wildlife value and to draw up detailed proposals. Following discussions between British Gypsum, Newark and Sherwood District Council and the Trust, plans to create the Beacon Hill Conservation Park were agreed and the land was transferred to the Trust on May 3^rd, 2001. 

Saint-Gobain Formula and British Gypsum continue to support the reserve and the Trust by getting involved through employee activities to help improve it for both wildlife and the local community to thrive.