PLANS to rejuvenate parkland in front of a Yorkshire Dales country estate by creating a corridor of grassland and new trees.

Applicants Rt Hon Tom and Katie Orde-Powlett have submitted the plans to Richmondshire District Council for a new avenue from Bolton Hall, Wensley, to Lord's Bridge, on the Bolton estate.

This will involve converting a corridor of intensive dairy grassland to low intensity, species rich grassland and creation of a new avenue of trees.

Planning permission is sought to lay a drive down the centre of this corridor, recreating the access arrangements of the 17th and 18th centuries.

This will tie in with existing access over Lord’s Bridge and terminate with a carriage sweep in front of Bolton Hall.

It will also connect with the existing access running east-west, which will remain. The new drive will be typically 3.65m wide, to form a single carriageway.

The route of the proposed avenue is currently intensively managed grassland, grazed by a dairy farm, with little benefit to biodiversity.

The planned corridor of low intensity, species rich grassland and avenue trees will greatly benefit biodiversity twofold: by improving the habitat in the corridor itself and by helping to link the wildflower meadows in the grounds of the Hall with Wanlass Grasslands SSSI, south of the River Ure.

The course of the drive itself will not require the removal of any trees.

Lord’s Bridge Covert is planted with non-native sycamore, which have reached maturity.

A portion will be felled to be replaced by the new avenue trees, for which a felling licence will be sought from the Forestry Commission and ample replanting will be undertaken, in accordance with their requirements.

A heritage statement with the plans states: "As Bolton Hall moves to the next generation, Tom and Katie Orde-Powlett are planning to rejuvenate the natural and historic landscape.

"Guided by the eminent garden historian, Val Hepworth, the idea is to reinstate the axial approach of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and restore the link between the hall and the River Ure.

"The original avenue is clearly recorded on historic plans with a remarkable sight-line that ran north-south from one ridge of the valley to the other through the centre of the house and the Lord’s Bridge."

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