THE Bishop’s Meadow Trust, a charity set up a decade ago to save Farnham’s riverside water meadows from development, is celebrating its tenth anniversary and its most successful year ever.

The trust has managed to finally buy the land outright, a journey that was started ten years ago with donations as small as £1 from hundreds of local people.

Initially with the generous help of Herald proprietor Sir Ray Tindle and then with help from the Farnham Buildings Preservation Trust, the Bishop’s Meadow Trust has been tirelessly fundraising for a decade to pay off its loans and is now the legitimate owners of the meadow on behalf of its members.

2018 was also a year when the trust won gold again in South and South East in Bloom and took delivery of a comprehensive land management plan and year-long wildlife survey from Surrey Wildlife Trust, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The Heritage Lottery Fund has asked that the work of the Bishop’s Meadow Trust can used as national test case, which it recognises as a huge honour.

Now the trust can put the recommendations of Surrey’s local wildlife experts into practice with a regular volunteer programme the details of which will be available on the new website www.bishopsmeadowtrust.com

In addition, members also heard how the reintroduction of cattle on to the meadows last year, one of the traditional ways to manage water meadows, had been an overwhelming success and will continue in 2019 and beyond.

The Bishop’s Meadow and the way the trust is managing the land is going to be part of an important national research project by the Floodplains Meadow Partnership which may determine how water meadows are best managed nationally in the future.

To celebrate, members toasted their past successes and looked forward to a sunny future for the historic riverside water meadows that have been saved by the people of Farnham for future generations to enjoy.