Standfirst: Suffolk's ghost ponds are being brought back to life by farmers like John Sanderson in Bungay who is rediscovering these nests of biodiversity remembered from his childhood. Here, he talks to Jo Caird
Suffolk is full of ghosts. Not the kind you’re thinking of – this isn’t a story of spooky spectres or ghoulish apparitions. Yet the county is haunted nonetheless, with the remnants of thousands upon thousands of farmland ponds that are hiding in plain sight across the countryside.
These so-called ‘ghost ponds’ are a legacy of the demise of traditional agriculture, not just here in Suffolk but all over the UK.
Whether occurring naturally in the landscape or dug for clay and marl for brickmaking and soil improvement, field and farmland ponds were put to good use by agricultural communities up until the middle of the 20th century. A place for watering livestock, soaking cartwheels and washing clothes in the days before mains water, their fish and waterfowl were also an important source of protein.
Carl Sayer, a professor in geography at UCL and leader of the pond restoration research group at the university, estimates that from over a million ponds in Great Britain in the late 1900s, there are only around 500,000 now. You’ll find around 22,000 of them here in Suffolk – and while that might sound like a lot, as many as 70 per cent of these ponds are neglected or abandoned.
That’s a problem, says Jenny Rawson, senior farm advisor at the Suffolk Wildlife Trust (SWT), because “ponds provide a biodiversity hotspot in our landscape and are a vital stepping stone for threatened farm wildlife”.
Studies have shown that they’re home to at least two-thirds of all wetland plants and animals found in Britain, and often support more species, including more rare species, than other types of freshwater habitat, such as lakes and rivers.
That’s everything from mammals such as water voles and otters, down to invertebrates including water snails and dragonflies.
The good news is that restoring farmland ponds – both ‘ghost ponds’, or those that have disappeared entirely, and those that are simply in a sorry state – is an eminently achievable process.
A pond might have been dormant for years, centuries even, nothing left of it but an area of darker soil in a field. Yet dig out the sediment and let it fill naturally with water – a technique pioneered by Carl Sayer – and life will return.
After just a few months sometimes, the seeds of aquatic plants, none the worse for their long wait in the seedbank, burst forth to create a habitat not seen in generations.
That’s exactly what has been happening at South Elmham Hall Farms, just south of Bungay, where farmer John Sanderson has been working, with funding support from SWT, to restore ponds filled in by his father and grandfather.
His family have been on this land since 1906, initially as tenant farmers then, from 1920, as owners.
“There are plants coming up in ponds that have been filled in for maybe 70 years and longer, which is exciting,” he says. “They’re like little time capsules.”
John has been able to identify some of the 28 ponds that he has restored so far because they had been filled in during his lifetime.
Others, however, required a bit of detective work: “We looked on the earliest OS map we could find and the ponds were marked. We dug them out and found the sediment.”
This ongoing pond restoration work (John has also created five totally new ponds) is just one element of a wider programme of rewilding on John’s land.
“Water is very important in terms of insects, invertebrates, birds and mammals. Over time [the ponds] will build into a whole matrix of wildlife. They provide an instant fix in terms of biodiversity.
“It's exciting to see something happen almost immediately, because most of the things we're doing on the farm – tree planting and allowing natural regeneration areas – are going to take perhaps a generation, whereas this has an immediate impact.”
It’s an impact that’s being felt up and down the county, with the SWT having restored and created around 120 ponds since 2020, and over 100 Suffolk farmers currently on a waiting list for financial support with their pond restoration projects.
“We are excited to continue this pace, reinstating Suffolk’s historic status as one of the most pond-rich counties in the UK,” says Jenny.
But there’s a long way to go, she admits.
“We have tackled only a small fraction of the ponds that need restoring and ongoing management still poses a significant problem post-restoration for many ponds.”
With finances tight for many farmers, it’s a challenging picture.
There’s little to no funding available for ongoing maintenance, even in places like East Anglia, where funding is available for the restoration work itself, thanks to cash ringfenced for the protection of great crested newts.
In the meantime, however, even overgrown ponds can offer benefits for wildlife, says Dr Sarah Davies, a ponds expert at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.
“It's all about creating variety. Ideally you want multiple ponds on your land restored at different times and different features at each pond so that you can benefit the greatest amount of species over a whole landscape. The beauty of ponds is that they're all so different.”
So the next time you’re out in the Suffolk countryside and come across a humble farmland pond, take a moment to admire this biodiversity powerhouse and applaud the people like John going above and beyond, to restore and safeguard these magical spots.
As Carl says, “Rewilding is important, nature reserves are important but our biggest area of land in this country will always be farms. We have to have farming with wildlife, we have to take the wildlife with us. It's the most important thing.”
