Where is it?

The Loddon and Eversley Heritage Area is an area of countryside, villages and towns encompassing Basingstoke in the west and Farnborough in the east. It extends to the border with Berkshire in the north and onto the North Downs in the south.

The rivers of the Loddon catchment arise from the chalk aquifers of the Hampshire Downs and flow north over the clays, sands and gravels of the London Basin to join the River Loddon and ultimately the River Thames. The varied geology and wide floodplains have resulted in a matrix of different habitat types, supporting a diverse range of species.

The area includes the historic medieval royal hunting forest known as the Forest of Eversley, once part of the great Forest of Windsor, where kings and noblemen hunted deer and other “beasts of the forest”. The old English name for wild boar “defer” has given rise to the name ‘Eversley’.