Prince Freddy's Meadows
Background
In November 2025, an amazing opportunity arose to purchase 900m of land along the Little Ouse in Blo' Norton, originally part of Blo' Norton Hall estate. This 27acre (11ha) area is another piece of the jigsaw helping to extend the wildlife corridor created by Little Ouse Headwaters Project (LOHP) westwards from Parkers Piece in Thelnetham, to Hopton, and secure it for posterity.
Aerial view of riverside land in Blo' Norton © Strutt and Parker
The meadows are named after Prince Frederick Duleep Singh, who lived at nearby Blo’ Norton Hall from 1909 to 1926. Prince Freddy, was the son of Maharajah Duleep Singh, the last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire who was exiled to Britain and was befriended by Queen Victoria. Prince Freddy took a great interest in Blo’ Norton parish and was passionate about trees in the landscape. This fascinating piece of land would also have been familiar to Virginia Woolf, who stayed at Blo’ Norton Hall in 1906, and who wrote affectionally of the area and even swam in the river.
Conservation
The first impressions of the river frontage are how uneven it is, with rank vegetation at the eastern end among some high dry patches looking more like Breckland mixed in with low boggy areas and meadows and extending to the west into mixed closed-canopy woodland with no ground flora. The river has been modified at many levels over many years by local landowners trying to alleviate flooding or create walkways for stock, to wholesale river-channel straightening/deepening in the early 1900s. There is an old section of abandoned river parallel to the current main channel. This all leads to a very interesting topography with scope for carefully considered river and landscape restoration aimed at the long-term development of a biodiverse corridor for wildlife.
View across some of the riverside meadows © Ellie Beach
Wildlife already recorded includes otter, water voles, mandarin duck, roe deer and a herd of red deer but it has the potential to be much richer.
Plans for the future
Water Vole © Arthur Rivett
Our vision for this area is to restore the meandering course of the old river as well as enhancing the adjoining meadows, woodland and hedges for wildlife.
This is by far the greatest challenge LOHP has taken on. The purchase of this unique area was only made possible by a short-term interest free loan of £120,000 from a benefactor and further fundraising will be essential to carry out much of this restoration.
To help us start to restore the area we must first pay off the loan, then fund the initial baseline surveys of the land (including level surveys, soil surveys, vegetation surveys and many more) so we can see what is already there and what we have to do to restore it
Donate today, to help us restore the habitat and wildlife of this neglected gem on the Little Ouse.
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Access
There is currently no public access to Prince Freddy’s Meadows, but LOHP plans to provide access points where there are good views of the river as part of its plans to restore the site. Throughout the restoration we will run regular guided walks.
The first one is on Sunday 11th January 2026 where will be visiting Prince Freddy's Meadows, Booking Essential as places are limited, please see our events pages for more details.