Staines Moor

The moor has been common land since 1065, and anyone owning grazing animals who registers with the local authority is entitled to graze stock on it. The traditional limit of livestock a person could leave to graze on the common was one horse and two cattle per head. Formerly the commoners were any people who lived in the parish of Staines, which since the mid-20th century has had three Church of England churches, whereas before the mid-19th century it had just one church. The part of the moor north of the A30 is indivisible from Stanwell Moor's remaining moor occupying most of that late 20th-century small village, which was before then a hamlet. Its land covering 510.8 acre has been more…

Staines Moor consists of alluvial flood meadows, the King George VI Reservoir, the Staines Reservoirs and a stretch of the River Colne. Three of the six main distributaries of the River Colne run southward through it. The moor consists of rich alluvial soil on a bed of clay, a soil which is much more thick and naturally fertile compared with most of the patchy humus in the topsoil in the large historic parishes to the east such as Ashford, Stanwell, Harmondsworth, Bedfont and Feltham, which have thin, less moist humus on gravel-rich clay, formed by the ancient terraces of the Thames in the same way as the inland parts of the riverside parishes. As such rich pasture is the primary use of the…