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Fishburn Airfield is a small grass strip airfield in Fishburn, County Durham. The airfield was opened on 30 June 1995 by the then local MP and Leader of the Opposition Tony Blair. It was named as "Airfield of the year" by aviation magazine Flyer in 2004 for its welcoming atmosphere and bacon butties. In 2005, the airfield hosted filming for a scene from the Bollywood film Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors
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1.4 km
Bishop Middleham Quarry
Bishop Middleham Quarry is a disused quarry, about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) north-west of Sedgefield, County Durham, England. Quarry-working here ceased in 1934, and the site has since been colonised by vegetation. The underlying rock is Magnesian Limestone and this has had a strong influence in determining the range of plant and animal communities now found there.
In 1968 the quarry was designated as a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The SSSI boundaries were revised in 1982 to exclude areas which were no longer found to have high wildlife interest due to tipping and quarry reworking.
The site contains a variety of vegetation types including woodland, scrub, and several grassland communities. The most important part of the site from a biodiversity conservation perspective is the species-rich unimproved magnesian limestone grassland, which covers just under 4.6 hectares (11 acres) of the site. Only 270 hectares (670 acres) of this habitat exist in Britain, two-thirds of it in County Durham.
Magnesian limestone grassland supports an assemblage of calcicolous plants adapted to growing in thin soils with a short sward. The quarry holds one of the largest British populations of the dark red helleborine, Epipactis atrorubens; a survey in 2010 found nearly 1700 flowering spikes of this nationally rare species.
The quarry is a breeding site for the Durham argus butterfly, a local race of the brown argus found only in northeast England.
The site attracted the interest of birdwatchers in 2002 when a pair of European bee-eaters took up residence, raising two young, only the third breeding attempt ever in Britain.
Bishop Middleham Quarry is managed as a Nature Reserve by the Durham Wildlife Trust.
1.6 km
Fishburn Grassland
Fishburn Grassland is a Site of Special Scientific Interest in County Durham, England. It lies between the villages of Fishburn and Trimdon, just north of the former.
The site consists of a small area of species-rich magnesian limestone grassland, a vegetation type that is rare nationally and mainly restricted to County Durham and Tyne and Wear. There are two distinct plant communities, the larger of which, dominated by blue moor-grass, Sesleria albicans, and small scabious, Scabiosa columbaria, is known only from east Durham. The other community, dominated by upright brome, Bromus erectus, is common on limestone in southern England but is at its northern limit in Durham, where there are no other protected sites.
1.9 km
Fishburn
Fishburn is a village and civil parish in County Durham, in England. It is situated about 12 miles (19 km) west of Hartlepool. The population was 2,454, increasing to 2,588 at the 2011 Census.
1.9 km
Bishop Middleham
Bishop Middleham is a village in County Durham, in England. The population of the parish as taken at the 2011 census was 1,275 It is close to Sedgefield.