Nob End

Nob End stands on the flat land where the River Irwell meets the River Croal, a few miles north-west of Bolton. Once it was a waste tip for poisonous alkali left over from making soda ash in the 19th century. The old Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal once ran beside the tip, and in 1936 a breach there flooded fields until Watson Homes repaired the banks. In 1988 the eight-hectare site became a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and ten years later it was declared a local nature reserve. The soil is now mostly calcium carbonate, a legacy of the old waste, and rare plants have settled on the grassland.

The ground shows five different habitats shaped by how the waste was tipped and what lay beneath. Open limestone grassland grows where the soil stayed shallow and alkaline. Patches of fescue grass mix with willow scrub, while wet hollows hold rushes and marsh plants. Neutral and acid grasslands appear where the waste mixed with other soils. These varied conditions let uncommon wild flowers take hold.

Visitors walk short paths across the reserve and see orchids, broomrape, twayblade, blue fleabane and carline thistle in season. The air carries the scent of the old soda-ash works no longer, yet the ground still hints at its industrial past. From the flat banks of the Irwell the view stretches over the reserve and the distant hills of Lancashire.