May Hill

May Hill stands between Gloucester and Ross-on-Wye as a prominent landmark in the landscape. Its summit, on the western edge of Gloucestershire, is marked by a clump of trees that forms a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Three public footpaths lead to the top, two of them part of the Gloucestershire Way and Wysis Way. The hill separates the River Severn from the River Wye and rises to 296 metres above sea level. From the summit, views stretch to the Welsh borders and the lower reaches of the Severn, bypassed by the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal. Benches placed among the trees allow visitors to sit and take in the scenery in all directions. The hill has been known by different names over the centuries. Documents from a couple of hundred years ago call it Yartleton Hill, but it was renamed for the May Day events held there. Each May Day, morris dancers perform at dawn on the summit, and hundreds gather to watch the celebration. A ceremony has taken place every year for several centuries, originally including a mock battle between youths. The trees on the summit were planted to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887 and Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. The oldest Scots Pine dates from before the 19th century but was damaged in an ice storm in 2012. The summit area is grassland and heath, with patches of heather and gorse. The woods below are a mix of coniferous and deciduous trees, home to birds such as meadow pipit, tree pipit, common redstart and raven. The hill includes an Iron Age earthwork—a circular trench 100 metres across surrounding a round barrow. The National Trust cares for 30 hectares of the hill, though the summit remains a village green managed by Longhope Parish Council. Benches on the summit include one dedicated to Winifred Foley, a chronicler of the Forest of Dean, and another to the composer Gerald Finzi, whose ashes were scattered there in 1973.