Visitors to Heene Cemetery may be intrigued by two lines of text on the large noticeboard just inside the cemetery gates. They are: “This Cemetery has been formally designated a Site of Nature Conservation Importance (SNCI)”. This post explains what this means.
Heene Cemetery (aka St Michael’s Graveyard) was given the SNCI designation by West Sussex in 1992. In the citation, the habitat was given the short description of “neutral grassland scrub”, meaning that it was unimproved grassland that was neither calcareous (chalky) nor acid, broadly pH neutral, often of a kind that used to be meadowland.
The citation went on to say:
This is a small but vital oasis for wildlife in built-up Worthing. It supports a wide range of flowering plants, grasses, trees and shrubs. Despite the obvious disturbance, it contains fragments of a much threatened habitat – the ‘old meadow’ community. Only 3% of such unimproved grasslands present in the 1940s still retain significant ecological interest.
1992 West Sussex SNCI citation for St. Michael’s Graveyard, Worthing (site reference W8)
Indeed, 21 years later Heene Cemetery remains “a small but vital oasis of wildlife”, but the SNCI designation that recognized this is now a thing of the past.
From SNCI to LWS
SNCIs no longer exist in England (although variants of the name do exist in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). Since 2018 they have been called Local Wildlife Sites (LWSs) and Heene Cemetery now has this as its official designation (albeit with a noticeboard that is at the moment outdated).
LWSs are areas of land that are especially important for their wildlife. The Wildlife Trusts, who have an excellent 12-page PDF about LWSs, say: “they are some of our most valuable wildlife areas”. Sites are identified and selected locally by means of scientific criteria and are subject to review and survey. Heene Cemetery comes under the auspices of the Sussex Local Wildlife Sites Initiative. Their website describes the purpose of this initiative as ensuring that these important sites can “be accurately represented in Local Plans, be given due consideration in the planning & development process [and] receive targeted management advice & support”. Above all,
the ultimate aim of the Sussex Local Wildlife Sites Initiative is to conserve biodiversity.
https://lws-sussex.org.uk/
The Sussex LWS Initiative is operated from an office at the excellent Sussex Biodiversity Record Office (SxBRC), the umbrella organization that, amongst other things, works alongside the specialist county recorders.
Sussex Local Wildlife Sites
At the time of writing, there are 669 LWSs across Sussex (west and east), with 261 of these falling in West Sussex. Including Heene Cemetery, there are 12 LWSs in the borough of Worthing.
Worthing’s Local Wildlife Sites
We’re not aware of an easily-accessible public listing of Worthing’s LWSs, although all of this information is available on request to the Sussex Local Wildlife Site Initiative. We’ve therefore put the following list together, shown here (with hectares, designation date and/or last survey date, plus a habitat summary – from large to small in descending order). These are all within the borough of Worthing:
| Site | Size (hectares) | Designation date (last survey date) | Habitat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Worthing & Hill Barn Golf Courses | 205.2 | 1992 (2003) | Unimproved chalk grassland, neutral grassland, mixed chalk scrub and woodland |
| Clapham Wood | 152.7 | 1992 (2020) | South Downs National Park |
| Titnore & Goring Woods Complex | 77.2 | 1992 (2020) | South Downs National Park |
| Long Furlong & Church Hill | 68.6 | 1992 | Chalk grassland, scrub and semi‐natural woodland |
| Goring and Ferring Gap | 67.1 | 2018 (2019) | A break in the Worthing conurbation separating the areas of Goring and Ferring |
| Highdown Hill & the Miller’s Tomb | 22.9 | 1992 (1997) | Chalk grassland, scrub and chalk pits |
| The Sanctuary, High Salvington | 20.4 | 1992 (2020) | South Downs National Park |
| The Gallops and No Man’s Land | 19.3 | 1992 (2018) | Woodland and scrub habitat |
| Tenants Hill & Reservoirs | 16.8 | 1992 (2003) | Chalk grassland, scrub and dewpond |
| Offington Cemetery | 2.8 | 1992 | Chalk grassland and scrub in the south-western quarter of the cemetery |
| Ham Farm Wood | 2.3 | 1992 | Semi‐natural (ancient) woodland |
| Heene Cemetery (St. Michael’s Graveyard) | 0.4 | 1992 | Neutral grassland and scrub |
You don’t have to be eagle-eyed to spot that Heene Cemetery is the smallest of these 12 Worthing Local Wildlife Sites. At about one acre, it’s actually miniscule! What isn’t apparent from this listing is location: Heene Cemetery is the only LWS south of the railway line and entirely surrounded by suburbs. In this sense, it is unique within the town.
Although these Local Wildlife Sites are amongst the best places to explore and enjoy nature in Worthing, if they aren’t inside the South Downs National Park this status does not give them automatic protection (or funding). They are non-statutory sites that place no obligation on owners. They also do not provide additional public access where none already exists. They therefore thrive or fade as valuable wildlife resources according to the efforts made to support them.
By following a carefully thought-out management plan and documenting the biodiversity that a site has, an LWS can – in the words of the Sussex Local Wildlife Site Initiative – “be given due consideration in the planning and developing process”. The Friends of Heene Cemetery believe they are currently on track with both of these important tasks.
[Our thanks go to the Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre for providing some of the above information. It was correct when this post was published in May 2023.]
Written by Rob Tomlinson
