For current news and information on Blacka Moor click this link. 

Situated just outside Sheffield, this magnificent moorland is the largest of the Wildlife Trust’s nature reserves, containing 180 hectares of breathtaking scenery.  It has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) because of its important population of upland breeding birds, and is popular with walkers, horse riders and nature lovers.

Heathland Habitat

Although the heathland has a distinctly wild feel, the landscape you can see today is the result of thousands of years of use by the people who lived here.  Much of the original woodland was cleared in mediaeval times to provide grazing for cattle, and it is this spring and summer grazing that enables such heathland plants as heather, bilberry and cowberry to thrive and stops the encroachment of bracken and scrub woodland.  Now many heathland birds – meadow and tree pipit, skylark and whinchat – are found on Blacka Moor, as are many rare moths such as the ruby tiger.

Wonderful Woodland

With ancient oak woodlands, more recent mixed plantations and sunny glades, Blacka Moor is home to a range of woodland habitats, all supporting their own particular wildlife.  The Moor’s globally important oak and birch woodland was managed by the coppice-with-standards method – most trees cut back to the base with some left standing – right up until the nineteenth century, to provide timber for building and industry; and is now home to the bluebell, upland birds like the pied flycatcher and wood warbler, and many rare invertebrates.  In the valley bottoms, wet woodland plants such as the wood horsetail, marsh thistle and marsh violet thrive; whilst conifers like Scots pine, Corsican pine and larch are an important food source for the crossbill, great spotted woodpecker, goldcrest and other birds. 

Strawberry Lee Farm

There has been a working farmstead at Strawberry Lee Farm for over 600 years, making it the site of the longest human occupation at Blacka Moor.  It began life in 1263 as a monastery farm, with the last remaining farm buildings being demolished in the 1930s.  The old field boundaries are still visible as collapsed dry stone walls, and sheep still graze the pastures, maintaining ideal conditions for such oddly-named fungi as the milkcap, blusher and parrot waxcap and the nationally important rose wax cap.  Where a habitat has remained stable like this over a long time, it’s possible that these species have been here for 500 years or more!

How to get there

By Bus

Take the 97 bus from the Peace Gardens in central Sheffield to Totley.  Get off at Cross Scythes, and walk down Hill Foot Road towards the Strawberry Lee Lane entrance.  For the Stony Ridge Road entrance, take the 240 or 272 from the Sheffield Interchange and ask for the Piper Lane bus stop.  Phone Travelline 01700 515151 for more details.

By Car

There are two car parks on the main Hathersage Road (A625), and one at the Strawberry Lee Lane entrance.

Download a copy of our Blacka Moor leaflet and map here.

Or click here for a full colour printable Blacka Moor Guide. 

• Parking
• Picnic Area

• Heathland
• Woodland
• Wetland