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Hackpen, Warren & Gramp's Hill Downs

UK Site of Special Scientific Interest

Specimen drawers, botanical folios and brass scientific instruments under study light
Science and natureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ5637387 ↗
Source-derived summary

Hackpen, Warren & Gramp's Hill Downs is a 71.4-hectare (176-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Letcombe Bassett in Oxfordshire.

Site features

The site is composed of three separate sloping areas of unimproved chalk downland, representing a type of habitat now uncommon in the Berkshire Downs. It was formerly notified as Hackpen Hill and Crowhole Bottom. Eleven species of butterfly have been recorded, including chalkhill blue, brown argus and marbled white. The site has extensive views over rolling countryside.

Gramp's Hill Down is the most easterly area, and the closest to Letcombe Bassett. The main grass is upright brome, and it has a rich variety of herbs, including yellow rattle, chalk milkwort and kidney vetch.

The eastern half of the central area, Warren Down, is also dominated by upright brome, with herbs including bulbous buttercup and salad burnet. The main grass in the western half is meadow grass, with bare patches and rabbit damaged areas which have been colonised by plants of disturbed ground such as henbane.

At the western end is Hackpen Down, the largest part of the site, which has a wide variety of aspects and gradients.

Editorial summary

“Hackpen, Warren & Gramp's Hill Downs” enters the record as uK Site of Special Scientific Interest. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hackpen, Warren and Gramp's can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical orientation to terminology and classification, particularly when read beside dated observations, specimens or technical literature. The current 190-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Hackpen, Warren and Gramp's.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Hackpen, Warren & Gramp's Hill Downs” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Hackpen, Warren and Gramp's provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5637387. Authority coordinates are 51.558, -1.489. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Check terminology, classification and the date of the cited evidence. Scientific names and technical consensus can change while older records retain historical value.

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  • Classification context
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  2. Expand the search: follow Hackpen, Warren & Gramp's Hill Downs primary sources, Hackpen, Warren & Gramp's Hill Downs archive and Hackpen research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Hackpen, Warren & Gramp's Hill Downs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.