Essex is an important historic county just East of London. It counts some of the richest and poorest people in its borders, and bears the blurred distinction of being commutable to London which means it has lots of government and financial types. Jon has a sister and family that lives there, and we stayed with them for the wedding of their daughter. We saw castles and narrow streets and pelican crossings, but, we never got to see anything like this.

Now here’s a man who has the right idea about documenting the changes beavers bring.

Natural dam builders munch above their weight

Beavers are set to play a key role in water and flood management on an Essex estate. Judith Tooth reports. Beavers are famously good dam builders. Absent from this country for at least 400 years, though, we don’t have first hand experience of their skills.

Essex landowner Archie Ruggles-Brise is hoping to change that and demonstrate that reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver is a viable ecosystem service model. In other words, it will provide cleaner water, enhance biodiversity and reduce the risk of flooding.

Natural capital – environmental assets such as soil, clean air and clean water – and water management are particular interests of Archie’s. A biology graduate from Newcastle University, and now a part-time masters student in rural estate and land management at Harper Adams, he worked for Northumbrian Water on technical water and sewerage treatment projects.

Through the Rivers Trust, Archie is also involved with the EU project Topsoil, which is tracking sediment flows from Layer Brook to Abberton reservoir, and looking at managed aquifer recharge – putting water back into rivers – in the Suffolk Sandlings.

At home on the Spains Hall Estate, Archie is planning a series of leaky dams – piles of logs in ditches – that push water on to the surrounding land, in this case, 5ha grassland on the Spains Hall Estate above the village of Finchingfield, turning it into a temporary flood storage area. When the water spreads, it slows and any sediment drops out of it.

Water quality monitoring equipment, funded by the Environment Agency, has just been installed at two sites, collecting data on water temperature, which relates to dissolved oxygen; conductivity, giving a measure of salts; turbidity, which shows how much sediment and, therefore, how much phosphate, is being carried, and, finally, ammonium. The aim is to compare results over three months this year with the same period next year.

Now he’s seeking permission from Natural England to fence an area of wet woodland upstream of Finchingfield in which to release a pair of beavers, so that they can build the dams for him.

Good for Archie. Have fun trying out beavers in Essex! We’re so impressed I won’t even make fun of your name, (which sounds a bit made up by someone who wanted to tease the British). The 7 hectare grounds at Spains hall were listed in the Doomsday book and owned by just three families since 1066. There was some talk of putting it on the market in 2016 but I guess he decided against it. Better to try his hand at wedding rentals and ecotourism first.