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LOWER MOSS WOOD
Telephone: 01565 755082 | info@lowermosswood.com
Lower Moss Wood is an 18-acre educational nature reserve and working wildlife hospital at Ollerton, near Knutsford. For nearly forty years it has been a place where children and organised groups learn about the countryside, and where sick, injured and orphaned wild animals and birds are treated, rehabilitated and, wherever possible, returned to the wild. The reserve is a haven for wildlife and is not open to the general public, except by prior arrangement to organised parties such as schools, societies, natural history groups and groups with disabilities.
The hospital began with two fox cubs. In 1989 a local woman, Joyce Povey, telephoned “the man in the woods”: her dog had brought home a cub. She arrived with two. Ray had never reared an animal, but he moved out of his home and into a caravan on site so that he could care for them around the clock. One cub was released; the other, Povey, stayed for twelve and a half years, fostered thirty-seven cubs in her lifetime, and became part of Ray’s teaching. Word spread. People began bringing him sick and injured wildlife, and what had started as one man’s response to two orphans became a wildlife hospital.
HISTORY OF LOWER MOSS WOOD
From those first pens the work grew in scale and skill. Casualties arrived from across the region: foxes, badgers, hedgehogs, bats, birds of prey, fledglings and more. The aim was always the same — treat the animal, keep it as wild as possible, and release it if it could survive. Over the years the hospital was rebuilt three times as numbers rose. It now admits around two to three thousand wildlife casualties a year, with fully equipped wards, isolation and recovery space, and veterinary support from Holly House Vets. A dedicated team of staff and volunteers runs it seven days a week.
In 2006 Ray was awarded an MBE for services to animal welfare and to the community of Knutsford. He has always said that the honour belonged as much to his volunteers and family as to him, and that he could not have done the work without them.
A generous legacy made possible a new hospital building. It opened in 2015, with the charity’s patron Sir Bobby Charlton leading the ceremony. As if history were repeating itself, the first patient was again a fox cub.
The site began as an education centre. Its modern story is inseparable from Ray Jackson MBE, who arrived in the late 1980s after sixteen years in engineering at Crewe Locomotive Works. Wanting a life in the countryside rather than another factory clock, he joined a community programme at School Lane: clearing paths, planting trees and learning the wood. The then warden, Len Smith, saw a self-taught naturalist rather than an uncertified newcomer, and asked him to help teach the children who visited. Ray found that he could. When Len retired a few months later, Ray succeeded him. By 1988 he was warden.
In 1999 Lower Moss Wood became a registered charity, with objects covering both environmental education and the treatment of injured, sick and orphaned wildlife. The timing was harsh: foot-and-mouth closed the site for nine months and left the bank account empty. Friends of the Wood and relentless fundraising by Ray and the volunteers kept it alive. In 2002 the farmer who owned the land put it up for sale and gave Ray first refusal. Interest-free loans, gifts in memory, a donation of shares and public support — including a fundraising appearance by Virginia McKenna of Born Free — raised enough to buy the wood and secure its future.
Education was never an afterthought. The reserve was built for it. Over the decades Ray and his team have given more than 60,000 children and adults an insight into the great outdoors: walks, pond-dipping, conservation and the work of the hospital, explained in a way that makes a school day in the wood the trip many never forget. Groups with disabilities, environmental organisations and natural history societies have used the same paths and classrooms.
Ray Jackson retired as Warden in September 2026. What he and his volunteers built remains: an 18-acre reserve, an education centre, and a functioning wildlife hospital that still takes in thousands of casualties a year and still depends on the people who give their time to keep it running.
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