Restoring the River Test at Mottisfont Abbey

Foreword by Jamie Pankhurst

The River Test has long been the king of the chalkstreams, with worldclass fly fishing right here in Hampshire. At the heart of the Test valley lies Mottisfont Abbey, a name that echoes across all four corners of the fly fishing kingdom, the birthplace of fly fishing itself.

It is no secret that the River Test and its sister chalkstreams, have been maintained for fly fishing by river keepers for centuries, and before them for water mills, irrigation, transport, and trade. Today, with increasing pressures on English rivers, the health of the chalkstreams is a topic of everyday conversation, and therein lies the question; how can we protect and preserve these precious chalkstreams for generations to come?

The Wessex Rivers Trust prefer not just to protect the chalkstreams, but rather to empower the chalkstreams to protect themselves. For wild trout at Mottisfont in particular, that means maximising habitat quality, diversity, and climate resilience.

In this article, Neil grapples with passing the torch back to nature at Mottisfont, and restoring a river that has been shaped by humans for millennia.

The Oakley Beat at Mottisfont, summer 2025.

Neil Swift, Project Officer, Wessex Rivers Trust

The success of a wild fishery relies entirely on the quality and variety of the habitat it provides. For great wild trout fishing you of course need wild trout, and that means providing habitats to suit all life stages – from egg right through to adulthood. Since 2023, the Wessex Rivers Trust and the National Trust have been working in partnership to make sure that the chalkstreams on the Mottisfont Estate provide exactly that.

The truth is that a fantastic days trout fishing is not the focus of our work, but rather a happy bi-product. Our projects are not about creating a fantastic fishery, they’re not even specifically about wild trout, they’re simply about creating the best chalkstream habitat that we can. Because that’s what supports not just a thriving population of trout, and the fly life they feed on, but everything else that lives in and around the river too.

Our restoration journey at Mottisfont started on the Oakley Beat. Areas of shear concrete sandbag revetment were replaced with gently sloping gravel margins that have encouraged lush, diverse marginal fringes. A rock weir was removed and banks reshaped and regraded to give the river some proper wiggles. Uniform flows were brought to life with wood in the river channel, and we’re not just talking logs here, these are whole trees.

In 2024 we moved on to the Rectory Beat with the same approach. What was a beat of largely straight lines has been given meander, using a combination, gravel, a serious amount of wood and some industrious work with the excavator. High and bunded banks were lowered, bringing the river and its margins back together, and a backwater was created to provide fry refuge during high water.

The result of both projects has been the myriad of habitats that wild trout need not just to survive, but thrive. And we’re not stopping there, we are in the process of putting together a project to restore the Dun Beat too, a project we will deliver at the close of the trout fishing season in 2026.

Whilst we hope anglers will leave Mottisfont with memories of a special fish, we know you will leave with memories of fishing in a special place, surrounded by nature on some very special stretches of the River Test.

A large wild brown trout caught from the Oakley beat, summer 2025.

The Fishing at Mottisfont Abbey

We are delighted to be working with the Wessex Rivers Trust to bring you exclusive chalk stream fly fishing on the famous Oakley, Rectory, and Dun beats at Mottisfont Abbey on the River Test.

This is a unique and exciting opportunity to fish in the footsteps of the great F.M. Halford, one of the founding fathers of modern fly fishing, and to visit the epicentre of it all at Mottisfont Abbey. It was here on these very riverbanks that Halford developed the techniques that formed the bedrock of upstream dry fly fishing as we know it. Today, his work at Mottisfont lives on to inspire hundreds of thousands of fly fishers around the world to take up this fabulous way of life.

Since 2023, the Wessex Rivers Trust have been working alongside the National Trust, the custodians of these fabled stretches of the River Test, to restore and enhance habitat for wild trout and the plethora of wildlife that call the chalkstreams their home. In addition to a series of comprehensive restoration projects, complimented with some light fishery management, the National Trust have implemented a no stocking policy, which means when you spot that special fish rising happily under the trees, there is every chance it is a truly wild chalkstream trout. Think of fallen oaks, dense undergrowth, and wild brown trout drifting over bright gravels, slurping up wriggling gnats. This is chalkstream fly fishing in its most exciting and primitive form.

Find out more about the fishing at Mottisfont Abbey and step back in time in the Oakley fishing hut, where you can sit as Halford once did looking out over his river and tying his flies to match the evening rise.