Cottered · Hertfordshire · North Chalk Ridge

Triturus cristatus Great Crested Newts

One of only two viable colonies in Hertfordshire — resident at Lordship Farm for nearly a century

Female Great Crested Newt at Lordship Farm pond
The Colony

Nearly a century
of continuous residence

Cottered has a long association with Great Crested Newts. While rare and rapidly declining across the rest of Hertfordshire, they have hung on in the village, thanks to the remnants of an ancient moat system that means there are many wild ponds in its back gardens and alongside its roads.

Lordship Farm’s pond has had Great Crested Newts for nearly 100 years. When the Sanders family occupied the house in the 1930s, Diane Sanders — who lived here as a child — told us about putting bare feet in the pond and having them tickled by the investigating newts.

“The loss of this species has been dramatic over the last 50 years — of pond sites revisited in Hertfordshire, only five still supported Great Crested Newts.” — Hertfordshire Biodiversity Action Plan
100+
Years of continuous colony
residence in Cottered
47+
Individuals counted in
a single torch survey
1 of 2
Viable colonies
surviving in Hertfordshire
Multiple Great Crested Newts in survey basket
Multiple GCN individuals — survey basket, March 2026
Females laying eggs on pond plant
Females laying eggs in marginal pond plants, March 2026
Great Crested Newt eggs on pond plant
GCN eggs individually wrapped in folded leaf — active breeding confirmed
Expert Validation

Validated by Natural England’s
county expert

We didn’t appreciate what a rarity we had until 21st April 2023, when Dave Willis — head of Herts Amphibian and Reptile Group and Natural England’s Hertfordshire GCN expert — visited our pond. In his torch-count, he reached 47 before losing count, and became very excited.

You never see all the newts in a single torch count: some hide under platforms or behind vegetation, and juveniles leave the pond for one to three years before returning to breed. Using Natural England’s multiplier formula for torch counts, the true metapopulation is considerably larger — between one and two hundred individuals.

We have since teamed up with Affinity Water to encourage pond-owners across Cottered to make their ponds more newt-friendly. Six village ponds already have GCN — a classic source-sink metapopulation with satellite ponds around our main colony — all now registered with the Herts Environmental Records Centre.

GCN colony in survey basket
Colony Footage

Watch them
in the pond

Lordship Farm pond  ·  April 2026  ·  31 seconds

Shot in poor light with a domestic camera — and still compelling. The large individual climbing the pond wall at right is unmistakably GCN; multiple further individuals are visible in the water below. With professional equipment and optimal conditions, the visual appeal of this colony to schoolchildren would be extraordinary.

Wildlife Spectacle

A mini Jurassic Park
in north Hertfordshire

One look in our pond and you’ll see why this species is worth protecting. Adults are 8–15cm long; males in breeding garb look more like little dragons than anything else in Europe. We can watch females laying eggs on pond plants and, if patient, feed them by hand. It really is like having a mini aquatic Jurassic Park in your back garden.

We have seen the colony grow dramatically in our thirty-plus years here, helped by organic gardening and a wildlife-first philosophy. Cottered hosts one of only two viable GCN colonies remaining in Hertfordshire — the other being at Berkhamsted Castle Moat. This is a conservation story of national significance, told through a pond in a Hertfordshire village.

With the right support, this site could host curriculum-grounded educational resources for local primary schools, professional-quality video documentation of breeding behaviour, and a permanent record of one of Hertfordshire’s most remarkable wildlife success stories.