The Abberley Hills Preservation Society is seeking to get the hills listed as an AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) to prevent further quarry developments. One quarrying operation has created a cliff face on the Astley side of the Hills, but the boomerang-shaped western side remains an unspoiled backdrop to Abberley.

In 1993, the society successfully fought the English China Clays application to quarry the Abberley side, a scheme that would have removed the crest at the northern end of the Hills.
‘We don’t want the end of the immediate danger to the hills to mean that we fold up,” says solicitor Norman Carless, society chairman.
“If the Abberley Hills are listed as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, it will make it almost impossible to quarry this side.” Robin Hardwick, the society’s liaison officer, adds: “We are applying to extend the Malvern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to include the Abberley Hills as well.”

At its May annual meeting, the society formed its own Heritage Group. “We have walks along the top of the hill and we are cataloguing the wild flowers,” says group chairman, Mrs Angela Thompson, a writer of Needlework Magazine who also produces the society newsletter Hill and Vale. “Although the views are better from the Malverns, I would far rather walk over Abberley Hill. When the leaves are off the trees, you get lovely views.”
She lives in a bungalow built by her father on the hills in 1934 with a garden dropping into woodland. “I had a lovely childhood here,’ she says. “We have about six or seven yews on my patch. We think — we have no proof – there was a Roman vineyard on this side of the hill, which was the warmer side.” One of the unusual features of the hills is the large number of yew trees on the ground undisturbed for centuries. “It is is rare to get yew trees outside churchyards — they would never have them in fields near cattle as they are poisonous,” she says. “We have six or seven on patch. We are trying to preserve the line of trees on the ancient woodland along the ridge.”