A Landscape Transformed
The Devil's Punch Bowl is a natural amphitheatre of heathland and woodland at Hindhead, carved into the Upper Greensand by springs over millennia. For decades, the busy A3 trunk road cut directly across the top, bisecting one of Surrey's finest open spaces with noise, pollution, and tarmac. That changed in July 2011 when the Hindhead Tunnel opened beneath Gibbet Hill, diverting traffic underground and returning the surface to nature.
The National Trust acquired Hindhead Commons and the Devil's Punch Bowl in 1906, making it one of the first open spaces the Trust ever owned. The combined estate covers some 1,600 acres. Since the tunnel's opening, the old A3 road surface has been removed and the land restored to heathland – a transformation that Natural England assessed as meeting its conservation targets within six years.
The Heathland
Lowland heath is one of Europe's most threatened habitats, rarer than tropical rainforest by some measures. Hindhead supports a significant area of it: heather, gorse, and cross-leaved heath stretch across the commons, interspersed with Scots pine and silver birch. The heathland provides breeding habitat for Dartford warblers, nightjars, woodlarks, and tree pipits – all species that depend on this increasingly scarce landscape.
Six native reptile species live here: adder, grass snake, smooth snake, slow worm, common lizard, and sand lizard. The smooth snake and sand lizard are nationally rare, confined almost entirely to southern English heathlands. Hindhead is part of the Wealden Heaths National Nature Reserve, a collaborative project across Surrey and Sussex to protect and connect these fragile habitats.
Walking the Punch Bowl
Several waymarked routes explore the Punch Bowl and surrounding commons, ranging from short family-friendly loops to longer circuits of five miles or more. The viewpoint above the Punch Bowl offers panoramic views south across the Weald.
