St Aidan's is a 355 hectare (877 acres) nature park located between Leeds and Castleford[1] in West Yorkshire, England.

However, the car park and visitor centre were subsequently closed in July 2013 due to unresolved land issues.

[citation needed] In 2023, it was the location of a site-specific performance by the National Youth Theatre, entitled Nest, part of Leeds 2023.

[13] Mining operations were suspended and remedial works costing £20 million were required to drain the site and re-route the river.

The find provided a unique insight into river trade in the seventeenth century onwards, including the hulls of four boats (virtually intact), various pottery and evidence of a medieval weir.

[16][17] Ownership of the land was transferred in 2010 from UK Coal/Harworth Estates to St Aidan's Trust, a charity administered by Leeds City Council.

The main trails at St Aidan's pass through a variety of habitats including reedbed, wetland, meadows and woodland.

[20] Breeding birds on the site include one of the rarest in the UK, black-necked grebe with around 25% of the national population which nest, for protection, near the one-thousand pairs of black-headed gull.

[22][23] Originally christened Clinchfield, it was brought to the UK from the US in 1954,[9][24][25] when it was the second-largest such machine in the world,[10] weighing 1,220 long tons (1,240 t).