Woodland Heritage Manual - 2008 Section B:The Heritage This section provides the background and context for the rest of the manual. It describes the evolution of today’s wooded landscapes, explains how their usage has changed over time and why and how they should be protected for the future. Key definitions and concepts relating to wooded landscapes, their archaeology, history and ecology are introduced. These are designed to help you understand the importance of the documentary research and field surveys for your own woodland. The chapters in this section can be read alone without having to Section B The Heritage undertake any further work or carry out surveys. Chapters give several references for further reading, if you are new to the subject. This section includes the following chapters: 1. Introduction to Woods and Wooded Landscapes 2.Woodland Crafts and Industries 3.Woodland History and Archaeology 4.What is an Ancient Woodland? 5.Woodland Ecology and Biodiversity 6.Woodland Conservation Management The section should be seen as a reference section complementing and guiding your documentary research, field surveys, report writing, management and interpretation. 7 Woodland Heritage Manual - 2008 B1: Introduction to Woods and Wooded Landscapes Ian D. Rotherham, Mel Jones and Alastair Oswald The Wildwood The so-called ‘Wildwood’ was the natural woodland that grew up when the glaciers and ice sheets melted across Britain at the end of the Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago. Frozen ground thawed and climatic conditions improved to the point where trees could move in again from those parts of Europe that had lain beyond the grip of ice. Seeds carried on the wind or spread in the droppings and coats of birds and mammals enabled a wave of colonisation to make its way across Britain from the south. The progress of this colonisation has been reconstructed using the pollen grains and spores preserved in layers of sediment in bogs, lakes and ponds. Where such sites survive, undisturbed to modern times, they provide a fascinating biological archive of former vegetation and climate. Using this evidence it has been possible to show that the first trees to colonise post-glacial Britain were arctic species such as Aspen, Birch and Willow, the latter two are usually still the first trees to colonise waste ground in the twenty-first century. Later came Scots Pine and Hazel, then Alder and Oak, followed by Elm and Lime and finally Ash, Beech, Holly, Hornbeam and Maple. By about 4,000 BC, altered little by human interference, the wildwood was fully developed in a landscape with extensive wetlands in both the lowlands and uplands, and open grass or heath in varying amounts. Until recently, the established theory was that the wildwood stretched as an almost closed canopy forest without gaps virtually across the whole of Great Britain, and in most of North Western Europe. This long-held theory has now been seriously challenged by the work of Dr Frans Vera (2000). He put forward the theory that the wildwood consisted of a patchwork of woodland and extensive tracts of grassland with open-grown, solitary trees, the clearings maintained by large herbivores such as deer and wild oxen. The Vera Hypothesis is the subject of much debate (see, for example, Hodder et al., 2005). Does this scene resemble our ancient woodland landscape? Recent research indicates that herbivores maintained large open tracts of land interspersed with solitary open grown trees and patches of woodland (Vera Hypothesis).This opposes the view that England was entirely wooded prior to human activities. Calke Abbey, Derbyshire. © Ian D.Rotherham. 8 Woodland Heritage Manual - 2008 The Destruction of the Wildwood It is still unclear as to the extent to which Mesolithic hunter-gatherers managed the largely wooded environment they inhabited after the retreat of the glaciers (10,000 BC to 4,000 BC). While they are not thought to have carried out any large-scale clearance, it is possible that they created small clearings to encourage deer and other animals to graze in concentrated areas, where they offered easy targets. Trees were certainly felled to build shelters and to manufacture tools, including bows and arrows. In the early part of the Neolithic (4,000 BC to 2,000 BC), the pace of woodland clearance gradually accelerated as scattered communities adopted agriculture. This did not involve an immediate switch to a sedentary way of life; it is thought that communities moved around extensive territories according to the season, and that they abandoned the relatively small clearings they farmed from time to time, perhaps as agriculture exhausted the fertility of the rich woodland soils. Throughout Europe, the stone axe became both a common tool and a symbol of Section B The Heritage power. The construction of new kinds of monument - first the communal burial mounds known as 'long barrows' and then the ceremonial meeting places known as 'causewayed enclosures' - required the felling of mature Oaks in sufficient numbers to have a significant effect on the local woodland. At the extreme end of the scale in monumental building it has been estimated that the complex of causewayed enclosures and boundary earthworks on Hambledon Hill in Dorset would have required the felling of at least 10,000 maturing oak trees, all in the course of the thirty-eighth century BC. The Bronze Age (2,000 - 750 BC) saw the deforestation for agriculture of many areas which today are thought of as classic heath, moor and downland landscapes: Dartmoor, the South Downs, the Peak District and the Cheviots. The growth of farmland at the expense of woodland continued through the Iron Age (750 BC - AD 43), accelerating further towards the end of the first century BC as new agricultural technologies were introduced. Both Julius Caesar, writing after his invasion in 54 BC, and Strabo, the Greek historian and geographer writing around the time of the birth of Christ, inform us that the demand for timber as a building material also continued. Strabo wrote of the Britons that 'Their cities are the forests, for they fell trees and fence in large circular enclosures, within which they build huts and pen their cattle.' Throughout the Roman occupation of Britain (AD 43 - 410), the smelting of tin, iron, lead, silver and other metals also had an impact on the extent of woodlands and their management in different regions of Britain. It is thought that the Romans who organised the manufacture of iron in the Weald actively managed woods by coppicing rather than clear felling in order to obtain sufficient fuel. Most of the remains of Roman bloomeries are found in ancient coppice woodland, and in the Weald, ancient gill woods. Initial clearance and subsequent usage of land for settlement was not uniform in space or time. Where settlements were abandoned woodland could regenerate. As a result, Iron Age hillforts and Bronze Age field systems, amongst other prehistoric remains, are found in woodlands, some of which are classified as ancient. In the so-called Dark Ages, the centuries after the collapse of the Roman administration when Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian colonists encroached deep into much of Eastern England, there seems to have been widespread woodland regeneration, although with local variations. Even so, it has been estimated that by Domesday (1086), only 15% of England was still wooded (Rackham, 2007). Clearance continued throughout the High Medieval period, with industry and urban expansion making increasing demands from the seventeenth century onwards. By the end of the medieval period, only fragments of the original wildwood remained and these were often much modified in form from their original state (see Pigott, and also Day, in Beswick and Rotherham, 1993). By then much changed by human interference, individual woodlands were often enclosed within boundaries, protected from grazing animals, and often 9 Woodland Heritage Manual - 2008 given specific names. Coppice woods needed to be protected from the flocks and herds driven into the wood pasture, commons or the dens. Some areas of woodland, in both lowlands and uplands, survived as 'wooded commons', and others, perhaps in part linking to the great wildwood and its veteran trees, were protected in Royal Forests or in medieval parks. Rackham (1986) describes this process in a very readable account. Small-scale regeneration of woodlands also occurred. For example, moats abandoned before the end of the Middle Ages often proved too difficult to plough, leading to the regeneration of small blocks of woodland. In other cases, the well drained enclosures were sometimes deliberately sought out for the plantation of orchards, which eventually returned to nature. In the southeast, there is also increasing evidence that land now occupied by ancient woods was historically covered by woody heaths and pastures (and all grades in between). In short, while there has been a gradual net loss of woodland, the history of an individual wood is seldom one of straightforward evolution. The Wood Pasture Tradition Wood Pasture, the silva pastilis of the Domesday Book, occurred in three forms: Royal Forests and their private equivalent Chases, on Wooded Commons and in Deer Parks. Royal Forests and the private forests of the aristocracy (Chases) flourished after the Norman Conquest of 1066. In this context, the word 'forest' does not necessarily mean or imply woodland. Forest here is a legal term for land on which 'Forest Law' applied, relating to the hunting of deer, the grazing of animals, the clearing of land and the felling of timber. Forests and chases were not fenced and could include within their boundaries woodland, heath, moorland, fen, farmland, and settlements. Wooded commons, forests, and chases might all contain large numbers of veteran trees. Deer Parks, like forests and chases, also flourished after the Norman Conquest but it is now believed that the Domesday Book of 1086, which records only thirty-seven deer parks, massively under-records the number already in existence at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period.