The History of Tree Health and Tree Populations in England Since C.1550
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The History of Tree Health and Tree Populations in England since c.1550. Tom Williamson Gerry Barnes Toby Pillatt Acknowledgements A large number of people have helped with this project, providing access to documents or providing information and advice. We would like to thank, in particular, the staff at Hertfordshire Archives and Local History, the Northamptonshire Record Office, Norfolk Record Office, and the various Yorkshire Record Offices (at Northallerton, Leeds, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley, Hull and Beverley); and Crispin Towell at Boughton House archives, Northamptonshire. Thanks also to Anne Rowe and Peter Austin, for information about Hertfordshire; Tracey Partida, for access to her research on Northamptonshire enclosure; and to Sid Cooper, Teresa Betterton, Rachel Riley, Richard Brooke, Jim Lyon, Andrew Falcon, Rod Pass, John White, Mark Pritchard, Rory Hart, Peter Clarke, Garry Battell, Nicola Orchard, Justin Gilbert, Andrew MacNair, Jack Langton, Rob Liddiard, Steve Scott and Patsy Dallas. Contents Part 1: Report Summary ……………………………………………………………………………… ........................ 4 Part 2: Main Report: ................................................................................................................ 18 1. Introduction: trees, woods and landscapes ….. .................................................................... 18 2. Farmland Trees ..................................................................................................................... 51 3. Woodland and Wood-Pasture …………………………………………………………………… ..................... 78 4. Tree Species in ‘Traditional’ Landscapes’ ........................................................................... 107 5. The Development of Trees and Woodlands, c.1780-1880 ………………………… .................... 129 6. Trees and Woodland since c.1880 ………………………………….. ............................................... 159 7. Health, Age and Management ………………………………………………………………… ..................... 183 8. Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………204 Bibliography and Principal Sources …………………………………………………………………………………...214 2 Abbreviations Barn - Barnsley Record Office, South Yorkshire Bev – Beverley Record Office, East Yorkshire Brad – Bradford Record Office, West Yorkshire Cal IPM – Calendar of Inquisitions Post-Mortem Cald - Calderdale (Halifax) Record Office, West Yorkshire CPR – Calendar of Patent Rolls Don – Doncaster Record Office, South Yorkshire FC – Forestry Commission FC archive – Forestry Commission archive, Santon Downham, Suffolk HALS – Hertfordshire Archives and Local History, Hertford HHA – Hatfield House archives, Hertfordshire Hull - Hull Record Office, East Yorkshire Kirk - Kirklees (Huddersfield) Record Office, West Yorkshire Lds – Leeds Record Office, West Yorkshire NCC - Norfolk County Council NHRO – Northamptonshire Record Office, Northampton NRO – Norfolk Record Office, Norwich Nrth - Northallerton Record Office, North Yorkshire Shf – Sheffield Record Office, South Yorkshire TNA/PRO – The National Archive/Public Record Office, Kew Part 1. Report Summary This report, the result of a two-year research project jointly funded by DEFRA and the AHRC, is divided into two sections. This, the first, comprises a brief summary of the principal findings. The second, much larger section presents the arguments, evidence and data upon which these are based. The aims of the project were to: • Examine the changing character of tree populations in England since c.1550 in terms of the numbers of farmland trees and the number and extent of woods; the distribution of both at various spatial scales;, their species composition and their management. • Cast light on past attitudes to tree health in England and on historic patterns of tree morbidity. The prime, underlying motivation for undertaking this research was a belief that, in order to understand current threats to trees in England and evaluate their true scale, we need to view them in historical perspective. In particular, it is important to assess the extent to which rural tree populations are essentially ‘natural’ in character, as opposed to being culturally determined; and to identify any developments over the last century or so which may have rendered them more susceptible to the attacks of pathogens. The project was based on a systematic examination of early printed texts on forestry, farming and land management. But it also – and more importantly – involved extensive archival research, using maps, deeds, estate accounts, surveys, descriptions, correspondence and much else. For this second aspect, our attention was firmly focussed on four counties, largely chosen because they represent a wide tranche of landscape types and of post-medieval social/economic systems, as well as displaying contrasting geological, climatic, edaphic and topographic characteristics. Northamptonshire was chosen because it possessed an archetypical ‘champion’ landscape, of the kind found widely across the central districts of England in the medieval and earlier post-medieval periods. Most of the land lay, not in fields bounded by walls or hedges, but in ‘open fields’ comprising the unenclosed and intermingled strips of large numbers of farmers. Such fields were managed collectively, and farms and cottages were closely clustered in nucleated villages. These open landscapes were gradually replaced by networks of hedged fields in the period between 1550 and c.1760, and more rapidly thereafter, through various forms of enclosure. Northamptonshire was, and is, a county of varied geology, although largely dominated by heavy clays, on the most extensive and difficult tracts of which the three royal forests of Rockingham, Salcey and Whittlewood were found. Other aspects of the county’s landscape and agrarian history had already been exhaustively studied during an earlier AHRC –funded project based at the University of East Anglia, and the data and GIS datasets produced by this provided an ideal context for our enquiries. Norfolk, the second county chosen for detailed investigation, was also in part a ‘champion’ county, although here such landscapes were mainly concentrated on the lighter soils and permeable geologies where, by the seventeenth and eighteenth century, extensive tracts of heathland also existed. The south and east of the county, in contrast, where heavier clays and loams occurred, experienced a considerable degree of early enclosure – even in the Middle Ages much land here lay in enclosed fields – and woods were abundant. In was, on the whole, a wealthier and more populous county than Northamptonshire, and its county town, Norwich, was the second or third largest population centre in England. Hertfordshire was different again. Little open field survived here by 1550, so that hedges and hedgerow trees were abundant, and large amounts of both enclosed woodland, and wood-pasture, also existed. The county also lay within a short distance of London, something which had an important influence on the management of its trees and woods. Lastly, Yorkshire – comprising its three traditional ‘Ridings’ – was, like Northamptonshire, a mainly ‘champion’ county, its clay Vales and chalk Wolds largely farmed as open-fields from nucleated villages. But it also included large tracts of the western Pennines, and the North York Moors, where typical ‘upland’ landscapes, featuring large areas of peat moorland, could be found. Yorkshire is also distinguished by its early industrialisation. By the sixteenth century the south Yorkshire coalfield was already being exploited on a large scale, as were the mineral reserves of the Pennines. There were important geological, topographic, climatic and edalphic differences between these four counties, but of greater significance in shaping the character of their trees and woodlands were human influences. One of the principal arguments of this report is that tree populations were essentially, or at least substantially, artificial in character: there was relatively little about them that was ‘natural’. In a densely settled and intensively-exploited landscape trees were either deliberately planted or intentionally permitted to grown in particular locations. Trees and woods were thus intimately connected with complex social and economic systems and it was this, as much as the influence of purely natural factors, which explains the variations which they manifested not only over space, but also over time. Pre-industrial tree populations in woods, on commons or on farmland were, moreover, much more intensively managed than today, and in most cases trees were regarded exclusively or at least primarily in economic terms. Timber was required in large quantities, but more important was the need for wood, especially for industrial and domestic fuel. Farmland tree populations before the later eighteenth century Farmland trees in the period before the later eighteenth century were, by the standards of today, extraordinarily numerous in many districts. In the old-enclosed areas of Hertfordshire and Norfolk, where hedges formed a dense and intricate mesh, there were usually – by the time our records become abundant, from the later seventeenth century – an average of more than 15 farmland trees per hectare; often more than 20; while local densities of 50 or even more were not uncommon. Such trees were generally scattered fairly evenly across the landscape, growing either within hedges or in ‘rows’ around field margins. In ‘champion’ open-field districts, in contrast, there were far