Woodland Heritage Manual Revised Version Final.Qxd
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Woodland Heritage Manual - 2008 Section C: Documentary Research This section looks at the sources for and types of documentary material that you can use to complement your woodland fieldwork surveys. Uncovering this material may involve some detective work but will be invaluable in providing a context for what you are seeing on the ground and help with interpreting your survey results. If time and resources permit, the research work may also gather information over a wider area or about the management of a large estate which contains your woodland. Documentary research will reveal details about the history of your wood which aren't available purely from fieldwork. There is a wide range of types of information and sources that can be used to answer questions about your woodland's history. By looking at and using maps, place- names, old documents, photographs and gathering personal recollections you can often find out a great deal about the age of your wood, who owned it, why it was managed and how it changed through time. However, it is also worth bearing in mind that not every activity and Section C Documentary Research change of land use will be documented. There will be gaps in the documentary record which will lead you to some ‘dead ends’. Thus, be careful that the documentary research informs but does not 'drive' your fieldwork by steering you to look for or value only those features identified from documentary material. This section also gives you background information on other sources such as the biodiversity of the woodland. The chapters included in this section are: 1. Introduction to Documentary Research 2. Where to Look for Information 3. Types of Documents Used for Constructing the History of the Wood 4. Using Maps for Historical Research 5. Woodland Place-names 6. Personal Recollections It is up to you how much time you want to spend researching your wood. A basic search and comparison of old and recent maps will give enough information to inform your initial field investigations. Further documentary work can be added at a later stage. 55 Woodland Heritage Manual - 2008 C.1: Introduction to Documentary Research Mel Jones, Christine Handley and Elaine Gathercole “Historical information enables us to look beyond the neglect or destruction of much English woodland in the last few decades to the often more conservative management of past centuries. Without such information it is impossible adequately to assess the importance of individual woods and woodland types, or to draw up rational management schemes…” Oliver Rackham (1979) Why Documentary Sources are Important Documentary sources can provide specific evidence of past conditions, past events and past management practices which are often impossible to detect through site surveys alone. Moreover they can confirm or overturn inferences from field surveys. Arguments about the ecological and heritage value of sites are greatly strengthened by combining field and documentary evidence. Sites with a well-documented history can be more readily understood than those where such information is scarce or entirely lacking. Sites where documentary and landscape evidence can be combined have still more added value. The specific kinds of information that can emerge from a documentary study of a wood are: 1. The status of a woodland: if it is ancient (in existence by 1600AD) or long established (in existence by the production of the 1st edition Ordnance Survey maps). 2. Past management practices: wood pasture; simple coppice; coppice-with-standards; high forest; game reserve; length of coppice cycles; compartmentation; long-term and short-term changes of management. 3. Markets for wood, timber and other woodland products (e.g. poles, bark, besoms), including changing markets leading to changes of management. 4. Other past uses of parts of the site, e.g. mining and quarrying, lime kilns, charcoal platforms, potash production. 5. Biological species present and clarification of the status of different tree species: native to the site or planted; number contracting or expanding. 6. Significance and in some cases the dating of boundary and internal earthworks. 7. Woodland clearances and woodland extensions. Planning Your Research The sources and types of information that you could potentially use to investigate the history of your woodland are wide ranging. So, before you start it is important to follow a few basic steps which will provide a focus for your research and give some structure to how you will carry it out. These are outlined below. 56 Woodland Heritage Manual - 2008 • Decide on how much time you can allocate to your documentary research; what your budget might be; and if you are part of a group, allocate tasks. This will help you to plan any visits or make a decision about using internet sources. Some collection of material, especially where copies are needed, has a cost attached and there may be travel costs depending on the location of the relevant record offices. • If you know who currently owns your woodland, ask if they have any information about its history and who owned it before them. If you don't know who the current owners are you will need to find this out to gain permission to carry out your survey and can ask about its history then. • If you are not already familiar with the woodland - make a visit, note down any obvious physical features such as wood banks, ancient trees, pits and earthworks in the woodland and nearby. See D.3 on how to carry out your preliminary survey. This will help in identifying relevant sources of information and the questions you need to ask. • If you know of any protected or interesting flora and fauna species in your wood it is worth noting these down when you begin your research. The ecology and biodiversity of woodland is covered in B.4 and D.4 of the manual. The species recorded may be indicators of the presence of historical features or indicate past management. Some species may be mentioned in the documentary record: lists of planting schemes appear in account books, records were made by previous generations of naturalists and local people may recollect seeing the species or even collecting them as a child. • Look on a modern map at the area around the woodland - make a note of the nearest village, Section C Documentary Research any place names or prominent features. This will help with your search enabling you to target your questions to the right area but remember that names and features may have changed historically so you may need to try different spellings. • Look in the local library for any publications that may cover your area and ask around to see if there are any local groups or individuals that may have useful information. • Decide on the questions you need to ask and where you are most likely to find the information. The key questions that you will need to focus on are: • who owns or owned the wood? • what is or was it used for? • how is or was it managed? • how long has it been there? and • how has it changed? You may have an idea of the answers to some of these questions so can start to look for the historical record or at a specific event. Otherwise, it is perhaps easiest to start by comparing maps from the present day back through time, or try to find out its ownership in the nineteenth century and work backwards and forwards from there. Sometimes there was far greater stability of ownership up to the nineteenth century than there was in the twentieth century. • Choose a couple of types of information to focus on initially. These will probably provide further pointers to other types and sources whilst providing some useful information for your research. If an initial search finds very little, it is worth asking about the wider area, perhaps the parish or local village not just your woodland. • An essential source of information and the first which should be consulted is maps (see C.3). The first edition Ordnance Survey map series goes back into the mid-nineteenth century and will give essential information about the shape and extent of the woodland and the 57 Woodland Heritage Manual - 2008 surrounding area at this time. Subsequent editions of these maps will allow you to track the changes to your woodland boundaries to the present day. The large-scale maps (25 inches to 1 mile) also give an indication of the overall composition of a wood. • Decide on your filing system for the information you collect - use keywords and a referencing system. This will help to keep your research relevant to your woodland. It will also enable you to refer back to your information once you have carried out your fieldwork surveys. • Plan your visit to a library, record centre or to the internet. • In some cases, all or part of the library or archive record centre's catalogue (list of books in the library or items contained in each archive collection) may be available online, either on their own website or via the Access to Archives website (see C.2). Spending time in advance on keyword searches for local place, family or personal names to find relevant items prior to your visit may make the visit more productive. However, it is always worth finding out from staff whether the on-line catalogues are comprehensive as some have only been partially completed. • You can find contact and other basic details such as opening times for county and other archives and local libraries via the internet. Always try to contact them in advance of your visit. In some archive record centres it will be necessary to make an appointment to visit or to book facilities such as microfilm or fiche readers, desks, map tables or PC connection points (if available).