126 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
sending small wedges of forest out towards Harwich and St.
Osyth. The shorter spur, of greater thickness, passes out from,
the south-western core and terminates at Felsted. Separated
from the main forested area are the wooded districts of Tiptree,
Danbury and Hockley, whilst smaller areas occur to the west
of Fobbing and Corringham.
These suggested forested areas fit in very well with previously
mentioned blank areas of the centuriation distribution, and
correspond to the general lines of the later Norman Forest.
Furthermore, an additional check was adduced by an examination
of the shapes of villages known to exist in pre-Conquest
times. Villages like Wakering, Kirby and Tillingham show a
typical extra-forest structure, being very long and narrow owing
to the ease of settlement along the routeways of the open country-
side; Wakering, indeed, stretching for about three-quarters of
a mile yet being hardly more than a main street. Opposed to
this type is the compact, nucleated forest settlement evidenced
in such towns and villages as Ardleigh and Coggeshall—often
appearing with a central green. In Essex the majority of
this latter type of settlement occurs to the north and west
within the suggested forested areas.
The history of the settlement and forest clearing occurring
within the County has so far been dealt with in a qualitative
way—a quantitative analysis of deforestation being impossible
for Essex until 1086. The Great Survey, known as the Domes-
day Book, gives us our first opportunity of discussing the clearing
of the Forest from a consideration of documentary evidence,
and of arriving at some idea of the extent of arable land within
the County. In the following account of the woodland of
Norman times some discussion of that troublesome unit—the
hide—is necessary. This early measure was unfixed, depending
apparently on the state of cultivation the countryside had
reached. Where later charters allow means of checking those
varying areas it appears that the hide corresponded to about
120 acres in the east of England, approaching a figure of nearly
2,000 acres in the less civilised district to the west and north.
Researches by the writer within the County support the
suggestion that 120 acres per hide is a reliable figure for all
Essex. Using this figure, the arable manorial areas mentioned
in Domesday were plotted for the County, the areas being drawn