Although timber has never been a main product, the records show an
adequate succession of generations of oak: the saplings of 1604, for instance,
became the timber trees of 1783.
In two places we can compare an ancient description with the present plant
communities. Hainault Forest, to judge by its surviving fragments, has changed
remarkably little in vegetation since the 1544 survey; the principal trees are the
same, though there is now rather less blackthorn and oak, and more hornbeam
and birch, and there is now some holly which is not listed in 1544. Monk Wood
has changed rather more since the account of it in 1582, and has become much
less varied. Six of the seven trees then recorded are still there, but beech has
become the sole dominant; holly has also increased; oak has greatly declined;
and crabapple, then abundant, is now rare or extinct. These changes appear to
result chiefly from relatively recent lack of pollarding, which has allowed beech
to suppress the other species, especially the oaks whose dead remains are still to
be seen. The 1582 record of crabtrees and hawthorns "most parte dead in the
toppe' suggests that even 15 years between pollardings was enough to start the
process of suppression.
In Epping Forest in general the surviving old trees suggest that beech was
dominant on high ground and hornbeam on the lower slopes. Oaks occurred in
both zones but predominated in a narrow belt between them; they were also the
chief scattered trees in the plains. Under pollarding the three trees would
coexist without undue competition, but after pollarding has ceased both beech
and hornbeam have overtopped, shaded, and killed many of the oaks among
them; beech has tended also to overrun the oak zone and to move down into the
hornbeam zone.
The long-term changes in the trees of Epping have their parallels in other
Forests. The New Forest and the Foret de Fontainebleau both tell of a change
from lime to oak to beech. Lime declined in antiquity, as at Epping, and is
commemorated by the place-names Lyndhurst (= lime-grove) and La Tillaie.
The increase of beech over oak is more recent (54); at Fontainebleau, as at
Epping, this second change is associated with the decline of the Forest land-uses
(40).
EVENTS SINCE 1878
The Epping Forest Act (1) abolished the rights of the Crown and the
landowners and transferred the freehold of the Forest to the City of London,
who were to appoint Conservators to manage it as a public open space. The
Conservators were given, and promptly exercised, the power to terminate the
woodcutting rights, although these had been a means of frustrating the
destruction of the Forest; the common rights of grazing, illogically, were
allowed to remain. The Act required the Conservators "as far as possible" to
"preserve the natural aspect of the Forest" and (unconditionally) to "protect
the timber and other trees, pollards, shrubs, underwood, heather, gorse, turf,
and herbage growing on the Forest".
52