preferment of beech on the grounds that the latter "are much more likely to
improve." This has led to further loss of variety.
Great Monk Wood was greatly thinned of its pollards in 1893 with the
object of allowing spear beeches to grow to full height. Today, this is one of the
poorest parts of the Forest for wildlife with its monotony of widespread, tall
pollarded beeches, few if any spears from 1893 and a floor thickly carpeted with
dead leaves and cushions of the moss Leucobryum glaucum: there is little else,
save wisps of grass and weak brambles where the promoted beeches have fallen,
and a few groups of seedling trees where further deliberate felling has occurred.
Even a little permanent light will encourage grasses and herbs to grow. On the
ride to the south, recent widening has produced an oasis of herbage, including a
few plants of common heather. Could not more light be let in? Little Monk
Wood (see Table 9), if pollarded, would provide an apposite contrast with
Great Monk and, incidentally, might save the surviving oak pollards from death
by shading.
The western slopes of St Thomas's Quarters had "decadent hornbeams
which used to cover the whole surface, and had nearly succeeded in destroying
the undergrowth." This was because man failed to maintain pollarding and no
fault of the hornbeam — they were persecuted throughout the Forest. He says
that "Every chance should be given here to the holly". Now, holly has taken
every chance given it and is commonly dominant or sub-dominant as shrub and
understorey in the Forest — a decided tendency to uniformity, probably
aided by reduced grazing.
Lord's Bushes was heavily thinned of its "meaner" hornbeams. "But it is
the old oak pollards which give it a character of its own . . . Many of these have
been killed by the overshadowing of the lusty young beeches, but others have
been taken in time and saved from the slow but sure process of choking... no
one can doubt that the ancient boles will continue to give a venerable air to this
wood for many years to come." This action was beneficial but the opportunity
to perpetuate them further by removing the beech canopy and pollarding the
oaks was lost.
At the end of this section Buxton notes that variety extends to shrubs and
herbage: "grass, heather, brake fern, gorse, broom or blackthorn" occur
"according to soil and aspect". Buxton, however, would have us lose all this (p.
111): he notes the part lopping rights (pollarding) played in the legal battle to
preserve the Forest, but claims pollarding to be "abolished for ever" and its
suppression as "one of the foremost duties" of the Committee. He did not then
show any appreciation of the direct link between the dense shade created by the
large uncut pollard crowns and the decline of ground flora and its invertebrates.
This single decision (arguably in contravention of the Act) has had the
greatest adverse effect on the Forest since 1878.
An aspect of variety, or its diminution, not prominent in Buxton's day
(though he was aware of it) is the encroachment of scrub and trees (especially
oak) on to the plains. The process has been going on for several centuries in
places (e.g. the southern and northern edges of Almshouse Plain (Cockrell 1975
and Table 10), but has accelerated in the past 50 years. Epping Plain is a good
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