INTRODUCTION
Lords Bushes, an isolated portion of Epping Forest, is situated in the extreme
south-west corner of the modern county of Essex in the parish of Buckhurst Hill (for-
merly Chigwell) just 15 km north-east of the City of London, Its grid reference is
TQ4193(46).
Until the drought year of 1976 some 97% of its 92 acres (37 ha) was covered by
woodland, predominantly beech with oak, hornbeam and holly, many of the trees being
pollards, relics of a wood-pasture system of management and characteristic of much of
Epping Forest, Many trees, notably the beech, succumbed to the drought of 1976 and
subsequently a large portion of the central area of the woodland was clear-felled of its
dead and dying trees, leaving an extensive cleared area devoid of vegetation. Such
clearings are rare events in ancient woodland today (almost invariably if a woodland is
cleared today it involves its complete destruction i.e. the cleared area is turned over to
agriculture or is replanted with conifers) and so I began recording the flora and fauna as
it appeared on this area. An account of the results of this survey, and work carried out in
other parts of Lords Bushes relatively unscathed by the events of 1976, and some
historical research, are contained in the following pages.
WOOD-PASTURE
Wood-pasture and its relationship to other methods of woodland management
Before I go into detail about the history and ecology of Lords Bushes a brief note is
required, to put it into its context as part of a wood-pasture system, and the relationship
wood-pasture has to other types of woodland management. Much of this section is taken
from Rackham (59).
Wooded areas in lowland Britain today are (or have been) basically managed in
three ways — as plantations, woods or wood-pasture.
Plantations: A relatively recent innovation: in a plantation the trees are all of one age,
usually of one species (commonly coniferous trees today) and are deliberately planted as
a crop to be harvested at about a third of their natural life-span and the stumps left to
die; the land either being re-planted or put to some other use.
The other two methods of management differ in that they are of greater antiquity
and are more conservative in their treatment of the trees, which are in most cases in-
digenous to the site upon which the wood is situated. Woods and wood-pasture were
certainly in operation in Anglo-Saxon times and woods may be of earlier origin.
Woods: In a wood the trees are basically of two types: timber (or standard) trees and
underwood (or coppice). Periodically, on a rotational basis, a section of the underwood
is felled: the poles being cut just above ground-level, from a stool, which then sprouts
more shoots which eventually grow to provide poles for the next felling. The wood cut
provides among other things tool handles, material for fencing (hurdles) and most often
fuel. Interspersed among the underwood are the standard trees (usually oak); these are
allowed to grow for many decades until a usable size is reached and are then felled and
the timber used in building, for example, providing beams, posts and planks. This
system of management is often referred to as 'coppice with standards'. The regrowth
from coppice stools is much favoured by livestock and to prevent animals browsing
woods are invariably surrounded by extensive earthworks (woodbank) supporting a
hedge or fence.
Wood-pasture: This system differs from woods in that it combined the growing of trees
with the grazing of animals. In order that this could take place the trees in a wood-
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