More on Essex wood pasture and ancient trees
M.W. Hanson 3 Church Cottages, Church Road, Boreham, Essex
Looking up wood pasture on the internet you will probably be surprised as I was to find
over 50,000 entries related to this topic in the UK alone - given that probably a percentage
of these are duplicated it still indicates that there is a huge amount of interest being
generated at many different levels in our ancient royal forests, old parklands and wooded
commons. Much of the interest lies in the ancient pollard trees that characterise these
landscapes. I have stated before that the UK in general is thought to hold some 85% of
north-west Europe's ancient trees and that Essex in particular has a phenomenal
population of these.
It is my belief that Epping Forest is the most important single site from the point of view
of sheer numbers of ancient trees in this region. Although there have been many and
substantial losses the Forest still has at least 70,000 and possibly well over 100,000
pollard trees (depending on how you conduct your census). Despite this importance and
intense interest there is, as far as I know, no structured access to the vast amount of
information being generated, for example from ever increasing numbers of parkland
surveys and indirectly through people recording various aspects of forest or parkland
history (e.g. bird, bryophyte or saproxylic invertebrates) as part of wider countywidc
surveys.
Considering the importance of the habitat to the UK it seems amiss that there is no one
body that draws together all the disparate elements and provides a forum for discussion.
Essex has had at least five ancient royal forests with the substantial remains of at least
three surviving and what was one of the densest concentrations of parklands in the UK.
For these reasons Essex should be at the forefront of any movement that attempts to
bring together information about our UK wood pasture heritage.
I am hoping in the not too distant future to make some contribution to the process of
establishing a county wood pasture research and study resource (this will include all
aspects of forest and parkland history from rare wood-feeding beetles to park landscapers
via grazing animals!!). I would also like to extend its remit to eventually include the
other counties that are likely to make up the new east of England region, which I suspect
will be foisted upon us whether we like it or not and ' for better or worse'. It would be
nice to think that eventually such a facility could be 'bolted' on to an established authority
that would be mature enough to understand its value.
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Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 50, May 2006