Wood-Pasture and Parks
It is only relatively recently that lowland wood-pasture as a habitat type has been recognised. It is,
by its simplest definition, an area of land where the growing of trees was combined with the grazing
of animals. Included under this definition are wooded commons, ancient royal forests, chases and
parks. The trees within a wood-pasture are characteristically pollards - trees cut at a height which
would prevent livestock from browsing the re-growth. Parks stocked with deer in the medieval
period differed from forests, in having a deer-proof perimeter fence - the pale - were privately
owned and were not governed by a legal system or special administration. Hylands came late to
this group. It was created in the early 18th century from a pre-existing agricultural landscape, as
were many much earlier parks. Characteristically Hylands was surrounded by an oak pale; animals
including cattle and sheep were grazed here and today a large herd of fallow deer (around a hundred
head) roam the park, although the perimeter fence is no longer deer-proof. Pollard trees are present
in the park, albeit in small numbers (and all are of hedgerow origin). As a park created for its visual
amenity, rather than as a producer of venison, standard trees - including a number of sizeable oaks
- are in the majority.
Hylands is not of medieval origin, although it does incorporate elements of ancient landscapes
within its current boundary. The Great Oak on Writtle Hills - possibly more than 500 years old -
probably started life in the 15th or 16th century. Hylands is relatively young, at about 270 years old
(in part). Parks such as this are sometimes termed 'pseudo-medieval', but there is no real justification
for this term, since many medieval parks were created in this way as well and we don't refer to
medieval parks as being 'pseudo-Saxon'. In 1320 Edward I gave leave ''to inclose 150 acres of
demesne adjoining park of Waltham and High Easter called Le Plessie to enlarge that Park". The
resulting enlarged Pleshey Great Park, comprising some 625 acres of coppiced woodland, hedgerows,
trees and pasture, is little different in structure to the 570 acres of Hylands Park today.
Even now. what is Britain's best studied deer park - Moccas Park in Herefordshire - (famous for
its rare beetles and now a national nature reserve) may not be medieval in origin. There appears to
be no record of a licence to empark (possibly one was not applied for) and the park is first recorded
in the early 17th century. In 1617 some deer were sent from Moccas to stock a park in Ireland. The
Lower Park at Moccas has ridge and furrow (probably medieval) and according to John Phibbs -
''Most of the veteran oaks stand on the ridge and furrow". Its most famous tree - the "Hypebaeus
Tree" (named for a rare beetle only known in Britain from Moccas) - a very ancient oak pollard
"appears to be in origin, a hedgerow tree". So Moccas in fact may be a 'pseudo-medieval' park
created in part out of agricultural land that had gone out of cultivation much earlier, possibly
during the 'BlackDeath'.
The vast Richmond Park in Surrey, twice the size of Hatfield Forest and another National Nature
Reserve, was emparked as late as 1637 by Charles I as a place to hunt red deer - hence its size. It
too consisted of existing farmland, but also common land and woodland (relatively little Crown
land was involved in its creation).
Parks have been created virtually throughout England's history since the Conquest and still goes on
today in the form of 'country parks', which are emparked for their wild-life and public amenity, not
for their deer. At all times there has been an ebb and flow of park creation - thousands were made
in the medieval period, hundreds disparked in the 17th and 18th centuries. A feature of Essex parks
is that they were created and adapted from a pre-existing, sometimes agricultural, landscape of
woodland, fields and pastures.
Essex Parks: Section 1 - Parks in Essex
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