Woodland

By 500 BC half of England had been cleared of woodland, and by the 11th century AD only some 15% of the land recorded by the Domesday survey was woodland and wood-pasture. Out of 12,580 settlements, only 6208 contained woodland (Oliver Rackham, Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape, 1976, p. 75; Eric S. Wood, Historical Britain, 1995).

Here is an example of a record of a woodland in Herefordshire:

"1,3 KINGSTONE

"King Edward held it ...

"A wood named Treville which pays no customary dues except hunting rights. The villagers who lived there before 1066 carried (the produce of) the hunt to Hereford and did no other service, as the Shire states." (Frank and Caroline Thorn (eds.), Domesday Book: 17 Hereford, 1,3, Phillimore, 1983)  

Today only 1% of land is woodland. It is thought that the Forest of Dean was the last natural wildwood in England, and that this was felled in the 13th century.

Place-names have been studied to find out which settlement may have been near a wooded area. Place-names ending in -ley or -hurst appear to mean an inhabited clearing surrounded by woodland (see Oliver Rackham, above, p. 82). Weobley in Herefordshire is a good example.

In the Middle Ages most woodland was managed. Some of the woodland was used for pasture; pigs especially foraged in the wooded areas. Fallen nuts, acorns or beechmast were good pannage (food) for pigs. Large trees were felled for timber for houses and ship building, and underwood (such as hazels, ash and willow) was coppiced to produce poles and material for fencing, wattles and basket weaving. Even the bark was used for curing meat and tanning leather. Underwood also provided wood for fuel and to heat kilns for industry, such as glassmaking.

Both trees and underwood renew themselves if given a chance (e.g. by not letting animals eat re-growth and not burning stumps) and produce a sustained yield. Managed woodland provided a considerable source of income and owners were very careful to punish misuse.

This example of a lord bringing a case against someone who cut wood in his woodland in Herefordshire is taken from a manorial court document of 1344:

"The lord as plaintiff opposes Hugh de Wotton in a plea of trespass that Hugh and his household ... have cut his wood at Heckwood to a damage of 20s and a value of 20s and he brings his suit ... " (Record Office abstract, Manor of Pencombe 1303-1452, Arkwright Manorial Records A63). 

Whilst people were punished for taking or damaging trees in medieval England, the law was not as brutal as the Old German laws mentioned by the Roman author Tacitus. He noted that the penalty for someone who dared peel the bark off a living tree (and thus killing the tree) was to have his navel cut out and nailed to the tree and then to be driven round the tree until all his guts were wound about its trunk (Charles Mynors, The Law of Trees, Forests and Hedgerows, Sweet & Maxwell, 2002, p. 3).

The saying "by hook or by crook" comes from the Middle Ages when villagers were only allowed to take dead wood, not cut down trees or bushes. Fallen timber and dead wood could be cleared and pulled out with a shepherd's crook or a weeding hook. 

King Henry III tried to pay off some of his debts with the proceeds of the underwood of his forests. In 1255 he appointed agents, such as Peter de Neyreford and Nicholas de Rummesye, to raise money by selling the underwood (Oliver Rackham, Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape, revised edition 1990, p. 171). Medieval kings were not cash-wealthy and being able to reward someone with something money could not buy, such as a large oak tree or a deer, added to their status and helped to augment their authority.

The author Geoffrey Chaucer, for example, not being eligible for a knighthood as he was not a fighting man, was awarded the position of under-Forester of a Somerset forest (Oliver Rackham, see above, p. 172).

[Original author: Toria Forsyth-Moser, 2002]