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Crisis and Continuum in theShaping of Landscapes

Edited by Ian.D.Rotherham

Landscape Archaeology and Ecology, Volume 5, 2005

Crisis and Continuum in the Shaping of LandscapesLandscape Archaeology and Ecology, Volume 5, 2005

Edited by Ian D. Rotherham

ISSN 1354 - 0262

Printed by: B&B Press (Parkgate) Rotherham

Published by: Wildtrack Publishing, P.O. Box 1142, Sheffield, S1 1SZ

Typeset and processed by: Diane Harrison and Christine Handley

Supported by: South Yorkshire Biodiversity Research Group, LandscapeConservation Forum, Hallam Environmental Consultants Ltd, Tourism Leisureand Environmental Change Research Unit at Sheffield Hallam University,English Nature, Windgather Press

© Wildtrack Publishing and the individual authorsAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmittedin any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission inwriting from the publisher.

© Front Cover Picture - Professor Andrew Fleming

Preface

Dr Ian D. RotherhamSheffield Hallam University

This 3-day conference was emphatically interdisciplinary in nature. It addressed the impactsof crises - especially ecological crises - on the landscape, and how landscape as a continuumrecovers from these events and indeed exists through and beyond them. Considering issuesof landscape development and evolution, the conference focused on how crises transformlandscapes and how the changes are absorbed into the environmental and cultural matrix.

This multi-disciplinary, international event is of great relevance to ecologists, geographers,landscape historians and archaeologists, and all those with an interest in landscapes andenvironmental change. It has been designed to appeal to both professionals and amateurs, topractitioners and to those in education.

As a special theme and in collaboration with English Nature, the conference had time setaside for a special discussion based around the work of Dr Frans Vera, and a presentation ofthe monitoring work commissioned by English Nature. This was themed as: LargeHerbivores as drivers of past and future landscapes? The ideas of Frans Vera have stimulatedconsiderable debate about the nature of the former natural landscape of Britain and thepotential for naturalistic grazing regimes as ways of managing landscapes for natureconservation. English Nature commissioned a review of research and ideas in this areaduring 2003-4. Findings from this review were presented at the conference.

Contents Page John Barnatt Chatsworth: the Transformation of a Great Estate

Landscape 5

Paul C. Buckland The Nature of Mid-Holocene Woodland 11

Paul C. Buckland and Eva Panagiotakopulu

Insects and Human Impact on Atlantic Islands 14

Jill Butler Trees in the Historic Landscape 16

Kevin J. Edwards Crisis? Recovery? Management? Landscapes of contrast in Viking Age Iceland and the Faroe Islands 19

Andrew Fleming Perpetual crisis? The ‘struggle for existence’ on the edge of the Atlantic 21

Glenn Foard, David Hall and Tracey Partida

Rockingham: The Destruction of a Forest 23

Ted Green Tree Archaeology – what can it tell us? 41

Kathy H. Hodder and James M. Bullock

Naturalistic grazing in present and future landscapes 43

Melvyn Jones Ancient Woodland Destruction, Survival and Restoration: A South Yorkshire Perspective 46

Keith Kirby Was the wildwood closed forest or savannah – and does it matter? 59

Robert Marrs Plot to Landscape on Moorlands, or vice versa 61

George Peterken Ecological Crises in the Lower Wye Valley 62

Ian D. Rotherham Fuel and Landscape – Exploitation, Environment, Crisis and Continuum 65

David Smith and Nicki Whitehouse

Beetle faunas, woodland history and the palaeoenvironment 82

Chris Smout The Scottish Coasts – An Archaeological Landscape in Crisis 86

Richard Tipping Coping with Climatic Stresses: Climate Change, Prehistoric Farmers and the Transmission of Knowledge 90

Robert Van de Noort Crisis, What Crisis? Towards a ‘Third Way’ in Landscape Archaeology? 95

Frans W.M. Vera Large Ungulates – driving forces behind a non-linear succession 99

Ian Whyte Parliamentary Enclosure: a Crisis for Upland Landscapes and Communities? 101

Tom Williamson Crisis, Continuity and the ‘Natural Frame’: aspects of Anglo-Saxon settlement 113

Poster Summary 'Connectivity in the Landscape: The Zoological Society of London's conservation work at Whipsnade Wild Animal Park'

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Crisis and Continuum in the Shaping of Landscapes - Landscape Archaeology and Ecology, Volume 5, 2005

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Chatsworth: The transformation of a great estatelandscapeJohn BarnattPeak District National Park Authority, Bakewell, Derbyshire

IntroductionThis paper uses the estate landscapesurrounding Chatsworth House, in the PeakDistrict of Derbyshire, to illustrate a number ofradical landscape transformations over severalmillennia. It demonstrates the value ofcombining a landscape history approach witharchaeological fieldwork, thus giving a greaterunderstanding of the long-term development ofthe landscape than either approach would ifundertaken separately.

It draws heavily on work undertaken over thelast ten years, at the behest of the Trustees ofthe Chatsworth Settlement and EnglishHeritage. Assessment of the designed landscapewas led by Elise Perciful, Steven Thomas andTom Williamson; and of the archaeologicallandscape by Nicola Bannister and JohnBarnatt. Barnatt and Williamson have recentlysummarised the landscape history ofChatsworth's park and gardens, which is shortlyto be published.

Chatsworth House lies in the Derwent Valleyclose to the river, with adjacent formal gardens,extensive parkland on both sides of the river,and estate farmland and moors beyond. At thecore is a visually-spectacular designedlandscape, with the parkland and its scatteredtrees flanked by wooded slopes planted as abackdrop. The House and gardens lie east ofthe river, nestled below woods on a 200m highgritstone scarp, above which there are late 18thcentury fields out of view. Both scarp and shelfabove were once a large late-medieval deerpark. Beyond there is extensive heathermoorland separating this idyllic haven from theheavily industrialised landscape aroundChesterfield. To the west of the river, beyondthe park, the ridges are lower than those on theeast and today there are plantations on steeper

slopes, surrounding a broad expanse of opengrazing on Calton Pastures. On this side of theriver there were once open fields centred on thevillage of Edensor, a large warren near theriver, and commons on higher ground above.

A Very Special LandscapeOne thing that distinguishes the Chatsworthlandscape as very special, particularly theparkland in the valley and the moorlands aboveto the east, is the extensive survival ofarchaeological features that tell of the history ofthis landscape over several millennia and ofperiodic transformations. The moorlands haveexceptional evidence for prehistoric farming ina landscape, surviving because this land hasbeen subsequently used for rough grazing overthe last 2000 years. The parkland has acomplex palimpsest of medieval and laterfeatures, which were effectively fossilised inthe mid 18th and early 19th centuries.Differences in topography on the two sides ofthe river, and how people chose to use theseareas, have led to varying and often contrastingstories unfolding through time. For manypeople who visit Chatsworth they see whatappears to be a landscape of timeless grandeur -in reality it has a long and complex history.While the Chatsworth landscape sometimestells of common historic trends in the ever-changing English countryside, viewed here inmicrocosm, it is a place where the exceptionalsurvival allows these to be seen with particularclarity.

Undoubtedly, when radical changes atChatsworth were taking place, some peoplewho were affected saw these as times of crisis.However, retrospectively, in terms of continuedif different use of the landscape, these were notso much crises as transformations. Over the lastfew hundred years, some of the changes were


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only possible because they were instigated bypeople with exceptional wealth, the CavendishFamily, the Dukes (formerly Earls) ofDevonshire. Thus, while some of thetransformations over several millennia reflectcommon changes over broad swathes of thecountryside, others such as the creation ofChatsworth Park are atypical developmentsparticular to only specific places.

The MoorlandsWhilst today's moorlands are erroneouslyviewed by many visitors as 'natural' - nothingcould be further from the truth. There has beenno fully 'natural' landscape around Chatsworthfor several millennia. After the last ice age thePeak District was extensively wooded.However, hunter-gatherers and later, farmers,gradually removed much of the tree cover fromthe upland areas. In the second and firstmillennia BC the gritstone upland aboveChatsworth, was extensively farmed, withscattered farmsteads surrounded by small fieldswherever the soils were most favourable. Thebrown earths here were stony and much stonehad to be removed before and duringcultivation. Surrounding the fields wereextensive open pastures and woods whereflocks and herds were grazed. Many vestiges ofthis past farming, in the form of field boundarybanks and clearance cairns, together with manymonuments such as barrows and stone circles,survive to today in this now heavily podsolisedlandscape. Since the abandonment of many ofthese farms around 2500-2000 years ago,heather moorland became dominant; with thecessation of careful management of this landand its natural resources - as it came to be usedonly for rough pasture - saplings were grazedout and trees became scarce. The eastern moorswould naturally revert to woodland and onlytwo thousand years of continuous grazing hasprevented this occurring. In the medieval periodthese moorlands were mostly commons used bynearby communities centred in the valleys toeither side, but later they became private sheepwalks owned by large estates. They could easilyhave been enclosed and improved in the 19thcentury as happened in many comparableplaces, and their survival owes much to the

management policies of large estates such asChatsworth. They were retained for grouseshooting.

Chatsworth ParkThe Derwent Valley around Chatsworth hasbeen inhabited since prehistory. From themedieval period onwards significant differencesin land use to either side of the river can beidentified. To the east, fertile valley bottomland is restricted, while the slopes above aresteep and rocky - in medieval times this was alandscape of scattered farmsteads and hamlets,each with some arable land and extensivewoodland pasture. In contrast, west of the river,good agricultural land is more extensive andhere large open fields surrounded the largevillage of Edensor. Much ridge and furrow,following patterns of cultivation strips firstestablished within the medieval open fields, canstill be identified in Chatsworth Park.

From the mid-14th century onwards, followingthe ravages of the Black Death, a worsening ofthe climate and political upheaval, medievalfeudal patterns of land use broke down. Thesmall settlements on the east side of theDerwent were depopulated and at Chatsworth alarge deer park was created. This parklandextended eastwards from the hall, taking in thesteep scarp slope and the high gritstone shelfabove. Many important veteran oak trees stillgrow near the House, surviving in what was thelower slope of the deer park, the only part ofthis which was later incorporated in the 18thcentury landscape park. A grand house atChatsworth, together with large formal gardensthat included canals, ponds and orchards, wascreated in the decades after 1549 when theCavendish family acquired the estate.

To the west of the Derwent large parts of theopen fields were abandoned in late medievaltimes, some reverting to open grazing, whichby the early 17th century at latest appears tohave ceased to be a common and wascontrolled by the estate. Mixed farming wasstill practiced close to the village, and here theopen fields were gradually subdivided intolarge bounded fields, only some of which were


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still partitioned into strips in the customaryway. Between the village and the river anextensive area of former open field was madeinto a large warren, with 'fences' at its edge butno internal boundaries. Pillow mounds survivewhich testify to this land being used for rearingrabbits. In 1617 the first surviving maps of theestate land were drawn by William Senior andthese show all the main landscape elementsnoted above.

The next surviving estate map showing theDerwent valley landscape was drawn in the1770s, after a large new park had been created.It is only with the archaeological survey of thisparkland in the 1990s that an intermediateradical landscape transformation was identified.West of the Derwent, the extensive areas ofopen grazing, including the former commons onthe Calton Pastures ridgetop, were all dividedinto hedged fields sometime in the 17th or early18th century. The warren was similarly divided,although we know from estate account itcontinued to be farmed for rabbits until the late1750s. The formal gardens around the Housewere episodically enlarged as befitted a grandhouse, with ornamental parterres, geometricwildernesses, canals, cascades and fountainsdominating the scene.

Starting in 1759 and continuing into the mid1760s, the landscape around the House wasagain radically transformed, with the creation ofCapability Brown's extensive landscape park.Enclosed fields on both sides of the river wereswept away, as were some of the outmodedformal gardens and outbuildings near the House,to create the elegant parkland setting sofashionable at the time, where 'nature' wasidealised - the result being far from what naturewould achieve if left to its own devices. Thewarren was removed and the old deer parkbecame redundant - eventually the upper parts,out of view of the house, were divided intorectangular fields flanked by shelterbelts.Selected hedgerow trees and older plantings,perhaps by Kent, where retained within the newpark, and new trees planted, to create thedesired decorative effect - of scattered standardsand tree clumps within a sea of grass grazed by

deer, cattle and sheep. The whole was carefullyorchestrated, with bridges and decorativebuildings added for effect, to be appreciatedboth from the house and, equally importantly,when passing along new roads and drivesthrough the park. There was much planting ofadjacent slopes to create an embracing woodedbackdrop. Beyond, on Calton Pasture, fieldboundaries were again removed wholesale, tocreate a large open sheep walk. This was ineffect an 'outer park' where the Duke and hisvisitors could ride for sport and to appreciateextensive vistas across the estate, the foregroundsuitably enhanced with tree clumps andunencumbered by field boundaries. This newdecorative landscape of parks and woods stillsurvives, although it was modified later andwhat we see today owes as much or more to19th century aesthetics than those of the centurybefore.

In the early to mid 19th century the park andgardens where significantly modified for thefamily by Wyattville and later Paxton. Thevillage of Edensor was transformed. One halfwas demolished to allow passage to the housewithout having to go through the village. Theother half, at the edge of the park, wasremodelled in an eclectic mixture ofarchitectural styles, creating a suitably politeadjunct to the park, in typical paternalistic 19thcentury fashion. The park was enlargednorthwards, taking in a broad expanse of valley-bottom land. This was hidden by tree screensfrom the diverted turnpike road at the northernedge, with a new approach drive that allowed along approach to the House through thisexclusive space. Many new trees were plantedthroughout the park, changing it from sparsely-treed grassland to one where decorative speciesabound, framing and ornamenting ever-changing vistas seen as you pass along. How thelandscape beyond was experienced was alsochanged with the making of carriage drivesthrough the flanking woodlands and acrossCalton Pasture. The extensive gardens at theHouse which we see today, while incorporatingearlier elements, where largely the creation ofthe 6th Duke and Paxton, whose enthusiasmmade them one of the wonders of Chatsworth.


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ConclusionsOne true crisis at Chatsworth came in the mid20th century. Shortly before, the parkland hadlargely survived the threat of wartimeploughing, which unfortunately removedearthworks at many other parks, while theHouse was used as a school. With the death ofthe 10th Duke in 1950, crippling death dutiesled to demolition of the dilapidated house beingseriously considered. However, instead, the11th Duke and his wife slowly but surelytransformed Chatsworth into the major visitorattraction we know today, while retaining thehistoric fabric without resorting to the fun fairsor big game parks sometimes introducedelsewhere. It is now one of the most successfulgreat-estate businesses, catering for manythousands of visitors every year.

Chatsworth is extremely important, for everydesigned feature, low earthwork, wall andbuilding tells rich tales that interweave to makea fascinating landscape book, where the wordsare plainly written but sometimes hard to readif you are unfamiliar with the language used.The Chatsworth environs illustrate contrastingand sometimes radical transformations throughtime - people have shaped and reshaped it overand over again. The past is truly a foreign land,where people thought and worked in waysdifferent to ourselves, while at the same timeleaving a legacy for us - their futuregenerations - to experience. At the same timethis is not a fossilised landscape, but one wheremodern tourism and farming contribute to thishistoric but living landscape.

Those of us who interpret the landscape need todisseminate, as widely as possible, the fact thatthe historic character of our countryside hascontinually been in a state of flux over thecenturies. There needs to be a generalabandonment of the mindset that pitches natureagainst people. What we have inherited is anirrevocable intermixture of both, but at thesame time a landscape where people haveshaped the ecology. We need to take fullresponsibility for the management of the whole,both for the benefit of future generations ofpeople and of the plants and animals inhabiting

the cultural landscape. Our landscape is not astatic entity, nor should we want to fossilise it,but rather, manage it as a living landscape -retaining what is most valuable from the past,to enrich the future, while allowing for positivechange. In the present, where we have thecapacity to make more radical changes thanever before, often leading to dull uniformity,this management needs to be holistic andcarefully considered, and can only be achievedby winning hearts and minds. For, if themajority do not understand the richness,diversity and local distinctiveness of ourlandscapes, and also appreciate and get pleasurefrom this, then no amount of control willachieve our aims.

One of the ancient oaks growing within theparkland to the north of the house.


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The Main Transformations of the Chatsworth Landscape through Time Period East of the Derwent West of the Derwent

Prehistory (pre-2000 BC)

The gritstone uplands are gradually deforested by hunter/gatherers and later by farmers for pasture.

Later Prehistory (c. 2000-0 BC)

The gritstone uplands are extensively farmed from scattered farmsteads.

Late Prehistory / Roman (c. 100 BC-100 AD)

A severe contraction of settlement on the gritstone uplands leads to less intensive management and results in the loss of the remaining tree cover.

Medieval (c. 900-1350AD)

(By this time there are small settlements in the valley east of the river – presumably with much earlier origins - with extensive woodland pasture on the valley sides, limited arable on the valley-bottom land and rough grazing on the gritstone upland above.)

Edensor develops as a large village surrounded by extensive open fields, with commons on the Calton Pasture ridge above.

Mid 14th to 16th Centuries

The small settlements are depopulated, with an increased importance of the hall at Chatsworth, and a large deer park is created. A grand house with formal gardens is built in the mid to late 16th century.

Edensor continues as an important settlement, but the open fields contract and are partially-enclosed. Some areas revert to open grazing, and a large rabbit warren is created in the valley bottom.

17th and Early 18th Centuries

The formal gardens at Chatsworth are greatly expanded.

The whole landscape is divided into enclosed fields (including the warren, which continued to function).

Mid 18th Century

The deer park is abandoned (and eventually divided into walled fields) and a new landscape park created on land that was formerly largely agricultural. Some of the formal gardens are also removed.

The warren is removed and a new landscape park created here and on land that was formerly agricultural. Extensive new tree plantings flank this and beyond there is a new ‘outer park’ on Calton Pasture.

19th Century

New tree plantings in the parkland generally, which is also much expanded northwards.

The parkland is given many new tree plantings, and slightly enlarged. The village of Edensor is partially demolished and the remainder remodelled as a ‘model village’.

Late 20th Century The House gardens and park are transformed into a major visitor attraction.

Table 1


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Chatsworth from the air, looking north east. The house is surrounded by formal gardenswhich incorporate features created over a long period of time, from the seventeenth to thetwentieth century. Behind, to the east, the wooded slopes of Stand Wood rise to a gritstoneshelf: this was the area occupied by the old deer park, created in the late middle ages. Incontrast, the land near the river only became parkland in the middle decades of theeighteenth century.

A fine series of medieval strip lynchets on the rising ground to the west ofthe Derwent.


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The Nature of Mid-Holocene Woodland

Paul C. BucklandSchool of Conservation Sciences, Bournemouth University

IntroductionThere is something of a dichotomy ininterpretation amongst the practitioners of thedominant discipline, palynology, in theexamination of the nature of what OliverRackham has christened the 'wildwood', theundisturbed landscape before the major impactof clearance for agriculture. With a fewsignificant exceptions, those working largely inthe lowlands see a landscape forested frommountain top to seashore, to misappropriate Arithe Wise' comment on Iceland before Norsesettlement in the ninth century AD, whilstothers see gaps between the trees and openareas, driven largely by mesolithic pyromania,the need to maintain gaps in the canopy toencourage grazing and browsing animals intoclearings to facilitate hunting. The presentinterglacial is singularly poor in largeherbivores. Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamusand bison failed to return after the end of thelast interglacial, wild horse, reindeer and elkwere probably present only during the earlyHolocene, until perhaps 8,200 years ago, andfallow deer is a Norman introduction. Thisleaves only aurochs, red and roe deer, wild boarand beaver as the major 'natural' herbivoreinstruments of woodland change. Beaver, withits penchant for poplar and willow, is likely tohave been instrumental in creating andmaintaining wet forest lawns in the lowlands,and there is some pollen evidence in support ofthis. In addition, a dam has been partlyexcavated at Skipsea in East Yorkshire, but thefollow up multidisciplinary palaeoecologicalresearch had to be abandoned when EnglishHeritage found that the site was not strictlyarchaeological and withdrew funding.

Herbivores and the Landscape Both red deer and aurochs are not infrequent asstray finds from mid-Holocene peats andalluvium, but there are few good archaeologicalassemblages later than the classic sites of StarCarr in the Vale of Pickering and Thatcham inBerkshire, although there are sufficient scattersof artefacts to imply that not all scatters ofcharcoal in bogs reflect natural, lightning struckfires. Human impact cannot be left out of theequation, even on the apparently remoteislands. The wildwood, where Mole and Rattyvisited Badger's home amongst the ruins ofmen, was already significantly impacted, eitherdirectly by fire, or indirectly and remotely bythe Late Pleistocene extinction of largevertebrates. It is this paucity of largeherbivores, even more evident in Ireland, whereonly wild boar and possibly red deer werepresent, which enabled Fraser Mitchell tocompare palynological signals for landscapeswith low and higher mammalian diversities,and conclude that grazing and browsingpressure had minimal impact on the closedmid-Holocene forest, and did not, as Frans Verahas hypothesised, drive the entire regenerativecycle.

The Evidence of InvertebratesApproached from other invertebrate viewpointshowever, the closed forest model has problems.There is no doubt that fires, other than those setby humans, have had a significant impact onwoodland succession, particularly in regionswhere pine formed a significant part of thecanopy. In the marginal lowland areas offorested raised mire of Thorne and HatfieldMoors in South Yorkshire, Gretel Boswijk has


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shown by detailed dendrochronological studythat the return period for major fires was of theorder of ~ 360 years during the early part of theLate Holocene, the Late Neolithic and BronzeAges; fire had also affected the oak-dominatedwoodland which preceded the bogs.

Whether fire was contingent on previous localdestruction by disease, wind-throw, drought orwater-logging is impossible to ascertain, butthere are significant elements in the insectfauna which are fire-adapted, and these cannothave evolved in response to either careless orprescriptive mesolithic hunters. The contrastbetween the palynological signal for the healthyforest and the fossil insect record for amoribund one, sometimes from the samelocality, is instructive. Charles Elton (1957) inhis The pattern of animal communities bringstogether a number of references to old growthforest: in Switzerland, in the 13,000 acre (5261ha) National Forest about a quarter of the treeswere either dead or dying, and in the ColoradoFront Range in an old stand he provides anestimate of 8.7 blown down trees per 100m2. Inareas of the New Forest, where deadwoodremoval has not taken place since the early1960s, the amount of dead and dying timber,both standing and on the forest floor, is what isimmediately apparent to anyone whosebackground lies in the tidy forestry of therecent past.

It is hardly surprising that what dominatesinsect assemblages from the mid-Holocene isthe deadwood fauna, including many specieswhich have been extirpated from the BritishIsles, or which hang on by the tips of their tarsiin those remnants of wood pasture whichremain, a tribute to England's greatest exponentof conservation, the Frenchman, William I. Inhis classic study of Wytham Wood, nearOxford, Elton further stresses the importance ofthe saproxylic fauna in the process of freeingup the nutrients locked in deadwood andreturning them to the regenerative cycle. To hislargely invertebrate story, one should perhapsadd the activities of wild boar, whose

omnivorous activities in the mid-Holocenewoods would have contributed both to thedeath of trees and processing of rotted timber.With his characteristically holoptic view, healso points out the importance of floweringshrubs in the woodland cycle; whilst the greaterpart of the life cycle may be spent in the larvalstage in deadwood, the dispersal and breedingof imagines relies heavily on what he called'Nature's refuelling stations', the nectarprovided by flowers, from blackthorn andhawthorn on the forest edge to the umbellifersand composites of the lawns. With theexception of the scolytids, able to seek outstressed trees over great distances and thebuprestid Melanophila acuminata, using infrared sensors to detect recent burnt over areas,most saproxylics have a low dispersal potential.The implication is that most deadwood habitatswere never far from a forest edge ecotone.

Other issues and problemsThere are other biogeographic problemsassociated with the insect fauna for with theseverance of direct connection with theContinent ca. 8500 BP, immigration wasincreasingly restricted to those species able toobtain assisted passage in the ships of cross-Channel and circum North Sea colonists andtraders, and whilst work on Atlantic islandfossil assemblages has shown that this elementin the fauna can be quite extensive, it is largelyrestricted to the synanthropic species and thoseable to exploit cultursteppe.

It is probable that much of the fauna of open,uncultivated ground, particularly old grasslandand heath had already established itself duringthe warmer phase at the opening of theHolocene ca. 10,000 BP, when dispersal toopen ground was less of a problem. Somexerothermic steppe elements failed to survivethe expansion of woodland, but many speciesmust have obtained habitat continuity in refugiasomewhere, since they expanded rapidly assoon as neolithic forest clearance began toprovide more open ground. Where theserefuges were remains a problem. If the


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woodland in areas of poorer soils approachedwood pasture with an understorey of heath,then habitat continuity may not have been aproblem. Equally, there are hints of more openground on the chalk and other limestones,where forest succession may have beenimpeded by a potential water deficit, but fewsites have so far provided a continuousmultidisciplinary record from the Lateglacial tothe Late Holocene. At Church Stretton inShropshire, Peter Osborne's fossil insect recordshows open ground with a sufficientlycontinuous trace of dung beetles to implyherbivore-maintained grassland during the mid-Holocene, but the site is currently unique. Mid-Holocene woodland, lime-dominated in thelowlands, giving way to oak-hazel in theuplands and west, was clearly more diverse thatits relatively simple pollen signature mightsuggest, but to what extent large herbivoresdrove its succession remains an open question.


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Insects and Human Impact on Atlantic IslandsPaul C BucklandSchool of Conservation Sciences, Bournemouth University

Eva PanagiotakopuluSchool of Arts, Culture and Environment, University of Edinburgh

IntroductionThe Atlantic islands were occupied byEuropean settlers from the ninth centuryonwards, beginning with the Faroes. This wassometime before AD 825, when these islandsappear first to be mentioned by the Irish monkDicuil, writing at the Court of Charlemagne'ssuccessors, Iceland ca. 865, and Greenlandaround the turn of the tenth millennium. Thistide of Norse expansion washed up against theshores of the New World in Newfoundland ageneration later, when Thorfinn Karlsefni wasmet by superior technology and numbers - asone Native American has put it, the onlyoccasion in the entire history of the Worldwhen the good guys won. The next wave ofexpansion in the fifteenth century took Iberiansettlement to the low latitude islands of theAzores, Madeira and the Canaries, and theSouth Atlantic was reached, if not settled by themiddle of the next century. PermanentEuropean settlement on the Falklands only tookplace at the end of the eighteenth century, withFrench, Spanish and English settlers disputingthe claims to sovereignty. Further south, SouthGeorgia lay beyond the limits of permanentoccupation, beyond its whaling station,although its introduced herd of reindeer has hadconsiderable impact.

ColonisationIn the north, the Faroes may have had a fewIrish monks and their sheep in residence beforetheir Norse colonisation, and Greenland hadseen at least two previous waves of palaeo-Eskimo hunters, whilst in the Canaries, Spanishinvaders had a hard fight against indigenousagriculturalists of North African extraction. Onthe Falklands, any indigenous hunter fishershad disappeared, leaving only their

domesticated fox, the warrah, by the timeEuropeans arrived.

Whether the settlers were Norse, Iberian,French, or English, their mind-set wasessentially the same. They carried with them aportmanteau of European agricultural methods,crops and domestic animals, and sought toimpose it on an often inappropriate landscape,engendering crises of varying impact. In thebirch forests of Iceland and south-westGreenland, fire was an effective weapon toconvert scrub to grassland to provide fodder forcattle, sheep, goats and horses; its impact canoften be seen as a thin layer of charcoal in bogsand lake basins. Pigs were also favoured andtheir ability to destroy wooded landscapesensured their own rapid disappearance in theareas of Norse settlement, leaving only a fewplace names and an archaeo-zoological record.

ImpactsIn 1420, the Portuguese explorer Zarco and hissucceeding colonists were faced with a moreimpenetrable problem on Madeira, dense forest.The fires used to remove it, and its deep litter,are alleged to have burned for up to eight years;in the absence of a macrofossil record, we stilldo not know what from its endemic fauna andflora expired in its smoke. The Canaries werealready well-grazed by sheep and goats, andwhalers, sealers and penguin slaughterers hadprobably already put down similar animals, aswell as cattle, on the Falklands beforepermanent settlement, first of cattle ranchersand later of sheep farmers. Scales of impactvaried, but no island still retains any naturallandscapes beyond those of rapidly melting icecaps and glaciers, and most have become whatmight be referred to as ovigenic landscapes.


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As well as intended fellow travellers, fromcrops to domestic animals, many invertebrateswere accidentally transported on ships acrossthe Atlantic, from the ectoparasites of peopleand their stock to species incorporated in, orattracted to the ballast and dunnage on ships.The earliest human settlement horizon(Landnám) is marked by a significant increasein species diversity and changes in frequencyand distribution of native species. As the forestdisappeared and bare eroded ground started toproliferate, species, like the small ground beetleBembidion grapei in Iceland, found their oncerare habitat in profusion, and begun to spreadacross the landscape, whilst shaded ground andmire faunas, such as the hydraenid Hydraenabritteni also in Iceland, started an inexorabledecline, sometimes to island extinction. Mostadditions to the faunas were stronglysynanthropic. The beetle, Aphodius lapponum,appears across the Faroes and Icelandimmediately after Landnám, flying out andcolonizing the dung of the introducedherbivores; curiously, despite the presence ofindigenous reindeer/caribou, it appears to havefailed to reach Greenland. Throughout theNorth Atlantic, a substantial fauna of bothColeoptera and Diptera has become establishedindoors in the fodder collected to enablelivestock to be overwintered. This assemblageconsists largely of species which feed on thefungi growing on the decaying grass hay instorage, and of their predators. Some taxa, likethe predatory staphylinid Quedius mesomelinusand the lathridiid Lathridius minutus (group),have become virtually cosmopolitan, beingrecorded from both ends of the Atlantic. In thenorth, the house fly, Musca domestica, whoseorigins probably lie in the warm temperateMediterranean region, perhaps in Egypt, isreplaced by the indigenous more cold tolerantHeleomyza borealis, and this is able to exploitthe artificially warmed foul habitats created byhuman activities, completing its life cycleindoors and often occurring in very largenumbers in house and byre floors. InGreenland, an assemblage of flies, includingthe thermophilous Telomarina flavipes, andbeetles introduced by the Norse settlers thrivedduring the ~ 400 years of farming, but became

extinct along with their unwitting hosts asconditions worsened into the Little Ice Age;several were probably re-introduced along withChristianity and Hans Egede during theeighteenth century.

Inevitably, ectoparasites - lice, fleas and keds,the latter Melophagus ovinus a wingless flywhich sucks the blood of sheep, were earlyfellow travellers, although the biogeography ofthe so-called human flea, Pulex irritans,suggests a New World origin and a prehistoricjourney across Eurasia from the east. Most ofthe species which are now cosmopolitan formparts of assemblages which were either pests instored products in the Old World, such as thegrain weevil, Sitophilus granarius, and saw-toothed grain beetle, Oryzaephilussurinamensis, or species associated with fodderand its residues, including dung. Elements ofthe grain fauna were frequently accidentallyand temporarily introduced in infested grain orflour. However, the fossil record indicates that alarge number of the more permanentintroductions formed part of the baggage of thefirst settlers and their animals. Their occurrencecan be used to chart the nuances of'Europeanization' across the Atlantic.


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Across northern Europe where thischaracteristic landscape has all but disappearedthere are mechanisms to protect and enhance itand individual trees are protected. For example,in Sweden the habitat has been recognised inthe Habitats Directive as Fenno-Scandianwooded meadows and pastures. The SwedishGovernment has drawn up a 10 year action planfor trees of high conservation importance. Theyhave allocated £35 million to implement it.While the trees are important in their own rightthey also expect their proposals to benefit 400Red Listed Species.

There is an inventory of old growth woodlandin Germany and individual ancient trees arepublished on a map. The Bundesamt furNaturschutz has championed the restoration ofwood pasture sites. In Denmark scientists aredemonstrating that many of the beech fungiindicators of the virgin forests of Slovakia arepresent in ancient wood pasture and parkland.Some sites in the UK are also internationallyimportant for beech indicators - e.g. the NewForest, Windsor Park and Burnham Beeches. Inthe Wallone Dept of Belgium there are plans tostop felling of trees greater than 1m dbh. TheBasque country of Spain retains someremarkable concentrations of ancient pollardsand they have responded very enthusiasticallywhen their international importance waspointed out.

There is positive support from the ForestryCommission in their policies and practicallythere are grants to allow ancient trees inwoodland to be released from competition andwhere ancient trees are present younger treesare being identified to go on into perpetuity.Changes in agri - environment schemes meanthat we can now encourage creation, restorationand maintenance of wood pastures under the

Trees in the historic landscape

Jill ButlerThe Woodland Trust

IntroductionThe landscape of the UK has a very specialcharacter because it still retains some veryimportant areas of ancient wood pastures andparkland and individual ancient trees. Placeswith trees over 200 years with a continuity ofold trees into the past are historically very richand retain many rare species closely associatedwith the concentrations of ancient open-growntrees. Trees are often the last remaining livinglandscape indicators of the history of a place.The Woodland Trust in partnership with theAncient Tree Forum launched its action planfor ancient trees in 2004 focussing on raisingawareness of their importance, managing themeffectively and creating a living inventory ofthis resource.

Despite their historic, biodiversity andlandscape importance ancient trees aredisappearing from our landscapes. For themajority of such trees we are reliant on theowner's good will to take care of them, buteven so there is often a lack of awareness ofhow best to look after them. However, wheregood will is absent they are difficult to protectbecause they fall though our designationsystems. Even where there is good will thepopulations of trees are still threatened becauseof large age gaps in the tree populations.

Studies at Burnham Beeches, Richmond Parkand Hatfield Forest have shown that we need tomanage our remaining ancient trees to keepthem alive until future generations can catchup. It has been estimated that we need to plantseven new trees for every existing ancient treeto meet the needs of the future and to providecontinuity for the biodiversity associated withthem.


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Higher Level Scheme. This will help trees insome of our most historic landscapes, howevermany ancient trees found outside this schemewill still be vulnerable because they cannot beprotected by current designations. A TreePreservation Order includes exemptions fortrees that are dead, dying or dangerous.Hedgerow Regulations do not protect trees inhedgerows. Many important sites with ancienttrees are not on the Register of Historic Parksand Gardens partly because unfortunately theypredate designed landscapes - thisdisadvantages them in decisions about agri-environment grants and means they may not betaken fully into consideration in planningdecisions.

The inventory of ancient woodland has been aremarkable tool in the conservation of ourancient coppice and high forest woods.However this inventory in many cases does notinclude wood pastures and parkland.

Through a series of brief case studies one cansee how some sites benefit from designationwhile others with potentially equal valuehistorically and for biodiversity are severely

disadvantaged because they have not beenrecognised. Sites such as Moccas Park may beprotected but parts of Whittlewood Forest falloutside the SSSI designation and are thereforevulnerable. Byrkley Park was threatened bydevelopment despite retaining trees over 500years old and trees at Forthampton are dyingeven though some trees are more than 1000years old.

The Woodland Trust in partnership with theAncient Tree Forum and the Tree Register iskeen to map all ancient trees and is seeking thehelp of people across the UK to help populatethe database. A map would help us to monitorthreats and losses, to raise awareness of theirimportance and to lobby for best practice in themanagement of the most important areas. Itwould help to identify the most importantconcentrations that should be designated. Treescan be registered on line on www.ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk.

The conservation of our ancient and veterantrees and their importance for the continuity ofbiodiversity is perhaps the UK's single biggestobligation to conservation in Europe.

An ancient oak in Redmire, North Yorkshire savedfrom felling just because it is dying.

An undesignated and unprotected historic landscapeof dying oaks in intensive dairy and arable farming.


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Crisis? Recovery? Management? Landscapes ofContrast in Viking Age Iceland and Faroe Islands.

Kevin EdwardsDepartment of Geography and Environment, University of Aberdeen

AbstractThe Faroe Islands and Iceland, along with otherparts of the North Atlantic region, became partof the Norse world in the 9th century AD. Theremay have been settlement antecedents withIrish monks reaching the Faroe Islands andIceland in the 8th century AD, but theirpresence, let alone their impacts, are the subjectof continuing debate and investigation. At oraround AD 800 and 871 for the Faroes andIceland respectively, the arrival of the 'Vikings'from Scandinavian homelands and from theBritish Isles essentially represented thecolonization of virgin landscapes. Bringing anagricultural package of sheep, goat, cattle, pigand horse as well as cereal cultivation, theearliest (coastal and near-coastal) immigrantsalso had access to seabirds (especially puffin,guillemot, razorbill, gulls and oystercatcher)and their eggs. The sea also provided copiousmarine resources including pilot whale, seal,cod, haddock, coalfish, seaweed and driftwood.Salmon and trout were available from streamsand lakes everywhere.

This natural and domesticated stock wasaugmented in Iceland by a supposedlywidespread birch-dominated woodland cover('from the mountain tops to the sea' accordingto Ari the Wise), but for many areas, thispattern is perhaps more apparent than real. TheFaroes could never lay claim to extensivearboreal advantages - a low density birch,juniper and willow scrub would have to suffice,although peat was clearly a readily availablecommodity.

Settlement proceeded apace, and if theaforementioned constituted a resource paradise,there was a major downside, viz. the weather

and broader changes in climate. For the Faroesarchipelago, sitting astride the North Atlanticstorm-tracks, ever-changing weather meanshigh precipitation, high wind velocities andmean summer temperatures of about 10C. ForIceland, where longer-term climatereconstructions are available, it seems that thesettlement period (landnám) onwards was oneof increasing climatic variability around aperiod of long-term temperature decline (theLittle Ice Age). Economic sustainability wasreliant on the availability of grazing lands andthe supply of winter fodder, increasinglysupplemented by fish. These presented differentchallenges which may be addressed throughsuch concepts as crisis, recovery andmanagement.

The starkest contrasts are seen in Iceland.Taking southern Iceland as a study area, itcannot be shown that the pre-Viking eraexperienced anthropogenic impacts, but theready erosion of friable volcanic soils(andisols) from landnám produces distinctsignals that are the result of spatially variablesensitivity to deforestation and grazing.

In short, it is possible to demonstrate massiveincreases in soil erosion which are coeval withthe Norse settlement. Historical documentation,however, reveals that regulatory mechanismswere set in place to prevent overgrazing from atleast the 13th century AD and modellingsuggests that there was sufficient biomass tosupport the numbers of domestic livestockindicated from historical sources. Landdegradation, mainly in the post-Norse period(after ca. AD 1550) seems to have resultedfrom a failure to adapt to increasing climaticdeterioration, although throughout the medieval


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period famine cannot often have been far fromthe farmers' doors.

In the Faroe Islands, the finds of early cereal-type pollen and the existence of 'ancient' fieldsmay indicate a pre-Norse settlement by Irishmonks. If so, their landscape impacts wereminor and it would be difficult to see suchimpacts against the backdrop of natural landsurface changes characterised by slopeinstability and the spread of blanket peat. Whatseems likely is that aside from a humanpopulation fall at the time of the early-mid 14th

century subsistence crisis and so-called BlackDeath, there was no long-term collapse in eitherpopulation or the overall ecological resourcebase. The apparent lack of crises may partly bea function of the poor documentary record, butit is also a function of both the richness of theresources provided by the Faroes Islands, andof the development of appropriate landmanagement practices such as outfield grazingand soil augmentation to counteract anydetrimental affects arising from, for instance,reductions in the bird population, soil and slopeerosion, the lack of naturally fertile soils andany climatic downturn. It seems that there havealways been sufficient resources available foran enterprising human population and that theFaroes did not exceed their carrying capacityduring the Norse period.


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Perpetual crisis? The 'struggle for existence' on theedge of the Atlantic.

Andrew FlemingDepartment of Archaeology, University of Wales Lampeter

AbstractMy work on the archipelago of St Kilda, aWorld Heritage Site some 60 km (40miles) offthe west coast of the Western Isles of Scotland,has led me to develop a critique of late 20th

century approaches to St Kilda's history.Traditional narrative tropes about 'marginality'and 'islandness' have led to a situation where StKilda has been either treated virtually inisolation, or regarded as 'marginal' in all sensesand therefore 'beyond the radar' of mainstreamhistorical accounts. As a remote place, thearchipelago has always been regarded asspecial in some sense, with visitors andcommentators expecting to find the exotic andthe St Kildans learning not to disappoint them.Over the years, these islands have developed aniconic status - aided by their stunning maritimescenery and especially by Tom Steel'spresentation in his classic The Life and Deathof St Kilda (first published 1965, and still inprint). Famously, the island community wasevacuated in 1930 at its own request (sort of),bringing its history to an apparent full stop, andcreating a built-in historical drama.

Influenced by 'the Hardrock Consensus, as Icall it, which developed in the late 1950s, Steelwrote up St Kilda's history as a classicaltragedy in a double sense. A diversion from thiscentral narrative was introduced by thesimultaneous promotion of a Golden Age/Fallof Man model which portrays the innocent StKildans as children of nature who were undoneby 'modernity'. But let us leave this on oneside, and concentrate on the more classicaltragic themes. For Steel, the historicalcommunity was undone partly because its'character' or cultural outlook was flawed,

leading to an inevitable dénouement. And itsdestiny was always fated to be a tragic one inthe sense that the islanders were pushing theirecological luck in having the temerity to live 'atthe edge of the Atlantic', engaging in aperpetual and heroic 'struggle for existence'.The powerful message is that in the long run,humans cannot buck the ecosystem; this isdoubtless true, but is St Kilda's history really arelevant parable?

It's a good story, but it simply isn't borne out bythe facts of the case. The St Kildans were notundone by built-in cultural inadequacies orflawed perceptions, and they managed toovercome any problems thrown at them by theclimate (or the vicissitudes of the weather).Their culture was not particularly'impoverished'; arguably they were in a betterposition to adopt a broad set of strategies tobuffer themselves against risk than were manyof their neighbours in north-west Scotland.They were culturally competent, in otherwords. The most problematic and interestingarea of their mode of existence was theirrelationship with the outside world - the set ofregular expectations and mutualities presentedby the chief/laird and his representatives, andmore random, less predictable encounters withvisiting tourists, pirates, fishermen etc., and, inthe final decades, the British state and theincreasing interventionism of its educatedclasses. But a narrative which stresses theimportance of the complex relationshipbetween a local community and a predatoryelite, about mutual interdependence, negotiatingstances and modes of exploitation, challengesus to develop more nuanced accounts ofhuman ecology than the 'struggle for existence'model. The more 'off the peg' postures


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apparently offered by geography and history -respectively, notions of marginality andhistorical hindsight - have a tendency to createtotalising frameworks. Their history is closedoff, predetermined; the place has beencategorised by geographical labelling, and thusprovided with a teleological form of history.But why should local history be put into thiskind of straitjacket just because the chosenlocale is on the edge of the Atlantic?

[For more details, see my forthcoming St Kildaand the wider world: tales of an iconic island(Windgather Press, early May 2005)].


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Rockingham: the destruction of a forest

Glenn Foard, David Hall, Tracy Partida

IntroductionThroughout the past millennium there has beenvarious conservation action which hasattempted to preserve or enhance aspects oflandscape character. In the medieval this tookthe form of forest law and deer parks to protectparticularly the woodland's recreational valuefor hunting, as well as its timber and otherresources, in the face of rapid clearance forarable. In the post-medieval the deer parks werereplaced by designed landscapes which were, inone sense, an attempt of the landed classes toretain or rather to recreate a perceived lost ordecaying rural idyll. These new parks, withtheir wide pastures and irregular planting,mimicked the medieval deer parks and forestlawns dotted with large standard trees that wereby then in rapid decline. From the later 20th

century onwards new conservation measureshave been introduced, such as CountrysideStewardship, which attempt to conserve thepattern of enclosed fields, and indeed landscapeparks and other components of the post-medieval landscape. These are all featureswhich, as a result of the decline of the greatestates and especially the industrialisation ofagriculture, have in their turn increasingly lostthe purpose for which they were originallycreated. All the conservation measures, inwhichever period, have had practical value butalso, to some degree, can be seen as attemptingto preserve a perceived world that neveractually existed and, in some senses, toconserve features in the face of overwhelmingeconomic imperatives.

If there is to be conservation of the landscapefor its historic value in the 21st century itshould at least be conservation based on asound understanding of the nature of pastlandscapes, how and why they evolved, and of

the rarity and significance of their variouscomponents. The study on which the presentpaper is based was an attempt to chart, in greatdetail, the evolution of the landscape of onesmall area of England, consisting of 572 squarekilometres (221 square miles) in the north eastpart of Northamptonshire, comprising almostthe whole of the Rockingham Forest landscapecharacter area.1 This forest lay between therivers Welland and Nene which drain eastwardthrough the Fenland into the North Sea via theWash.2

The mapping has revealed a landscape whichwas extensively re-planned in the late Saxonand early medieval; then in the late medievaland post-medieval saw a growing rate ofreorganisation through enclosure, reaching itsheight in the 18th century and completed in themid 19th century. All through this period thewoodland was in decline, though at greatlyvarying rates, and by the 20th century had beentotally destroyed as a landscape zone. Mostrecently, in the 19th and 20th centuries, itreveals an even more rapid transformation,through urbanisation and industrialisation,including mineral extraction, which is creatinga wholly new landscape.

The unique data set produced in theRockingham Forest project in 2002-2004 hasonly just begun to be analysed in any detail.What is therefore presented here is largely acommentary on the broadest patterns which canbe seen, complemented in places by indicationsof avenues of research that these new data setsopen up. It therefore repeats much of the storyof landscape evolution in the Midlands that iswell rehearsed, but it is hopefully worth suchrepetition as it seen in a new light because themapping to which it refers is so extensive if not


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unique in its chronology and detail.

Influences on landscape characterThe south east to north west trend of theJurassic rocks has determined the course of themain rivers and streams and gives the area itsbroad structure. The landscape takes the formof a plateau tipping gently south eastward, withon the north western edge a scarp slope fallingquite precipitously into the Welland valleywhile the dip slope gives a far gentler fall intothe Nene valley on the south east side. Most ofthe plateau is capped by boulder clay, but in thefar north east there is no capping and anexpanse of limestone formed a very differentbut equally inhospitable environment forsettlement and agriculture. Various streamshave cut through the clay capping exposingareas of permeable geology along the valleysides, and with gravels and alluvium depositedon the valley floor. These variations in geologyand relief, particularly through theirintermediate influence on soil type anddrainage, have had a dramatic influence on thecharacter of land use across the forest.

Although physical geography was the dominantforce determining the distribution of land usetypes in this landscape until recent centuries,the administrative and tenurial frameworkwithin which the land was organised andexploited was also important. It wasparticularly the pattern of townships, probablymainly laid out in the late Saxon period, whichwere the units which had the greatest impact.These have been mapped in detail from postmedieval sources, but other research wouldsuggest that medieval boundary alignments willhave varied significantly in only a very fewcases from the pattern recorded in the mapsfrom the 16th to 19th centuries.3 Thesetownships, once stabilised, provided for muchof the millennium a straightjacket within whichphases of intensification and detensificationwere largely constrained. When the townshipswere created large tracts of land remained incommon between the former members of theearly estates, as woodland and wood pasture.This was the land which became the core of the

royal forest after 1066. These common rightswere progressively extinguished oversubsequent centuries and the land dividedbetween the relevant townships or taken intothe sole control of the manorial lords. Thesignificance of these townships in themanagement of the agricultural landscape wasonly finally removed following the completionof the process of enclosure and the dissolutionof communal farming, the last enclosure in theForest being in the 1840s.

Another fundamental administrative influenceon landscape change was that of forest law.Soon after the Conquest the extensive tracts ofwoodland unallocated to any township by 1066,were removed from the royal and former royalmanors to create the royal forest, an area oflegal jurisdiction related to the management ofthe king's hunting preserves rather thanmeaning an area of continuous woodland.Progressively during the late 11th and 12thcentury other woodland, and very manytownships including their open fields were alsodrawn within the perambulation of the forest.By 1286 Rockingham Forest encompassed anarea of 350 square miles (907 squarekilometres), reflecting a far wider distributionof woodland in the later 11th century, when thebounds were being established. Yet at the sametime, land was progressively being removedfrom the forest and re-incorporated into thetownships. In response the forest bounds wereredefined in 1299 to encompass just 77 squaremiles (198 square kilometres), followingclosely the areas which, by then, had not beencleared of woodland, but still including wholetownships, particularly where these were inroyal control. Only fairly small areas ofwoodland lay outside the bounds. Even withinthe forest wooded land continued to be erodedin later centuries, particularly as the economyand population levels recovered. The final stageof dissolution of the forest took place withparliamentary enclosure in the late 18th andearly 19th centuries.

Landscape EvolutionBecause the majority of the population wassupported by agricultural production until the


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industrial period, land use potential determinedby physical geography has been the greatestinfluence on the character of the landscape,right through to the 19th century. There wastherefore a very close correlation in the Forestbetween landscape use and physiographiczones. However there has been progressiveoverriding of the physical constraints as thetechnological sophistication of the agriculturalsystem has increased. This can be seen veryclearly by comparing the detailed mapping ofthe medieval, 18th century and 20th centurylandscapes of the Forest. It is most noticeablein the changes of the last 150 years, with thephysiographic zones by 2000 playing a minimalrole in determining land use. The decoupling ofland use from the variation of the naturalenvironment has resulted in a progressive, andin the last century a dramatic loss of diversityand local distinctiveness.

While medieval land use patterning was closelycorrelated with the physiographic zones, thetownships were specifically designed tointegrate resources from several types and cutright across physiographic zones. But theresources of many were also supplemented bytheir access to intercommoned woodlandresources beyond the township boundary,providing a limitation to the completeness of ananalysis based on township alone. Quantifyingthese common rights as a component of theforest townships requires further research. Theinteraction of these resources can be seen tohave influenced the broad structure of thelandscape in many cases. One of the clearestexamples is at Easton on the Hill where a droveconnects the meadows on the valley floor, viathe village and through the arable, to thecommon grazing on the plateau, in this case onthe heath. Other long fossilised examples areseen in the plans of some other townships, suchas Wakerley, where in the early medievalWakerley Great Wood also appears to havebeen connected by a drove, running through thefields and village, to the meadow.

In the post medieval a far more fragmentedpattern of land use is revealed, in part becausethis was a landscape in transition. The patterns

are to a large degree random, at least in thesense that no clear zones can be defined. This isbecause change was based on the township,with adjacent townships often following totallydifferent trajectories of development with verydifferent landscape character. Someneighbouring townships followed such differenttrajectories for as much as 350 years, asbetween Rothwell, enclosed in the early 19th

century, and its neighbours Thorpe Underwood,Glendon and Rushton which were enclosed inthe 15th and 16th centuries. But it is also truethat a progressive simplification has taken placein the agricultural landscape over the post-medieval and early modern period. The mixedfunctions of any individual piece of land in themedieval: meadow/pasture, arable/fallow,wood/wood pasture, has tended to become asingle use of arable, pasture or wood. Thisprocess to monoculture has been furtherintensified in the modern under the impact ofmechanisation and chemical application. Thediversity of deciduous woodland has beenreplaced by the swathes of conifer andintensive arable has replaced pasture or mixedfarming rotations. In its way however this iscan now be seen as only a final extension of aprocess underway in the medieval itself, thecreation of the open fields themselvesrepresenting a massive shift towardsmonoculture. This is after all the reason whythe Central Province of England could becomethe grain factory which underpinned theurbanisation of the medieval kingdom, just asthe agricultural improvement andintensification of the 18th to 20th centuries hasunderpinned the industrialisation of the modernperiod.

This has all been achieved by the progressivemoulding of the land to meet the needs ofagricultural production rather than varying thecharacter of the agricultural systems to thevariations in the land. So from the retreat ofpasture, wood and marsh in the face of thegreat swathes of furlongs of the late Saxonopen field system, employing its new fixedmould board plough, through to the large fieldsworked by today's great internal combustionengine monsters, we see a landscape that has


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been cleared, drained, under drained and topdressed until one field is much like the next,right across the landscape. This is a processnow only held in check, at least in part, byconservation measures. Thanks to more than athousand years of intensification of agriculture,the place names of the Anglo-Saxon period arealmost all that we have left of the greatdiversity of field and ley, ham and wick, marshand moor that gave Rockingham Forest itscharacter before the laying out of the open fieldsystems.

'Celtic' and early/middle SaxonlandscapeFrom the end of the Roman period up to thebeginning of the Industrial period, the Foresthas passed through four main phases oflandscape development. Each phase was builtupon its predecessor but created distinctivepatterns of its own. The early phases oflandscape development in the Forest have beenintensively studies and mapped with intensivefieldwalking and aerial survey, but the resultsremain very piecemeal. In contrast to someother parts of Northamptonshire, only in a veryfew tiny areas of the forest has enough databeen recovered to being to get a feel for theform of the 'Celtic' landscape of the Iron Ageand Roman periods. But this is not as great aproblem as it may initially appear, because thepresent character of Rockingham Forest seemsto have been largely determined by human landuse over the last 1100 years, for there seems tobe a high level of discontinuity in plan formbetween the fragments of the 'Celtic' landscape,as mapped from aerial archaeological data, andthe 'English' landscape of the late Saxon to 19th

century as mapped in the present study.4 Thismay be a transition directly associated with thedemonstrated late Roman / early Saxonreorganisation of the settlement pattern.5 Thisdiscontinuity seems to apply equally to the planform of the medieval and post medievalwoodland as it does to the arable fields. This ismost clearly seen in the now cleared area ofGeddington Chase where an earlier boundarysystem has been revealed which respects theRoman road but has a completely different plan

form to the documented coppice pattern of thepost medieval woodland, which is believed tohave medieval origins.

In the early-middle Saxon the woodland wasfar more extensive, judging by the place namesof the settlements, and to have concentrated onthe boulder clay plateau extending into what bythe medieval period became 'champion' lands.The boulder clay seems to mark the broadextent of this woodland over most of the Forest.In the west the place names like Ash'ley' andDing'ley' betray this earlier wooded character,while in the south one can find 'Graf'ton andWeek'ley'. Conjectural reconstruction of themiddle Saxon landscape, based largely on theassociation of Saxon settlement with permeableand later of woodland with boulder claygeology, gives meaning to many of the placenames in the forest, showing how small an areaof cleared land probably existed in somevalleys, in places like Oakley, and explainingperhaps the presence of the numerous wick andother hamlet names, like Bulwick andHenwick. There were perhaps a small numberof open pasture areas called 'felds' set backwithin the woodland zone, notably Benefield,Churchfield and Benefield Lawn,8 survivingfrom the Roman period. These 'felds' wereconnected by 'rodes', that is linear clearingswhich cut across the clay land or ran along theminor valleys, giving access through the forest.'Leys' are also encountered in close proximityto the woods and are clearings within thewoodland on the permeable geology.9 The darkbulk of the woodland on the adjacent plateaumust have given a somewhat oppressive,enclosed feel to the narrow forest valleys, a feelthat must have remained well into the medievalperiod and in some places, such as Southwick,right into the 19th century. This contrasts withthe village place names and wide areas ofpermeable geology along the river valleyswhich remained settled throughout the firstmillennium AD. Here the limited tracts ofpermeable or mixed geologies, with their betteragricultural potential, may have provided apotential for larger settlements while in theforest these were restricted to quite narrowcorridors along the small stream valleys, with


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boulder clay or dry limestone plateau offeringpoor agricultural potential. In the latter areasthe settlements seem likely to have been muchsmaller, perhaps no more than single farms.

Late Saxon to early medievallandscape (circa 850-1350)The late Saxon period saw a re-planning which,more than anything else, determined thecharacter of the Forest for the next 1000 years.There was a massive intensification ofagriculture involving the creation of anextensively planned, highly arable landscape ofopen field systems, one to each township. Theyexpanded to their maximum extent by around1300, when more land was under arablecultivation than is the case even today. Butfurther expansion at the expense of thewoodland was halted by the recessionfollowing the great famines of the 1310s andBlack Death and other successive plagues from1348 onwards.

Open FieldsThe planning of open fields probably involveda conversion of significant areas of land frompasture to arable, with the core of these fieldslying on the mixed geologies of the valleys,around the villages. However these wereexpanded massively in the late Saxon andmedieval across large tracts of the plateau,something that is clearly visible from evidencesuch as plan form and furlong name. Some ofthe townships were to see subdivision in thelate Saxon as such extensive areas were clearedthat it made it possible for two villages to besupported where only hamlets had existedbefore, as perhaps in the case of Great andLittle Oakley. Within each township thecommon rights were shared between thetenants, though occasionally wider shared rightpersisted, with intercommoning of certain openfields, as between Glapthorn and Cotterstock.10

But in the woodland such intercommoning ofwood pasture between various townshipsremained the norm. Such land was only latersubdivided between the townships, a processseemingly under way in the medieval but onlyfinally completed in some areas with theparliamentary enclosure of the forest in the 19th

century.

During this period almost all of the settlementsin the Forest must have seen dramaticexpansion of their townships to create truevillages, with the conversion of large areas ofpasture or more likely clearance of large tractsof woodland for new open field furlongs. Insome cases it is perhaps possible to see thecreation of new townships, with a villagecentred on a minor stream and tiny block ofpermeable geology, but with the new regularfurlongs on the cleared boulder clay creatingthe agricultural resources to now support amedieval village. One of the best examples isGrafton Underwood. What is clear is theremarkable degree to which the layout of thefurlong pattern was as a result of regularplanning. Where the topography allows,furlongs tend to lay one under the other withstrips running in the same direction. Forexample at Wakerley all the furlongs exceptseven have lands in the same direction, up to1200m in overall length.

The townships were defined to give eachcommunity, as far as practicable, access to abalance of resources. The exact compositionvaried according to the topographical andgeological location of the settlement, mediatedby cross cutting tenurial, economic and otherinfluences, including earlier patterns of land usehistory. What the detailed mapping of thismedieval landscape has provided is thepotential for large scale analysis of patterning.Typically in the medieval they began withmeadow on the valley floor, ran through thecore of the open field arable on the mixedgeologies, with some pasture interspersed in theslades and small valleys, up onto the woodlandor heath on the plateau. Away from the mainvalleys the meadow could be absent. It wasnormally within the arable core that thenucleated settlements lay, usually on permeablegeology and adjacent to a stream or on a springline. Because the field-land and woodland layin such close proximity there appears rarely tohave been the need for detached blocks ofwoodland. When the townships are viewedagainst the high medieval pattern of land use


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this organisation can be seen very clearly insome cases, as with the townships of the Nenevalley.

Within the open field areas the small areas ofpasture were mainly on the minor streamvalleys and slades, where cultivation would nothave been possible. However the main areas ofpasture, other than in the woodland, were onthe hay meadows and the great fieldsthemselves, both of which were opened tocommon grazing after the harvest. Thesemeadows lay exclusively on the alluvialfloodplains where periodic inundation renderedcultivation impossible. Meadow was arelatively restricted land use type but it waswidely distributed through the forest andrepresented a resource of high importance,especially in the townships along the main rivervalleys.

Enclosed land did exist in limited butsignificant areas within this open landscape.Small parcels of land held in severalty wereattached to each of the village tenements fromthe outset, in the late Saxon period. Additionalsmall areas of closes were added, enclosedfrom the open fields, during the medievalaround most villages. From at least the 12th

century some clearances from woodland werealso immediately managed in severalty asenclosed fields, although much of the assartland appears to have been cultivated in strips aspart of the open field systems attached to thevillages. The enclosed assarts can often berecognised as a band of relatively smallenclosures on the common field/woodlandboundary, but even they are seen often to havebeen ploughed in medieval ridge and furrow.

With continuing expansion, on the periphery ofthe woodland zone many townships,particularly in the west, were transformed intowholly champion land by 1300, as the woodswere cleared and the arable furlongs extendedup onto the boulder clay to the watershed,meeting those of the adjacent townships.However, if one views the townships againstthe extent of boulder clay, which we argue maybroadly define the extent of Saxon woodland in

all but the north east sector of the forest, thenthe pattern of resources within almost all thesetownships in the Late Saxon can be seen tohave matched that of those across the rest ofthe Forest. In some places landowners, such asthe abbot of Pipewell, at the very head of theHarpers Brook, continued the clearance at theexpense of the wood to create a largely openlandscape by the 14th century where in the lateSaxon it must have been largely woodland.However it was rare in the heart of the forestfor such expansion to breach the woodlandbarrier on the clay land watershed, though allalong its edges one can see common field andthen, apparently slightly later, assarted landheld in severalty eating away at the woodland.Where the manor lay in royal control, or wheremanorial lords created deer parks, this processseems to have been even more restricted,whereas in non royal townships the processseems to have continued to a far greater degree.Thus one township may have been tightlyconstrained with large areas of woodlandremaining on the township periphery, whileadjacent townships had cut back far closer tothe watershed.

When land had been taken into the forest, rightsof common persisted and seem to havedetermined which settlement would later assartwhich area of woodland. The exact reasonswhy, during the medieval period, one piece ofwoodland was cleared while an adjacent onewas not may be unclear, but it seems to havefar more to do with administrative and tenurialfactors than the agricultural potential ofdifferent areas of boulder clay. This is probablyin contrast to the situation in the Saxon period,when population pressure was far less, whereland use was probably determined primarily byunderlying geology, particularly influencingwhether land was arable or woodland. Therecords of assarting show that in the 13thcentury clearance continued in many townshipswithin the forest.11

Wood and Wood PastureThe forest was organised into three Bailiwicks(Cliffe, Brigstock and Rockingham) formanagement purposes, each subdivided into the


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main woodland areas. Each of these tracts ofwoodland were further divided into individualwoods. As a result of increasing intensificationunder the pressures of population growth andeconomic development, by the high medieval itincluded large areas that were carefullymanaged and clearly delineated, with coppices,then ridings between them giving accessthrough the woods, and within the woodlandvarious discrete areas used primarily forpasture, including the enclosed lawns as well assome remaining unenclosed plains and greens.

Where coppice management had been institutedthen the woodland generally appears to havesurvived right through the medieval and intothe post-medieval period. However, despite theprotection offered by forest law from the late11th century, the history of woodland inRockingham Forest during the last 1000 yearsor more is largely one of contraction in the faceof clearance for agriculture. Major campaignsof clearance occurred in the 10th to 13th andthen starting again in earnest in the 17th butwith a last massive burst following finalenclosure of the forest in the early 19th

century.12 In such circumstances of majorpopulation increase and economic growth,woodland only survived where it had other usesof sufficient economic or recreational value tothe owners. This comprised a range of usesincluding production of charcoal fuel for theiron furnaces within the forest or the productionof timber for construction purposes. Mostimportant perhaps were the recreationalinterests of the king and lesser lords whomanaged much of the woodland for hunting.

Management for deer had been the primaryreason for placing the area under forest law andremained an important factor restrictingwoodland clearance throughout the medieval.Deer park creation sometimes involved theextinguishing of common rights of grazing,though cow pastures might be allocated in lieuof these rights in certain other areas of thetownship. Although most deer parks werecreated out of woodland there are several whichwere expanded by the incorporation of openfield land during the medieval period. For

example Fotheringhay Park was expanded ontoa few furlongs at the south at some unknowndate, King's Cliffe Park did the same in 1339and Brigstock Little Park somewhat earlier.

It is only with detailed extensive mapping ofthe historic landscape at this level of detail thatthe very different trajectory of different piecesof landscape can be understood. The woodswere of significance not only for the beast ofthe chase and as valuable as sources of fuel andof timber for building. They were also animportant component of the agriculturaleconomy of the woodland villages for thegrazing of cattle and pannage of pigs, allowingthem to keep far more stock than farmers ischampion townships. The woods were openedup at certain times of the year as wood pasture,in accordance with ancient common rights. Butintensive browsing simply destroyed newgrowth leading to an increasingly open woodpasture and potentially ending in total clearanceand therefore these rights often strictlycontrolled. In those wood pastures whereanimals could be kept without stint and nomanagement was instituted then, in the longerterm, the result was clearance as complete as ifthe wood had been cut down. The clearestexamples are in areas of intercommoning, forexample Weldon, Benefield and Deenethorpeplains, which were all completely clear of treesby the 1580s, when enclosure began there. Butthis had been wooded in the medieval period,as can be seen from the evidence of the densedistribution of charcoal hearths recorded fromaerial survey.13

HeathIn a relatively small area in the north of theForest, where the plateau was not boulder claycapped, the limestone geology with its thinsoils were in some parts decalcified. Theseacidic soils led to the development of heathlandrather than grassland when cleared by grazing.The chronology of this conversion is notunderstood nor indeed the degree to which thelimestone plateau was under woodland at anypoint from the end of the Roman period. Thiswas part of a wider heathland zone extendingeastward of the A1. This heathland may have


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been identical in some stages to the otherboulder clay townships, with the heathplaying the same role in the agriculturaleconomy as the wood pasture. Indeed itseems likely that at some point this land wasunder woodland and that the conversion toheath was one which paralleled that of theloss of woodland on the plains on the boulderclay with in the forest, such as Benefield andWeldon plains. These areas were treated ascommon by the adjacent townships, withEaston on the Hill still retaining its heath andthe drove connecting the heath through theopen fields to the village until the early 19th

century, while elsewhere fossilised drovesseem to be visible in the furlong pattern. Thissmall tract of heath in the north east corner ofthe forest was wholly enclosed in the 18th and19th centuries and converted to agriculturalfields.

Late medieval to early modernlandscape (circa 1350 - 1850)Apart from the village closes and assarts,hedged fields had been absent from most ofthe high medieval landscape under theinfluence of the economic changes followingthe Black Death, but progressively from the15th century they came to dominate thelandscape. Until the 19th and especially the20th century most of the closes were intendedprimarily for pastoral agriculture.

Although tending to concentrate on thesmaller townships and on the poorer land, thepattern of enclosure was a very fragmentaryone, depending to a large degree on thevagaries of land ownership and the degree towhich any township had already seensignificant population decline. This process ofchange continued through the 16th century.However within the forest there is relativelylittle evidence for piecemeal enclosure andonly one or two examples of whole greatfields being taken out of cultivation. Typicallyit seems to have been whole townships thatwere enclosed by agreement. Then, aspopulation levels began to increase morerapidly and the economy recovered, there was

again pressure on the woodland or formerlywooded commons (plains) leading to clearancethis time mainly for pasture as well ascontinuing enclosure of arable open fieldtownships.

In parallel to the enclosure of some townshipsfor complete conversion to pasture, there werealso significant changes within the many opentownships representing evolution within theopen field system itself in response to thechanging reality of the agricultural economy.Here a proportion of the land was often putdown to grass within the fields to increase thenumber of stock which could be kept. In somecases this involved the creation of Cowpastures on former arable furlongs. Within thesystem one also occasionally finds shortsections of hedges and even longer hedgesestablished within the open fields to assist inthe management of stock. A good example isseen at Braybrooke where a block of furlongson the clay land was put down to commonpasture, probably in lieu of common rights lostwhen another area of former open field, againon the poorest land, was enclosed for pasture.The major problem with these changes is thatthey are only occasionally recorded in mapform if open field maps were produced andsurvived. But with the mapping produced herefor the open field landscape the basic structureexists to enable further detailed research on thefar more common written sources to be able toreconstruct the evolving pattern of pasturewithin the open field system.

As the 17th century progressed the pressure forenclosure was not just for conversion topasture. Increasingly it was seen as a way ofimproving agricultural production generally,and this process of enclosure for agriculturalimprovement of mixed farming accelerated inthe 18th century. It is however unclear atpresent exactly where and when within theForest such pressures came to bear. The pace ofenclosure increased significantly as the processwas brought under a more formal system.Efficient implementation as well as a degree ofsafeguarding of the interests of the lesser


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parties was achieved under a new system ofprivate Acts of Parliament, one for eachtownship to be enclosed. In all 49% of thestudy area (56370 Acres) was ancientlyenclosed and 38.74% (44540 Acres) wasenclosed by parliamentary Act. These figuresexclude the forest enclosure Acts whichcovered 14030 acres and the 18410 acres forwhich the date or extent of enclosure has notyet been accurately determined. By 1841 theprocess of enclosure was complete and so inthe 1st edition 6 inch Ordnance Surveymapping of the 1880s we have a detailedpicture compiled within 40 years of thecompletion of the process. Unfortunately theOrdnance Surveyors drawings of the 1810s,which show fields at 2" scale, proved tooinaccurate and inconsistent to allow accuratemapping of the field patterns as they were atthe beginning of the 19th century across all thealready enclosed areas.

Not only did the purpose of enclosure change,there were developments in agriculturalpractice which saw significant variation in thenature of the landscape of fields of the 15th

century and those recorded in the 1880s. Thepattern of fields that were suitable for the earlyenclosure for sheep, the great sheepwalks, werenot suitable for later management. Progressivesubdivision is therefore seen. One of the bestexamples of this, and one which still survivesvery well today, is that of the Great Park atBrigstock, where the early 17th century largefields had been substantially subdivided by the1880s. However this sequence cannot alwaysbe assumed as there are some very specificexamples of early small enclosures, such as thePen Closes in Benefield or the allotments laidout on Desborough Plain some time betweenenclosure from the forest in 1518 and the mapof 1776. With the new mapping as a base,further work on the written source is nowneeded to explore the more detailed chronologyof such landscape change.

The enclosures under Acts of Parliament in the18th and 19th centuries tended to produce a farmore regularly planned pattern of field laid out

by surveyors according to what became a fairlywell established procedure. These fieldboundaries and the road systems tend toconform far less to the earlier furlong patternthan fields in the anciently enclosed townships.The present mapping provides the basis for adetailed analysis of the relative degree ofcontinuity in pattern. The floodplain meadowswere also progressively enclosed in the post-medieval but the majority remained as pasturein 1928. Today however very little is stillmanaged as hay meadow and, thanks todrainage and flood protection schemes, thegreater part of that meadow has been cultivated.Just a handful of floodplain meadows survivewhich have not be cultivated and retain theirpattern early stream channels.

The last open field systems were finallyextinguished in the mid 19th century. With themwent the pattern of interspersed strips ofpasture and small areas of marsh and furze etcthat lay in complex patterns between the arablefurlongs of the open fields. The enclosureprocess was now a fundamental tool to unlockthe potential of agricultural improvement andthis enclosure was accompanied or soonfollowed by drainage and other agriculturalchanges which destroyed these wet or roughgrazing areas. Thus enclosure and agriculturalintensification in the 18th and 19th century sawa dramatic loss of diversity accompanied by anequally significant loss of public access.

The transformation in the character anddistribution of settlement was nowhere near asgreat as that seen in the agricultural landscapeover this period. The one exception was thedispersed component of the medievalsettlement pattern. Although the appearance ofdispersed farms is usually associated withenclosure, where early enclosure took placethere is only limited evidence for theappearance of new settlement. The dispersal ofsettlement, with new farms being created in thenewly consolidated fields, seems only to havetaken place on a substantial scale in the 19th

century. In some cases this also resulted in afragmentation of the nucleated settlement, asfarms moved out of the villages, although in


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others continued population growth meant thatthe village did not shrink significantly.

Deer parks to landscape parksHunting remained a significant pastime in thelate medieval. There were a number of newdeer parks created in the 15th and 16th centuriesand several were in the woodland, as with theNew Park at Harringworth, probably created bythe Zouche family who had a great house in thevillage. However others were taken out of theopen field, as at Fotheringhay where the LittlePark next to the castle was created by the kingin 1464 and Collyweston, in existence by 1480.Apethorpe Park, created before 1552, may bepartly on demesne land but also appears to havetaken in a significant part of the fields of thedeserted village of Hale. When earlier parkshad been created it was in a landscape wherethe best arable land was under high demandand locked into complex open field systems. Bythe late medieval these restrictions had easedand the creation of parks by enclosure of arableland went alongside the conversion of arable topasture for stock.

The creation of such parks became morecommon and was later transformed into thecreation of landscape parks around the countryhouses, great and small, which were distributedin large numbers across the Forest. At the upperextreme was Boughton, with its plannedlandscape of avenues and vistas which was laidout for many miles across woodland, enclosedand open field alike, in the 18th century. At theother extreme lay the parks of Stoke Albany orBarton Seagrave. Though they mimicked thedeer park lawns, which were now decaying onthe clay plateau, only a handful of thelandscape parks were created directly out ofdeer parks, notably at Rockingham and Biggin,while only one was created wholly afresh in theheart of the woodland, at Fermyn Woods Hallnear Brigstock. Most were created through thedestruction of the enclosed field systems, someancient some parliamentary in origin.

WoodlandThe late medieval recession had led to a respitefrom the pressures for clearance, but as the

economy recovered in the 15th and 16th

centuries the restrictions which previouslyprotected the woodland had been significantlyrelaxed. The iron industry was in terminaldecline, if it had not already expired, and withit had gone the large demand for charcoal fuel.Finally in the mid 18th century, with theopening of the Nene navigation, the use ofwood for fuel was rapidly replaced by coal.Later in the 16th century the deer parks in thewoodland periphery began to be replaced byparks around the great houses, the first stage ofthe move to the great landscape parks of the18th century. The management of the forestitself as a hunting preserve also ceased to beimportant. As the constraints were increasinglyremoved so a remarkably large area ofwoodland or common pastures weredisafforested, cleared and enclosed in the 16th

and 17th centuries. This included the plain atPipewell, which was divided up in 1518between the townships which shared rights ofcommon there, Desborough, Pipewell andRushton, and enclosed. The same happened onthe plain between Benefield, Deenethorpe andWeldon in the late 16th century. In Brigstockdeer parks the woodland clearance followedswiftly after disparking, when sold by thecrown in 1602 to Sir Robert Cecil. It wouldappear that substantial parts of these areas hadalready been cleared and this, as much as landtenure, may prove another important influenceas to which areas were enclosed.

The final massive phase of clearance followedthe enclosure of the final tracts of forest inparliamentary enclosure Acts in the late 18th

and earlier 19th centuries. In the 1810s, on theOrdnance Surveyors' drawings, the forestwoodland is largely intact, except for the northpart of Geddington Chase, which had beenenclosed at the end of the 18th century. Bythe1880s large tracts had been cleared, forexample most of Morehay Walk. In one shortbut massive phase of woodland clearance thefinal fragmentation of the forest was completed,leaving just scattered remnants of the great tractof woodland that had regenerated in thecenturies after the Roman period. The sequence


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of evolution of woodland presented heredemonstrates what is achievable with suchextensive mapping with such a deep timecomponent and exhibits the sort of perspectivethat can be achieved with the new data set forvarious aspects of historic land use in theForest over the last millennium.

Yet even where the woodland survives theirregular coppice forms of the medievalwoodland management have almost all beenreplaced by a pattern of regular, straightridings, although archaeological survey hasshown that in some of these woods with 18th or19th century plan forms the earlier coppiceboundaries can be traced as distinct earthworkson the ground.

Industrial period (circa 1850 - 2000)The final step opening the way for thedissolution of the rural landscape had beenachieved by the mid 19th century, the removalof the last vestiges of the communal structurewhich had underpinned it ever since the firststages of its creation in the early-middle Saxonperiod. The industrialisation and urbanisation ofthe later 19th and 20th centuries represents thegeneration of a completely new landscape, atransformation as fundamental as those of openfield and village planning in the late Saxon orenclosure by Act of Parliament in the 18th.Fragments of the earlier structures are fossilisedwithin the new patterns, but where thepressures have been greatest the earlier patternshave been almost completely destroyed. Inother areas which have been under lessimmediate pressure then there is still arelatively good survival of the earlier forms.The present mapping provides a guide to suchtransitions but no attempt has been made hereto seek explanation, even though this mightassist in determining where and howconservation effort may be most effectivelyemployed to achieve historic landscapeconservation objectives.

The impact of these new forces was felt in asignificant way soon after 1850 with the arrivalof the mainline railways, the linked start of the

iron industry and subsequent industrialisationof boot and shoe production. This led to thedevelopment of a major corridor ofindustrialisation focussed on the rail line. Thevery first stages of this development can beseen on the 1st edition six inch OrdnanceSurvey mapping of the 1880s, which provides abaseline against which to measure the changein the landscape in the industrial period. Then,beginning in the 1910s but taking off on a largescale in the 1920s and 1930s, the developmentof the Corby iron and steel works and itsassociated quarries, provided a new focuswhich completely transformed the formerRockingham bailiwick. This process has mostrecently been accelerated, particularly in the IseValley, by the construction in the 1990s of theA14 road. The introduction of a majordispersed component to the settlement patternacross the forest, where almost none existedpreviously. In part this was a dispersal of farmsinto the consolidated holdings created byenclosure, but more recently it has beenindustrially related.

Another major influence on the landscape hasbeen the construction of a series of militaryairfields during World War II. This involved thecomplete removal of hedgerows oversubstantial areas and the introduction of variousstructures, where abandoned buildings on some,as at Desborough, have become industrial units,so introducing a permanent new component tothe settlement pattern. While the urbanisationhas created an almost irreversible and whollynew type of landscape that did not exist beforethe 19th century, mineral extraction and airfieldconstruction where the land has typicallyrestored to fields or woodland, but the result isa wholly new landscape which contains little ornothing from before the 20th century.

The other changes in the landscape are largelyrelated to the industrialisation of agriculture inthe 20th century. The impacts are initially farless obvious but have still transformed thecharacter of the landscape. In the late 19th andearly 20th century the vast majority of theproject area was pasture, with the arable


34

concentrated especially on the permeablegeologies in the main river valleys and on thelimestone plateau. However a shift to arablehad already begun by 1928. This heralded thefirst stages of re-planning for mechanisation.This is first seen in the late 19th centuryreorganisation of some small areas of fieldsystems, with replacement of irregular by veryregular fields of similar size, presumably toaccommodate the needs of steam ploughing.The best examples are in parts of Thornhaughand Fotheringhay.

From the 1940s, beginning with the needs ofthe wartime economy, there was a dramaticchange from pasture to arable. This wasmassively expanded by the industrialisation ofagriculture and the large scale grants given foragricultural intensification. This has beenaccompanied by removal of hedgerows oversubstantial areas to produce larger fields tobetter suited to modern agricultural machinery,though this has been far from a consistentpattern across the project area. There are somelandscapes which have retained their 19th

century pattern of fields almost unchanged,notably in the upper Welland valley on the clayland, where even today several townships arestill largely pastoral. But in other areas, like theLyveden valley, there have been massiveincreases in field size. Hence there are somelandscapes that appear to have a high degree ofland use continuity or 'time depth', whereas infact the quality of the survival of that enclosedfield landscape is in reality very poor.

The other remarkable transformation of thelandscape in the 20th century has been theintroduction of large numbers of trees in smallplantations into the landscape in areas wherethere has not been woodland for as manyhundreds of years. At the time when the finalfragmentation of the ancient woodland wastaking place, the process of dispersing smallpatches of trees across the landscape began.Begun through the creation of designedlandscapes to accompany country houses, andof coverts for fox hunting, it is now a processpromoted, and dramatically accelerated, bygrants over the last two decades for tree

planting. This is continuing to transform largeareas of the rural landscape without anyapparent consideration as to the impact of thosechanges on the character of the historiclandscape. In its own way these ill informedand poorly thought out measures, like someother conservation actions, has been andcontinues to be as destructive of the historicenvironment as the grants promotingagricultural intensification.

Footnotes1.Countryside Commission and English

Nature (1996) The Character of England.Countryside Commission, Cheltenham.

2. Where not using data from the mappingconducted for the project, unless otherwisereferenced, the text draws upon the detaileddiscussion of the Forest in Glenn Foard,"Medieval Land Use, Settlement and Industryin Rockingham Forest, Northants," MedievalArchaeology 47 (2001). For generalinformation on the open fields of the countyand for detailed information on the functioningof individual open field systems see DavidHall, The Open Fields of Northamptonshire,vol. 38 (Northampton: NorthamptonshireRecord Society, 1995).

3. Glenn Foard, "The AdministrativeOrganisation of Northamptonshire in the SaxonPeriod," Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeologyand History (1985). The wider evolution of theSaxon landscape in Northamptonshire isdiscussed in A.E. Brown and Glenn Foard,"The Saxon Landscape : A RegionalPerspective," in The Archaeology ofLandscape, Ed. Tom Williamson and PaulEverson (1998).4. Alison Deegan and Glenn Foard, The

Northamptonshire National MappingProgramme Project (in preparation).

5. A E Brown and Glenn Foard, "The AngloSaxon Period," in THe Archaeology ofNorthamptonshire, ed. Martin (ed.) Tingle(Northamptonshire Archaeological Society,2004), 78-101.

6. The term 'champion' derives from theFrench 'champagne' and was typically used inthe medieval and post medieval to describe thevast open landscapes which typified much of


35

central England.7. J.E.B. et al Gover, The Placenames of

Northamptonshire (1933).8. Known today as Beanfield.9. Glenn Foard, "The Saxon Bounds of

Oundle," Northamptonshire Past and Present 8,no. 3 (1991): 179-189.10. Glenn Foard, "A Framework for Saxon

Evidence from Northamptonshire," in FirstMillennium Papers, ed. R F J Jones, et al.(BAR, 1988). Other examples are Nassingtonwith its dependent hamlet of Yarwell and Deenewith part of Kirby.11. J A Raftis, Assart Data and Land Values :

Two Studies in the East Midlands 1200-1350(Toronto: 1974).

12. The best detailed study of an individualarea of woodland in the Forest during themedieval and post medieval is Burl Bellamy,Geddington Chase (1986).

13. Foard, "Medieval Land Use, Settlementand Industry in Rockingham Forest, Northants."

AcknowledgementsThe present article is based on a projectconducted by the authors on behalf of theRockingham Forest Trust, in association withNorthamptonshire County Council, with HLFand English Heritage funding in 2001-2004. Itwas underpinned by earlier research conductedby the authors and especially on fieldwork byDavid Hall on the medieval field systems ofNorthamptonshire over the last 40 years. Apopular publication based on the results theproject currently being prepared for publicationby the Trust.A full copy of the text of the project report isavailable on the RockinghamForeshttp://www.rockingham-forest-trust.org.uk/t Trust website athttp://www.rockingham-forest-trust.org.uk/ .That report provides full detail as to themethodology of data collection and analysisand full source information. A digital archivefor the project has been deposited in theNorthamptonshire Sites and MonumentsRecord.

Bibliography

Bellamy, Burl. (1986) Geddington Chase.

Brown, A E, and Foard G. (2004) "The AngloSaxon Period." In The Archaeology ofNorthamptonshire, edited by Martin Tingle, 78-101: Northamptonshire Archaeological Society.

Brown, A E, and Foard G. (1998)"The SaxonLandscape : A Regional Perspective." In TheArchaeology of Landscape, edited by TomWilliamson and Paul Everson.

Deegan, A, and Foard G. The NorthamptonshireNational Mapping Programme Project, inpreparation.

Foard, G (1985). "The AdministrativeOrganisation of Northamptonshire in the SaxonPeriod." Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeologyand History .Foard G (1988) "A Framework for SaxonEvidence from Northamptonshire." In FirstMillennium Papers, edited by R F J Jones, J HF Bloemers, S L Dyson and M Biddle: BAR,

Foard G. (2001) "Medieval Land Use,Settlement and Industry in Rockingham Forest,Northants." Medieval Archaeology 47

Forad G. (1991) "The Saxon Bounds ofOundle." Northamptonshire Past and Present 8,no. 3: 179-189.

Gover, J.E.B. et al. (1933) The Placenames ofNorthamptonshire.

Hall, D. (1995) The Open Fields ofNorthamptonshire. Vol. 38. Northampton:Northamptonshire Record Society.

Hall D. (2001) Turning the Plough: Midlandopen fields: landscape character and proposalsfor management. Northampton: Northamptonshire County Council & EnglishHeritage, 2001.

Raftis, J A. Assart Data and Land Values : TwoStudies in the East Midlands 1200-1350.Toronto, 1974.


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Figure 1: The Historic boundaries of Rockingham Forest

Figure 2: Physiographic zones


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Figure 3: Townships

Figure 4: Easton on the Hill prior to parliamentary enclosure, showing the fullmedieval furlong pattern by then partly enclosed


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Figure 5: The medievallandscape (with woodlandcoppices and plains addedwhere possible from postmedieval mapping)

Figure 6: Medievalland use by township


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Figure 7: Coppice, plain, deer park and open field in the heart ofthe Forest, prior to parliamentary enclosure, showing also the fullmedieval furlong pattern by then partly enclosed.

Figure 8: the landscape prior to parliamentaryenclosure (mainly 18th century)


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Figure 10: 20th century land use

Figure 9: The destruction of the woodland of the 'forest' and its dispersal intoscattered 'plantations'


41

AbstractLandscape historians such as Oliver Rackhamand Richard Muir through their studies of ourtrees, hedges and woodland have led the way inthe interpretation of past landscapes. However,the Ancient Tree Forum which has developedinto a unique, multi-disciplinary discussiongroup including arborists, foresters,conservationists, land managers and landscapedesigners, has continued to build on their work.

In discussions it soon became apparent that itwas fundamental to make an individual tree'important in its own right' and not merely forthe biodiversity that depends on it. A greatproportion of the Forum's discussions havecentred on how trees grow and age, and howthey have been managed in the past.

It is reasonable to state that down the ages ashumans evolved they worked with and on treesin a multitude of ways. Methods of cutting treeshave been developed and modified, andexperience has been passed from generation togeneration. They produced a vast quantity ofdiverse products from fruits, fodder, and fuel, totimber for buildings and ships. In general termsapart from pure fruit trees the bulk of thesetrees could be termed working pollards.However, perhaps the term 'working tree' is abetter description by encompassing all cut treesas well as trees managed for fruit and nutproduction.

Frans Vera (2000) draws out the relevance ofthe open grown or parkland tree in 'treescapes'.Prior to this, Rackham, Alexander and Greenhad already been expressing doubts about theconcept of continuous closed canopy woodland

across Europe. Indeed Francis Rose as early asthe 1960s had already come to the conclusionthat there was extensive open landscape.

In the UK we have many examples of ancientopen-grown trees which indicate a continuity ofopen space sometimes for as much as 1000years. The suites of species associated withthese trees appear to indicate a far longerperiod of continuity of open habitat. Vera putsspecial emphasis on the co-evolutionaryrelationship between the oak and the jay. TheLatin name for the jay is Garrulus glandaruswhich can be translated as 'noisy, chattering,acorn gatherer'. Not only is the European jayimportant for the establishment of our oaks,across the globe there are several othermembers of the crow family that collect treeseeds and cache them in a larders e.g. the azurewinged magpie in Spain (and presumably itbehaves similarly on the Asian side of itsdistribution), the scrub jay in California, theblue jay in eastern USA, the nutcracker in Asia,and the pinion jay in North America.

In very broad terms there are two types of treeform. At one end of the spectrum is the 'open-grown tree' and it is what it says; a tree grownin the open with little or no competition whichenables the tree to develop a wide spreadingcrown reminiscent of a dome. This sphericalshape is perhaps the most efficient design forutilising the life giving energy provided by thesun. Equally this shape must provide theoptimal area for pollen, flower and seedproduction. This must have implications for thebiodiversity associated with the trees andsimilarly must be significant when comparingthe productivity of pollen and seed production(especially acorns) between high forest andopen treescapes.

Tree archaeology: what can it tell us?

Ted Green


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At the other end of the spectrum is the 'ForestForm' - generally a tall and straight trunk withvery few branches. This form of tree has grownin confined conditions either through naturalregulation or planted in competition with othertrees, the competition from less vigorous treesgradually being removed either naturally bytheir death or by the Forester.

With the decline of ancient tree populations,many forms of pollards became significant fortheir veteran tree characteristics in providingcontinuity for the biodiversity associated withold trees, including the mycorrhizal and othersoil micro-organisms. While the rest of Europestill has a reasonable scatter of concentrationsof these working trees, in the UK we arefortunate to still have many ancient and veterantrees. Many parts of Europe have lost ancienttrees due to the popularity of high forestplantations.

In many cases it is usually not difficult torecognise the shapes and forms of these trees inthe countryside. They range from coppicestools and bundle planted trees to many formsof pollards and shredded trees. The shape of thetree, as a result of the different ways it was cutor trained, and the species of the tree weredifferent depending on the products which wererequired from it.

These working trees because of their age arenot only indicators of biological continuity butin many cases provide us with the only insightinto how people lived and were managing theland. We must safeguard this archaeologicalevidence. Their biodiversity, historical orlandscape values should be beyond disputehowever we must not forget that theseindividual trees are important in their ownright.

Picture of ancient tree with historic railings.Caption: Ancient Oak with the onlyremaining section of iron railings notremoved for the war effort in the early1940s. Photo credit: E.E. Green

Picture of old oak. Caption: 1000 year oldoak growing downwards. Photo credit: E.E.Green.

Diagram showing some of the differentforms of pollard. Credit E.E. Green


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IntroductionIn recent years, there has been increasinginterest in landscape-scale conservation, andeven in the possibility of creating 'newwilderness' areas. Natural processes could beallowed to operate in such places, without thecomparatively tight controls often required byconservation management. They are envisagedas zones where sharp boundaries would bereplaced by ecotones: relatively species richareas where habitats merge. In the early 1990s,the National Parks Review Panel (the 'EdwardsReport') recommended that:

“A number of experimental schemes on alimited scale should be set up in the [upland]National Parks, where farming is withdrawnentirely and the natural succession ofvegetation is allowed to take its course.”

This idea was further explored by a Council forNational Parks (CNP) report in 1998 whichconsidered upland, lowland and coastal areas.Instead of total abandonment, as suggested byEdwards, the CNP report recognised that initialmanagement works, followed by low-keymanagement of natural processes would be amore suitable approach for many areas.

These ideas have continued to be developed,but a fundamental issue is the difficulty ofdefining conservation objectives when the goalis to allow 'natural processes to act'. Oneapproach is to refer to a past landscape, and innorth-west Europe, the landscape of the mid-Holocene may be the best reference point: thiswas just prior to any significant impact byNeolithic peoples. However, three problemsarise with this solution. Firstly, the degree ofhuman impact at this period is debatable,secondly, there is no certainty about the precise

nature of the past landscape, and thirdlyenvironmental conditions have changed, andwill continue to change, since the pre-Neolithic.

Reference Landscapes andNaturalistic GrazingRegardless of the utility of past landscapes asreference points, the potential of stepping backfrom highly interventionist and prescriptivemanagement is being seriously considered.Discussion about naturalistic grazing shouldhowever, not be confused with other moregeneral moves towards landscape-scaleconservation management. The principal oflinking or expanding sites in order to avert theecological problems which are often associatedwith small isolated reserves, is not in question;nor is the utility of extensive grazing for themanagement of such large sites. Most countriesin Western Europe have good examples ofbiologically diverse sites which are managed bygrazing: the Camargue in France, the NewForest in England, Mols Bjerge in Denmark,Oland in Sweden, and the Borkener Paradies inGermany.

The defining difference between naturalisticgrazing and other large, extensively grazedconservation management can be found in therole of 'natural processes'. In the naturalisticapproach, there is no specified grazing density,instead herbivore populations self-regulate (thatis population numbers fluctuate according toe.g. the amount of food available, climate,pathogens and parasites). The grazing animalsare viewed as key ecosystem drivers, andnatural processes are allowed to act, rather thanmanaging by intervening to achieve targets forhabitat and species composition (Table 1). Innaturalistic grazing, direct management

Naturalistic Grazing in present and future landscapes

Kathy H. Hodder and James M. BullockCEH Dorset

intervention is reduced to a minimum and thenatural process is seen as an aim in itself.Clearly this approach is in great contrast toconservation practice guided by BiodiversityAction Plans, and hence to fulfil obligationsagreed in the Convention on BiologicalDiversity (1992).


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Naturalistic Other Extensive Systems Large herbivore density Herbivore populations are self-

regulated. This may lead to population fluctuations with the result that grazing pressure varies between years and this may provide windows of opportunity for scrub and tree regeneration in grasslands.

Numbers of grazing animals are controlled to provide a predetermined grazing pressure in order to meet a specific ecological management target.

Herbivore demography Animals allowed to breed, to form family groups etc. This may affect grazing patterns.

Determined by grazier – e.g. a single sex herd.

Control of numbers (by removal or humane destruction)

To avoid suffering, animals are removed when ‘beyond hope’ of recovery and it is clear that they would die anyway.

Numbers of grazing animals are maintained at the predetermined stocking level. Usually this about 0.2-0.8 LU/ha but depends on local conditions.

Seasonal or Year-round grazing

Always year round but in a large enough reserve seasonal movements could lead to effective fluctuations in grazing pressure.

May be seasonal or year round.

Additional management No If necessary (e.g. harrowing, mowing, burning).

Veterinary care Animals living independently may suffer from more stress from handling than a domestic animal. This should be taken into account (as well as herd dynamics) when deciding whether veterinary treatment is necessary.

Stock would receive the same care as domestic / farm animals. When hardy breeds are selected this may reduce the veterinary attention required.

Vaccinations As for domestic / farm stock under current law

As for domestic / farm stock

Fallen stock Locating fallen stock may be more difficult in a naturalistic reserve. Implications for water contamination should be considered.

The law requires that these are removed

Conservation targets Natural processes allowed to act. Open areas could be allowed to scrub over and forested areas to open out.

Usually involves management prescriptions for habitat type e.g. open grassland or dry heath.

Table 1. Differences between naturalistic and other forms of extensive grazing (based onconsultation with members of the Grazing Animals Project, the National Trust, and otherexperts).


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The main problem is unpredictability ofoutcomes: if the conservation of naturalprocesses becomes the goal, it becomesdifficult to define targets and to evaluatedevelopment of wild areas. This approachseems incompatible with current targets basedon species and habitats of conservationconcern. The Arcadian image of a naturalparkland landscape can capture the imagination,but may obfuscate discussion about actuallandscapes that might result from naturalisticregimes. Although there is a chance of a correctprediction, it is not realistic for proponents ofnaturalistic or wilderness grazing to assumethat biodiversity benefits of this approach couldbe forecast by describing the habitats andspecies found in the landscape that they assumewill emerge.

ConclusionsIt may be more realistic to replace targets withlimits to acceptable change, rather thanremoving intervention entirely (as suggested inthe CNP report 1998). Limits would be set byboth ecological and cultural factors, and somefactors will inevitably be imposed on sitemanagers, such as reserve size and'completeness' (i.e. the range of habitatsavailable), climate change and airbornepollutants. These latter factors impose a limit tohow 'natural' a system can be considered whenit will inevitably be affected inadvertently byhuman actions. Likewise, even assuming thatthe necessary legislative changes could be putin place to allow the use of self-regulatingherds of cattle (see Table 1), there would alsobe important limits to their 'naturalness'.Certainly in the short-term there are unlikely tobe adequately large and networked naturereserves to allow seasonal migration, and theabsence of large predators has importantconsequences for grazing behaviour and henceecosystem development.

Where there is little to lose in biodiversityinterest, there is likely to be the greatest scopefor allowing natural processes to operate, but inareas currently of high conservation interestmore management intervention is likely.

Managers may opt for allowing naturalprocesses to operate up to predefined limits tochange in landscape and biodiversity, and closemonitoring of naturalistic systems could enableadaptive management intervention whenrequired. If relatively flexible limits applied thiscould allow some scope for natural processeswithin the imposed limits (e.g. biodiversity,aesthetic). However, the scope for shiftingmosaics of vegetation to develop, where stocklevels are manipulated to maintain proportionsof habitat within required boundaries, mustsurely be very limited.

In practice it is likely to be very difficult toimpose a wilderness ideology on the busycultural landscapes of Britain, particularlylowland areas. Even in upland areas, it may bethe sense of 'wilderness' or 'naturalness' that issought by the public and site managers, and themaintenance of unobstructed views required forthis could well be at odds with stepping backfrom management. This goal is one oflandscape management, rather than naturalisticmanagement, because the main aim is to fulfil adeep psychological need for access to placesthat appear to be in a state of wilderness. In arecent review, site managers developinglandscape-scale projects often expressed aninterest in moving away from highlyprescriptive target-lead management. Howeverthe potential loss of biodiversity or highlyvalued habitat-types was rarely seen asacceptable, and this leads to an impasse forgroups and even individuals. More progresswas made when accepting that management isfor multiple aims, including active conservationof biodiversity and also landscape managementto maintain a sense of wilderness. Confusingthese two separate objectives cannot benefit theexciting opportunities we now have fordeveloping large interconnected nature reservesfor the benefit of plants, animals and people.


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IntroductionSouth Yorkshire (Figure 1) may seem initiallyan unlikely and unpromising area to choose tostudy woodland history. Nothing could befurther from the truth. When I visit other partsof the country - including other parts ofYorkshire - and begin to talk about ancientwoods in South Yorkshire, people's firstreaction is disbelief, then surprise and finallyenvy. For example, according to the NatureConservancy Council's woodland inventory,there are 333 ancient woodland sites in SouthYorkshire covering 4451 ha of the land surface(Eccles (1986). There are upwards of eightyancient woods within Sheffield's cityboundaries, including one of nearly 300 acreswithin a quarter of an hour's bus or car journey

of the city centre. Sheffield is the best-woodedcity in the country. Although ancient woods didnot survive in large numbers in theHumberhead Levels in the east of the region,Rotherham Metropolitan Borough and thewestern halves of Barnsley MetropolitanDistrict and Doncaster Metropolitan District,like Sheffield, are dotted with ancient woodslarge and small (Figure 2). And the resident orvisitor is always aware of the woods in thelandscape in the western and central parts ofSouth Yorkshire even though they cover only asmall fraction of the area. They cover thescarps and back slopes of the highest edges,and on lower ground they hang on steep valleysides, almost into the heart of both Sheffieldand Rotherham.

Ancient Woodland Destruction, Survival andRestoration: A South Yorkshire PerspectiveProfessor Melvyn JonesSheffield Hallam University

Figure.1


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hopes will be the beginning of a sustainedperiod of renewed active woodlandmanagement and restoration.

Place-name evidence for wildwood cover andits removal

Place-names of farms, hamlets and villages ofOld English and Old Norse origin, firstrecorded between the eleventh and thirteenthcenturies, provide widespread evidence of acountryside once covered by and graduallycleared of woodland. Some of these names tellus about the composition of the woods, namessuch as Lindrick (Old English for 'lime-treestrip', the name of a district which straddles theSouth Yorkshire-Nottinghamshire border andwhere there was a wood called bosco de lyndricfirst recorded in 1199; and Ewden and Agden,both deep valleys in the west of the region andfirst recorded as Udene (yew valley) in 1234and Aykeden (oak valley) in 1329 (Smith,1961).

But it is the woodland clearance names that aremost instructive. Many of these must indicatelarge clearings that had existed for manygenerations before the Anglo-Saxons andScandinavians entered the region and they weremerely renaming them in their own languages.

The sequence, if not the dating, of thewoodland history of South Yorkshire parallelsthat in the rest of the country (Rackham, 1976,1980). From the beginning of the Neolithicperiod there were thousands of years ofclearance of (almost entirely) broadleavedwoodland, followed by at least half amillennium of stability from the late medievalperiod until the second half of the nineteenthcentury, which was followed by a century of, atbest, benign neglect and, at worst, bydestruction through coniferisation and partial ortotal clearance through industrialisation,urbanisation and road building (Rotherham &Jones, 2000). The last twenty years, however,have seen a remarkable upturn for the better inthe attitude to and funding for the manysurviving ancient woods across the region,many of them in public ownership. This paperis concerned with considering the evidence ofplace-names and the Domesday Book for thedestruction and survival of the wildwood; withanalysing the long period of stability whencoppice management rose and remainedpredominant; with describing the century-longperiod of conversion of coppices to high forest,often accompanied by neglect and destruction;and, finally, with looking briefly at what one


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The Old English -leah (woodland clearing)which gives us names such as Heeley,Tankersley and Cantley is the most widelydistributed, with 40 occurrences on the1:50,000 OS sheets (110 and 111) covering theregion. Another widely distributed Old Englishelement is -feld (10 occurrences) which meansa treeless area in an otherwise well woodedlandscape, as in Sheffield, Darfield andHatfield. The Old Norse element for clearing is-thwaite (12 occurrences) as in Ouslethwaite,Butterthwaite and Hangthwaite. As Figure 3shows, woodland clearance names areunequally distributed across the region with thevast majority in the Coal Measure country,particularly in the western half of that zone.Significantly the Magnesian Limestone belt,long thought to be the most attractive area inSouth Yorkshire for early settlement has onlythree names indicative of a wooded countryside(Woolthwaite, Firbeck and Woodsetts)suggesting much woodland clearance therebefore the appearance of the Anglo-Saxon andDanish Viking name-givers.

The evidence of the Domesday Book forwoodland survival and destruction

If we take the Domesday returns at their facevalue, then woodland cover had beendrastically reduced by the eleventh century andthe countryside was not covered by theboundless woodland of people's imagination.Rackham (1980) has calculated that theDomesday survey of 1086 covered 27 millionacres of land of which 4.1 million werewooded, that is 15 per cent of the surveyedarea. His figure for the West Riding ofYorkshire is 16 per cent. My own calculationfor South Yorkshire is just under 13 per cent.By way of comparison, woods today, includingplantations, cover just over six per cent of theregion. What this means is that in the eleventhcentury, South Yorkshire was relatively sparselywooded even by today's standards.

The Domesday surveyors in South Yorkshire in1086 gave woodland measurements for eachmanor in almost every case in leagues (12furlongs or 1.5 miles) and furlongs (220 yards


49

or one-eighth of a mile) and in most casesrecorded how woods were utilised. When thedata are mapped (Figure 4), noticeablevariations in the distribution and types ofwoodland are clearly discernible. In the westernhalf of the region, in the Millstone Grit countryand on the Coal Measures, woodland wasrelatively extensive with a substantial numberof communities having more than 1000 acres ofwoodland. In contrast, in the MagnesianLimestone belt and in the Humberhead Levelsin the east, the picture was different. In thoseareas woodland was more scattered, andamounts in individual communities weregenerally smaller than to the west. In the westwithin the boundaries of the modern city ofSheffield woodland cover at Domesday was 22per cent; in the central part of the region in themodern metropolitan borough of Rotherham itwas 17 per cent; but in the east in the area nowcovered by Doncaster metropolitan district itwas only 9 per cent. Additionally, theMagnesian Limestone belt, although onlycovering about one-eighth of the land area ofthe region, contained nearly a third (10 out of33) of the places in which woodland was not

recorded at all. This underlines the point madeearlier about the lack of woodland clearanceplace-names suggesting very early clearance ofwoodland on the Magnesian Limestone.

The types of woodland recorded in SouthYorkshire at Domesday also suggest a shortageof woodland in some places in the east of theregion, particularly in the Magnesian Limestonebelt, and a relative abundance further west.When woods were relatively abundant andpopulations relatively small, they would havebeen able to be exploited for timber andunderwood and as pastures for cattle, sheep andpigs, i.e., as wood pastures. As populationsgrew and more woodland was cleared and theincreased number of grazing animals preventedthe regeneration of the remaining woodland,woods had to fenced to prevent animalsentering them and a type of management whichgave a continuous and self-renewing supply oftimber and underwood had to be introduced,i.e., coppicing.

Domesday woodland in South Yorkshire wasdescribed in four main ways: as silva, silvamodica, silva minuta and silva pastilis. Silva issimply woodland; the meaning of silva modica


50

is not clear; silva minuta is coppice; and silvapastilis is wood pasture. Of the 112 manors inwhich woodland was recorded, eight hadcoppice woods and 102 had wood pastures. Alleight occurrences of coppice woods were in theeastern half of the region, two in the easternpart of the Coal Measures and six on theMagnesian Limestone. On the other hand,although wood pastures were found throughoutSouth Yorkshire they were very extensive andthe only type of woodland found in theMillstone Grit country and throughout most ofthe Coal Measures.

The rise of coppice woods and woodlandstability

In the centuries following the Domesdaysurvey, although wood pastures in SouthYorkshire remained in existence, in the form ofwooded commons, chases and deer parks,coppice management gradually becamedominant in order to conserve wood supplieswhich were in danger of becoming seriouslydepleted as the population grew and morewoodland was permanently cleared foragriculture. As the change took place, a numberof deer parks became large coppice woodswhile retaining their original names. Examplesinclude Hesley Park and Cowley Park betweenChapeltown and Thorpe Hesley, which togethermark a medieval park of the de Mountenayfamily, and which had become coppice woodsof 163 and 135 acres respectively by 1637.Similarly, the 400-acre Tinsley Park, betweenSheffield and Rotherham, had by 1657 becometen coppice woods and three holts.

Throughout the region the form of coppicemanagement called coppice-with-standards,which combined the production of underwoodwith that of single-stemmed timber trees,emerged as the most important form ofwoodland management, in economic terms,during the middle ages and continued to be sountil at least the middle of the nineteenthcentury.

Two late medieval records of coppice-with-standards have survived. The first dated 1462,and written in English, refers to a number of

woods in Norton parish (now in Sheffield; thenin north Derbyshire) including 'herdyng wood',the old name for the present Rollestone Wood(Hall,1914). The lease noted that the lesseeshad been granted permission by the lord of themanor 'to fell downe cole (i.e., to make intocharcoal) and carry the said Woddes',preserving for the owner 'sufficiaunt Wayversafter the custom of the contre'. Wavers, orweavers, as they were more frequently written,were the young timber trees left to grow amongthe felled underwood. Wavers were alsomentioned in the second document, which waswritten in 1496, also in English, and refers totwo woods in the Sheaf valley again in theparish of Norton one of which was HutcliffWood, which still survives. The two woodswere the property of Beauchief Abbey and thelease records that the 'abbot of Beacheff' hadgranted permission to the lessees 'to cooll (i.e.,to make into charcoal) ii certen wodds', thewoods to be left 'weyverd workmonlyke'.Significantly, the document also refers to abloom hearth (a primitive furnace) and a dam(the local name for a pond at a water-poweredindustrial site) (Beauchief Muniments, BM994). Undoubtedly the increasing dominance ofcoppice management, at least in the westernhalf of the region, was closely related to theexpansion of metal smelting and related tradessuch as nail-making and edge tool manufacture.

But coppice management was also a feature ofthe eastern part of the region. At the dissolutionof Roche Abbey in the Magnesian Limestonebelt in 1546, a grant to Henry Tyrrell included60 acres of coppice woods in four separatewoods two of which (Norwood and Hell Wood)have survived to the present day. Two otherwoods belonging to the abbey, including aspring wood of 15 acres, is also listed. Therewere also 800 oaks and ashes of 60 and 80years' growth in the abbey's coppice woods andin other places in the abbey demesnes, 'partetymbre and part usually cropped and shred'(Aveling, 1870, p. 131). This reference toshredding - the cutting off of side branches toproduce a crop of poles and leaf fodder foranimals - is the only instance of this practicethat I have found in documents relating towoodland management in South Yorkshire.


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By the early seventeenth century coppice-with-standards management appears to have beengeneral. And, almost invariably, these woodswere referred to as spring woods, a term ofMiddle English origin. In an undated documentwritten for the 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, themajor landowner in south-west Yorkshire, whosucceeded to the title in 1590 and died in 1616,49 spring woods were listed, Significantly, theywere listed as belonging to the Earl's forges andcontained reference to charcoal making such as'Granowe Spring - 20 years ould redie to cole -100 ac' and 'Thorncliff Spring one half about 9years old tother halfe coalable - 30 ac'(Shrewsbury Papers at Lambeth Palace Library,698, Fol. 3). In 1637 John Harrison, in hissurvey of the manor of Sheffield listed 36spring woods in which the underwood varied inage from four years to forty. (Ronksley 1908).Maps of large compartmented coppice woodsalso survive from this period.

By this time the iron industry in south-westYorkshire had achieved a high degree ofsophistication and was increasinglycharacterised by a large measure of verticalintegration and horizontal combination(Hopkinson, 1963). By the 1650s, the mostpowerful ironmaster in the region was LionelCopley (Goodchild, 1996) who entered into asuccession of agreements with local landownersto fell and coal their spring woods. Thesurviving leases illustrate contemporarycoppice practice. For example, in 1657 the 2ndEarl of Strafford of Wentworth Woodhouseentered into a 10-year agreement with Copleyto fell the underwood and selected timber treesin thirteen of the Earl's woods. Under thecontract Copley was to cut 1000 cords of wood(in South Yorkshire, a pile of wood 4 feet wide,8 feet long and 4 feet high) each year forcharcoal making. He was allowed to cut 'youngtimber trees, Lordings, Black Barks, powles,coppices and Springwoode' together with 'theBark thereof'. The lessee was also instructed tomake sure that 'all the said Springwoode [is]well and sufficiently weavered' and thatcoppice was 'workmanlike cutt downe … andthe stowens [stools] thereof neare to the rooteso as best preserve for future growth and nextspringing thereof'. He was also asked to burn

the 'Ramell' in places that would be 'leastprejudiciall to the weavers and Springwoodwhich shall be left to grow'. Black barks werestandards that had grown through two coppicecycles, lordings were standards that had grownthrough three or more coppice cycles andramell (Latin ramillia) was brushwood.

Between the last quarter of the sixteenthcentury and the middle of the eighteenthcentury in the woods along the south-westernboundaries of South Yorkshire (and inneighbouring North Derbyshire) was anotherwoodland industry making a fuel for smeltingore and sustaining the management of theregion's woods as spring woods. The ore waslead and the fuel was whitecoal (Kiernan,1989). Local landowners are known to havebeen very active in the lead trade and theyobtained their ore from the Peak District andsmelted it at water-powered smelters called orehearths using a mixture of whitecoal andcharcoal as fuel. Whitecoal was small slivers ofwood, dried in a kiln until all the moisture wasdriven out. According to William Linnard,charcoal and whitecoal were mixed together inlead smelting because 'charcoal made tooviolent a fire, and wood alone was too gentle'(Linnard, 1982, p. 76). In 1657 EcclesallWoods in Sheffield were leased to a 'leadmerchant' who was permitted to make 'charcoleor whitecole' and to 'make & cast pitt & kilnesfor the coaleing of the same' (WentworthWoodhouse Muniments, WWM D 365). Thereare today in Ecclesall Woods some 300surviving charcoal hearths and about 140whitecoal kilns (Ardron & Rotherham, 1999),the latter in the form of deep round holes,usually on sloping ground, with a spout at thedown-slope end.

To the east, coppice-with-standardsmanagement was also important. On the Dukeof Leeds' estate centred on Kiveton Park on theeastern edge of the Magnesian Limestone belt,there were 17 woods in the early 1700s inHarthill, Thorpe Salvin and North and SouthAnston, five of them described in 1739 as'timber woods', and another eight as springwoods including the surviving Anston StonesWood, Hawks Wood, Lob Wells Wood and Old


52

Spring Wood. Among the products made fromthe timber and wood cut in these woods duringthe period in question were hop poles, scaffoldpoles, cordwood, pit wood ('puncheons'), heftwood, hazel hoops, hedge bindings, andperhaps most interesting of all, 562 'straiteoaken trees' which were taken by 'land andwater to his majestys yard at Chatham' in 1701and which yielded £473 in income (Duke ofLeeds' Archive, DD5/35).

Various aspects of eighteenth century springwood management in South Yorkshire are wellillustrated in two schemes devised by ThomasWentworth, Ist Marquis of Rockingham whoinherited the Wentworth estates in 1723. In1727 he devised what he called 'A Scheme formaking a yearly considerable Profit of SpringWoods in Yorkshire' and in 1749 what hedescribed as 'A Scheme for a Regular Fall ofWood for 21 years …'. In the 1749 scheme, a21-year rotation was used so that the woodscoppiced in 1749 would be cut again 1771.This meant that the Marquis' 876 acres (355 ha)of coppice-with-standards woodland in SouthYorkshire would produce a regular crop of 40acres of underwood a year. The Marquisstipulated that there were to be five black barksand 70 wavers left in every acre of felledcoppice (Wentworth Woodhouse Muninents,A1273). The Marquis of Rockingham wasfortunate that on his estate, besides hundreds ofacres of coppice woods he also had deposits ofironstone, and he linked the charcoaling of theformer with the mining of the latter. In 1749 hewrote that 'whereas it is the Iron Men that keepup the Price of the Wood, especiall care mustbe taken that the Iron Stone be never let for alonger time than the Woods are agreed for'(WWM A1273).

But this was the beginning of the end. By 1780the lead ore hearths had been replaced by coal-fired cupola furnaces and by the end of theeighteenth century iron furnaces wereconverted to or were rebuilt to use coke andnew ironworks were, from the first, coke fired.The market for whitecoal, therefore,disappeared and that for charcoal was reduced,although it was still in demand locally for theproduction of blister steel in cementation

furnaces. Nationally, coppicing did not declinein the immediate aftermath of the loss of themarket for charcoal for iron smelting, and oneauthor has suggested that the first half of thenineteenth century may be regarded as 'thegolden age of traditional English woodmanship(Collins, 1992). This was not the case in SouthYorkshire; its golden age was in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries whenproduction of charcoal and whitecoal were attheir height (Jones, 1997; Jones, 1998).

An important point must be re-emphasised atthis stage. During the long period between thelate fifteenth century and the middle of thenineteenth century when coppice managementwas almost universally practised in SouthYorkshire's woods, woodland destruction was atits lowest point during the whole of the lastmillennium. The long quoted fallacy and myththat woodlands were destroyed on a large scalebetween 1500 and 1700 by the British charcoaliron industry can be shown to be completelyuntrue for South Yorkshire - as in other partsof the country. The fallacy, quoted by manyeminent writers on rural history (e,g., Hoskins,1999, p. 138) was debunked forcibly in the1970s by Hammersley (1973) but still surfacesfrom time to time. That woods in SouthYorkshire were not destroyed by charcoalmakers or ironmasters but were jealouslyguarded, can be demonstrated clearly as shownin Figure 5. The maps show the coppice woodsknown to have been in existence in 1600 and1850 and woodlands still in existence todaywithin Sheffield's city boundaries. In 1600 therewere 43 documented coppices-with-standards,by 1850 only two had disappeared and theremaining 41 were still standing, many with thesame areas and boundaries as 250 yearspreviously. Since 1850 a further fourteen havedisappeared.

To the east, coppice-with-standardsmanagement was also important. On the Dukeof Leeds' estate centred on Kiveton Park on theeastern edge of the Magnesian Limestone belt,there were 17 woods in the early 1700s inHarthill, Thorpe Salvin and North and SouthAnston, five of them described in 1739 as'timber woods', and another eight as spring


53

woods including the surviving Anston StonesWood, Hawks Wood, Lob Wells Wood and OldSpring Wood. Among the products made fromthe timber and wood cut in these woods duringthe period in question were hop poles, scaffoldpoles, cordwood, pit wood ('puncheons'), heftwood, hazel hoops, hedge bindings, andperhaps most interesting of all, 562 'straiteoaken trees' which were taken by 'land andwater to his majestys yard at Chatham' in 1701and which yielded £473 in income (Duke ofLeeds' Archive, DD5/35).

Various aspects of eighteenth century springwood management in South Yorkshire are wellillustrated in two schemes devised by ThomasWentworth, Ist Marquis of Rockingham whoinherited the Wentworth estates in 1723. In1727 he devised what he called 'A Scheme formaking a yearly considerable Profit of SpringWoods in Yorkshire' and in 1749 what hedescribed as 'A Scheme for a Regular Fall ofWood for 21 years …'. In the 1749 scheme, a21-year rotation was used so that the woodscoppiced in 1749 would be cut again 1771.This meant that the Marquis' 876 acres (355 ha)of coppice-with-standards woodland in SouthYorkshire would produce a regular crop of 40acres of underwood a year. The Marquisstipulated that there were to be five black barksand 70 wavers left in every acre of felledcoppice (Wentworth Woodhouse Muninents,A1273). The Marquis of Rockingham wasfortunate that on his estate, besides hundreds ofacres of coppice woods he also had deposits ofironstone, and he linked the charcoaling of theformer with the mining of the latter. In 1749 hewrote that 'whereas it is the Iron Men that keepup the Price of the Wood, especiall care mustbe taken that the Iron Stone be never let for alonger time than the Woods are agreed for'(WWM A1273).

But this was the beginning of the end. By 1780the lead ore hearths had been replaced by coal-fired cupola furnaces and by the end of theeighteenth century iron furnaces wereconverted to or were rebuilt to use coke andnew ironworks were, from the first, coke fired.The market for whitecoal, therefore,disappeared and that for charcoal was reduced,

although it was still in demand locally for theproduction of blister steel in cementationfurnaces. Nationally, coppicing did not declinein the immediate aftermath of the loss of themarket for charcoal for iron smelting, and oneauthor has suggested that the first half of thenineteenth century may be regarded as 'thegolden age of traditional English woodmanship(Collins, 1992). This was not the case in SouthYorkshire; its golden age was in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries whenproduction of charcoal and whitecoal were attheir height (Jones, 1997; Jones, 1998).

An important point must be re-emphasised atthis stage. During the long period between thelate fifteenth century and the middle of thenineteenth century when coppice managementwas almost universally practised in SouthYorkshire's woods, woodland destruction was atits lowest point during the whole of the lastmillennium. The long quoted fallacy and myththat woodlands were destroyed on a large scalebetween 1500 and 1700 by the British charcoaliron industry can be shown to be completelyuntrue for South Yorkshire - as in other partsof the country. The fallacy, quoted by manyeminent writers on rural history (e,g., Hoskins,1999, p. 138) was debunked forcibly in the1970s by Hammersley (1973) but still surfacesfrom time to time. That woods in SouthYorkshire were not destroyed by charcoalmakers or ironmasters but were jealouslyguarded, can be demonstrated clearly as shownin Figure 5. The maps show the coppice woodsknown to have been in existence in 1600 and1850 and woodlands still in existence todaywithin Sheffield's city boundaries. In 1600 therewere 43 documented coppices-with-standards,by 1850 only two had disappeared and theremaining 41 were still standing, many with thesame areas and boundaries as 250 yearspreviously. Since 1850 a further fourteen havedisappeared.

The extinction of coppice managementaccompanied by major changes of ownershipand function

During the nineteenth century the survivingcoppice-using industries could not sustaincoppice-with-standards management in the


54

region. As a result more and more coppicewoods were gradually converted into highforests (Figure 6A and 6B). In essence theywere becoming plantations and forestry wasreplacing woodmanship (Jones, 1998). Thechanges in Ecclesall Woods after about 1850,mirror changes that were taking place, or wouldtake place in the next half century, in othercoppice woods throughout the region (Jones &Walker, 1997). In Ecclesall Woods sales from1775 until 1847 were entered under somevariation of the title of a 'fall of wood' or 'fallsof wood' or 'fall of coppice' But planting wasalso under way, there being a prolonged period

of planting between 1830 and 1845 andplanting took place either in Ecclesall Woodsspecifically or in woods in general on the estateof which Ecclesall Woods were part from theearly 1860s until the end of the nineteenthcentury. A timber sale was recorded for the firsttime in 1848, again in 1851, and thencontinuously almost every year until the end ofthe century. No more sales of falls of wood arerecorded after 1847. Those purchasing woodand timber from Ecclesall Woods also changeddramatically between the 1750s and 1900:between about 1750 and 1850 the maincustomers were ironmasters wanting coppice


55

and branchwood for charcoal making orcolliery owners purchasing pit wood; but fromthe 1850s industrial customers were replacedby timber merchants, William Toplis, aChesterfield timber merchant, being the solebuyer at the Ecclesall Woods annual timbersales on 27 out of the 30 annual sales that tookplace between 1869 and 1900-01.

Similar changes were also taking place in themany woods on the Duke of Norfolk's Sheffieldand Rotherham woods. In 1898 the Duke'sforester (a term that had supplanted the earlier'woodward'), began to plant heavily in thedeclining coppice woods. In Hesley Wood heplanned to plant 100 acres (40 ha) with ash,elm, sycamore, birch, lime, sweet chestnut andbeech eight feet apart and 'filled up' at four feet

intervals with larch. Another 40 ha were to beplanted in the same way in Smithy Wood, 50 hain Greno Wood, 25 ha in Beeley Wood, 16 hain Bowden Housteads Wood, 10 ha in HallWood and 8 ha in Woolley Wood.

By the end of the nineteenth century coppicing,and its related trades and industries had all butdisappeared.

Forestry management, including coniferousplantings, has continued to be important rightup to the present time in some parts of theregion, particularly on the still private estatewoodlands and those woodlands managed byForestry Enterprise (Wharncliffe Wood) andFountain Forestry (Greno Wood).

Many other woodlands have come into local


56

authority ownership through gift or bypurchase, but since their acquisition they haduntil recently only been managed, if managedat all, on a 'care and maintenance' basis, and bythe 1980s were even-aged with dense canopiesand poorly developed shrub layers. In a goodnumber of woods the ground layer haddisappeared altogether in large sections wherethe canopy was particularly dense especiallywhere beech had been planted (Figure 6C).Local residents were increasingly afraid ofwalking through the woods because they weredark and gloomy and engendered a fear ofpersonal attack. The more accessible woodswere also sometimes heavily vandalised andfull of litter. After many centuries of intensivemanagement and careful protection, thetwentieth-century attitude seemed, at best, toleave the woods to their own devices, and atworst to abuse them unmercifully or to threatento clear them for the sake of progress.

Restoration strategies for South Yorkshire'spublicly-owned woods

Things began to change for the better abouttwenty years ago. In Sheffield, the CityCouncil's Recreation Department had created aMoorland and Amenity Woodland AdvisoryGroup (MAWAG) in the 1970s made up ofcouncil officers and representatives fromoutside organisations including the voluntarysector. The City Council approved a WoodlandPolicy, put together by MAWAG, in 1987. Itsprimary aim was the protection andperpetuation of the almost 80 ancient woodssurviving within the city boundaries. The policywas largely enshrined in the City Council'sNature Conservation Strategy documentpublished in 1991. Meanwhile work beganduring the winter of 1988 on theimplementation of a management plan forBowden Housteads Wood, an inner city ancientwood that had remained unmanaged since itspurchase from the Duke of Norfolk in 1916.Other management plans and practical projectsfollowed (Jones & Talbot, 1995).

Similar developments took place in Rotherhamwhere there are more than twenty ancientwoods in public ownership. Management planswere drawn up for a number of woods and the

implementation of the management plan forScholes Coppice was awarded a Centre ofExcellence Award by the Forestry Commissionin 1995.

In Barnsley one of the most exciting projectsunder the auspices of the Countryside Action inthe Rural Environment (CARE) Project was thepurchase from the Forestry Commission in1989 by Tankersley Parish Council of BroadIng Wood, a plantation of sycamore andJapanese larch on an ancient woodland site.Members of the local community, withprofessional advice, transformed the site from aclose-set plantation into an amenity wood witha semi-natural character and carpets ofbluebells.

A major influence on local attitudes towoodland management in the last decade hasbeen the South Yorkshire Forest Project (nowPartnership). This project, established in 1991,was one of twelve 'community forest' projectsestablished across the country. South YorkshireForest covers most of the Coal Measurecountry in Sheffield, Rotherham and Barnsleyand among its objectives are commitments toprotect areas of historical, archaeological andecological interest (i.e., the existing ancientwoodlands). Following a year of publicconsultation, the South Yorkshire Forest's firstplan was published in 1994, which establisheda policy framework and a strategic approach towoodland management through the Projectarea.

In 1997 the South Yorkshire Forest Team puttogether a £1.5m bid to the Heritage LotteryFund for a five-year action plan to restore 35ancient woodlands in Sheffield, Rotherham andBarnsley - called Fuelling a Revolution - TheWoods that founded the Steel Country. InFebruary 1999 it was announced that the bidhad been successful and a five-year HeritageWoodlands Project was launched in September1999. Since that time there has been muchactivity on a broad front connected with theproject - archaeological surveys, the preparationof management plans, active woodlandmanagement programmes, interpretation forlocal communities, commissioning of public artworks and the development of educational


57

materials and programmes, including thepublication in Sheffield of a 'big book' -Sheffield Woodland Detectives (Jones & Jones,2002) - for the literacy hour pitched at Year 3pupils. There is also a Fuelling a Revolutionwebsite - www.heritagewoodsonline.co.uk -which provides general and site-by-siteinformation about the heritage woodlands andtheir restoration.

The future of South Yorkshire's many publicly-owned ancient woods looks much better than itdid two decades ago. Awareness of theircultural importance has been raised to a muchhigher level and interest in their economic andecological significance and recreationalpotential has been re-awakened. But it cannotbe emphasised enough that woodlandmanagement is not a one-off event; it needs tobe continuous and long term. The work that iscurrently taking place is very encouraging but itis just the beginning. The challenge, aseveryone involved knows only too well, is tosustain it in the medium and long term.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the owners and guardiansof the following archive collections forpermission to consult and quote from thedocuments in their care;

In Sheffield Archives: Arundel CastleManuscripts; Beauchief Muniments; BrightPapers; Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments.

In Yorkshire Archaeological Society's Archives,Leeds: Duke of Leeds Archives.

In Lambeth Palace Library, London:Shrewsbury Papers.

I also wish to thank Bob Warburton for drawingthe final versions of the maps and otherillustrations.

References

Ardron, P. A. and Rotherham, I. D. (1999)Types of charcoal hearth and the impact ofcharcoal and whitecoal production onwoodland vegetation. The Peak District Journalof Natural History and Archaeology, 1, 35-47.

Aveling, J. (1870) The History of Roche Abbey.Robert White.

Collins, E. J. T. (1992) Woodland andwoodland industries in Great Britain during andafter the charcoal iron era. In Metaille, J. P. (ed)Protoindustries et Histoire des Forets (LesCahiers de l'ISARD 3) University of Toulouse,pp. 109-120.

Eccles, C. (1986) South Yorkshire Inventory ofAncient Woodland. Nature ConservancyCouncil.

Goodchild, J. (1996) Lionell Copley, aseventeenth century capitalist. In Aspects ofRotherham: Discovering Local History, Volume2. Wharncliffe Publishing, pp. 28-36.

Hall, T.W. (1914) Descriptive Catalogueforming the Jackson Collection. J. W. NorthendLtd.

Hammersley, G. (1973) The Charcoal IronIndustry and its Fuel, 1540-1750. EconomicHistory Review, 26, 593-613.

Hopkinson, G. G. (1963) The charcoal ironindustry in the Sheffield region, 1550-1775.Transactions of the Hunter ArchaeologicalSociety, 8, 122-151.

Hoskins, W. G. (1995) The Making of theEnglish Landscape, Hodder & Stoughton.

Jones, M. (1997) Woodland management on theDuke of Norfolk's Sheffield estate in the earlyeighteenth century. In M. Jones (ed) Aspects ofSheffield: Discovering Local History, Volume 1.Wharncliffe Publishing, pp. 48-69.

Jones, M. (1998) The rise, decline andextinction of spring wood management insouth-westYorkshire. In C. Watkins (ed)European Woods and Forests: Studies inCultural History. CAB International, pp. 55-71.

Jones, J. and Jones, M. (2002) SheffieldWoodland Detectives. LD Design & Print forSheffield Heritage Woodlands Team.

Jones, M. and Talbot, E. (1995) Coppicing inurban woodlands: a progress report on a multi-purpose feasibility study in the city ofSheffield. Journal of Practical Ecology andConservation, 1, 48-54.


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Jones, M. and Walker, P. (1997) From coppice-with-standards to high forest: the managementof Ecclesall Woods, 1715-1901. In I. D.Rotherham and M. Jones (eds) The NaturalHistory of Ecclesall Woods, Pt. 1, Peak DistrictJournal of Natural History and Archaeology,Special Publication, No. 1, 11-20.

Kiernan, D. (1989) The Derbyshire LeadIndustry in the Sixteenth Century. DerbyshireRecord Society.

Linnard, W. (1982) Welsh Woods and Forest:History and Utilization. National Museum ofWales.

Rackham, O. (1976) Trees and Woodland in theBritish Landscape. J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Rackham, O. (1980, revised edition, 2003)Ancient Woodland: its history, vegetation anduses in England. Edward Arnold (1980),Castlepoint Press (2003).

Rotherham, I. D. and Jones, M. (2000) TheImpact of Economic, Social and PoliticalFactors on the Ecology of Small EnglishWoodlands: a Case Study of the Ancient Woodsin South Yorkshire, England. In M. Agnolettiand S. Anderson (eds) Forest History:International Studies on Socio-Economic andForest Ecosystem Change. CABI Publishing /IUFRO, pp. 397-410

Ronksley. J. G. (ed).1908) An exact and perfectSurvey and View of the Manor of Sheffield byJohn Harrison, 1637. Robert White & Co.

Smith, A. H. (1961) The Place-Names of theWest Riding of Yorkshire, Pt 1. CambridgeUniversity Press.


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Was the wildwood closed forest or savannah - and doesit matter?Keith KirbyEnglish Nature, Northminster House, Peterborough, PE1 1UA

IntroductionFrans Vera's ideas have sparked much debateand not a little controversy: but what is therelevance to English Nature? Most of what wehave been interested in conserving are clearlylong-standing cultural, not natural, landscapes.However we should try to understand wherethese habitats have come from: to what extentare they analogues of what may have beenpresent in the Atlantic period; because this mayhelp us decide where we want them to go.Vera's ideas have also encouraged the debateabout whether, if we move towards 'wilderlandscapes', there are ways in which we canstill maintain, albeit in different ways, thesmall-scale mosaic of habitats that are oftenwhat conservationists value.

Vera's hypothesis in relation to theformer landscapeA review project was set up with CEH and withPaul Buckland (through ECUS a consultancyattached to Sheffield University) to look at howVera's ideas about the past landscape have beenreceived; and secondly to looked at what hisideas might say about the use of free-ranginglarge herbivores in modern landscapes. A wideranging literature review was combined withdiscussions with key individuals both in Britainand the Netherlands. The final report will bepublished in the next couple of months.

In considering the past landscape there are twoseparate questions: (a) was the landscapecomposition driven by large herbivores; and (b)if so would it have produced an open landscapeover large parts of Britain. Evidence for one isnot necessarily proof of the other: the landscape

could have been more open because of theactivity of beavers; or large herbivores couldhave driven regeneration but produced alandscape-pattern with less than 30% openness.Modelling shows that you can have a 'Veralandscape' with only about 25% or lessopenness.

In reaching this conclusion we have looked atthe range of evidence that Frans Vera putforward:

- Recent work suggests that pollen records arepotentially capable of detecting openness in thelandscape. While evidence for openness isdetected this is relatively scarce for the Atlanticperiod compared to earlier or later periods andin previous inter-glacials. Alternativeexplanations for high levels of oak and hazelpollen in the former natural landscape arepossible. Their dependence on large openspaces for regeneration has been exaggeratedparticularly in GB where more shade-toleranttrees are generally scarce.

- The role of large herbivores in pastlandscapes has almost certainly beenunderestimated. Tree regeneration can occur inthe presence of large herbivores through theassociated protection provided by thorny scrub.However, there is no direct evidence that theherbivore populations were high enough tomake this the commonest mechanism by whichregeneration occurred.

- American literature suggests that theevidence that the pre-colonial forests were keptopen by large herbivores (now missing) isweak.

- Vera is right to reject the equation ofmedieval references to Forest and the modern


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use of the term. However, medieval Forestswere not 'wildwood', but landscapes that inBritain had already been intensively managedfor several millennia. The structure of medievalForests cannot be assumed to be that of theformer natural landscape.

- The current distribution and abundance of'open ground' species cannot be used as proofof the past extent of the habitats that theyrequire, unless there is separate evidence thatthey had similar abundance and distribution inthe Atlantic period.

Vera has done an extremely valuable job inforcing us to think again as to what the pastlandscape was like; some of the issues he raisesare not easily resolved. The ideas presented arevery relevant to the use of large herbivores inthe conservation management of present andfuture landscapes.

However, with respect to the structure andfunctioning of the original-natural landscape inBritain there are flaws in the evidence that ispresented:

- The role of large herbivores has beenunderestimated in the past, but the evidencethat they were the predominant driver of thelandscape pattern is weak.

- There is evidence for openness from variouspaleo-ecological studies the balance is towardsa landscape where trees predominate and openspace is the minority.

The Vera hypothesis, as a model of the past, iswe consider at best 'Not Proven'.


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Abstract

The reasons for choice of restoration target isoften driven by policy objectives such as therequirements of Agri-environment schemes,where the target community may not reflect thecharacteristics of the surrounding landscape.

Here, we relate the results of a restorationexperiment designed to reverse succession bycontrolling bracken Pteridium aquilinum and restoring moorland with the context of thesurrounding landscape.

We used four approaches:(1) we tested the effects of the brackencontrol/restoration treatments within arelatively long-term experiment;(2) we used high spatial resolution aerialphotography to produce a map of the landscapesurrounding with 13 component land classes,and then estimated the composition andconfiguration of the landscape:(3) we compared the species both thevegetation and diaspore bank and the overallcommunity composition of the experiment andlandscape; and(4) we carried out some simple restorationscenario simulations.

The restoration treatments appliedexperimentally showed varying degrees ofsuccess. The bracken cover was reduced tovarying degrees and for various periods bycontrol, and the species number and coverincreased over the ten years. The vegetationcommunities (NVC classes) produced showed amixture of responses, some close to the targetand some not; these varied from dense brackenstands through to well-established Calluna andgrass-heath mosaics, with some woodland

communities. Comparison of the experimentwith the landscape indicated that the restorationwork had successfully created the targetcommunities. However, it also showed thatsome communities were typical of disturbedhabitats, there was a lack of mire communities,which were prevalent in the wider landscape,and it may have been more sensibleto choose awoodland target on this site rather than amoorland. The wider landscape had a fine-grained texture, was highly fragmented and hadan intermixed distribution of manycommunities, with mires having a morecomplex structure than communities on driersoils.

The simulations provided different outcomesdepending on the areas targeted and their finalrestoration outcome, and the approach mayprove useful for policy makers for restorationplanning.

Plot to Landscape on Moorlands, or vice versa

Rob MarrsUniversity of Liverpool


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IntroductionThe Lower Wye Valley is a borderland in whichuniquely the designated Area of OutstandingNatural Beauty (AONB) extends across anational boundary. It contains several importanthabitat-types, including three designated asSpecial Areas for Conservation (SACs), theancient woods, the Wye itself, and severalroosts of horseshoe bats. Several adjacentdistricts also have high scenic and ecologicalvalue, notably the Caldicot level on the SevernEstuary and the Forest of Dean.

The Lower Wye Valley links the Dean and theTrellech plateau in east Monmouthshire to forman exceptionally well-wooded region by Britishstandards. This is one of the few tracts ofBritain where woodland cover has remainedabove 30%, and which has largely escapedecological isolation effects.

These districts are also important for studies ofenvironmental history. The caves of the WyeGorge have long been known to yield importantfinds, and are still being studied. In recentyears, the Severn Estuary margins have becomean exceptionally important arena for suchstudies.

Against this background, most residents andvisitors would be surprised to hear that there is,or was, an ecological crisis, though most wouldaccept the need for constant vigilance. Mostwould concede that pressures for developmenton the Levels are high, and there is great localconcern about proposals for further super-quarries in the limestone. Otherwise, the districtseems blissfully removed from ecological crisesthat are obvious elsewhere.

Past crisesHowever, there is no doubt that severalepisodes in the past would have been regardedas ecological crises, if modern eyes had judgedthem. These include the prehistoric extinctionof large herbivores, clearance of the originalforest, and the widespread disruption of naturalvegetation by cultivation and introduction ofnumerous alien species into farmland.

Many recent episodes would also be deemed tobe crises. Before the Black Death, farmingcaused widespread erosion, leaving deep siltlayers in the valley. The wood-pastures andmature timber habitats, that were extensive inthe medieval period, were devastated by timberfelling in the Dean in the 17th century, and byenclosure and clearance in east Monmouthshirein the 17th-19th centuries. All major marsheswere drained and cultivated in the 18th and 19th

centuries. Industrial development for metal-working industries was concentrated in the Wyetributaries from late Medieval times, and airpollution spread from industry in South Walesand West Midlands. The two combined haveremoved almost all the old-forest epiphytes.Victorian game keeping allied to collecting bynaturalists and holiday-makers removed manyspecies of mammal, bird, fern and floweringplant. The salmon fishery was almost destroyedby netting in the 19th century, recovered, andwas again almost destroyed in the late 20th

century. There was even a devastating flood inthe Levels in 1607, a possible tsunami.

In more recent times, several kinds of crisishave developed. Conifer forestry transformedmany woods in the mid-20th century, and wascomplemented by the decline of traditionalcoppice management. For this and otherreasons, habitat-specialist butterflies have either

Ecological Crises in the Lower Wye ValleyGeorge Peterken


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been extinguished, or very much reduced.Pesticide applications eliminated the otters.

Today's crises?Asked about current crises, most ecologistswould think first of the damaging impacts ofrecently naturalised aliens, notably Japaneseknotweed, Indian balsam, grey squirrels andmink. However, a better index of the currentecological crisis can be gained from an analysisof change the vascular flora during the 20th

century, which reveals substantial losses.Numerous native species have been lost fromthe whole district, or a significant part, and thefew that have been added were species that hadpreviously been overlooked. Extinctions havebeen concentrated amongst species that werealready rare, but not exclusively so. Numerousother species have been reduced to 1-, 2- or 3-locations, or to scattered relict populations, soare now vulnerable to extinction. Extinctionshave occurred in all habitats, but especiallyspecies of arable, grassland and wetland.Several woodland species have been lost, eventhough the woodland survives. Informationfrom other groups is less complete, but similarchanges seem to have taken place.

The immediate causes are (i) habitat loss(grassland, wetland) and (ii) habitatdeterioration (woodland, watercourses). Theroot causes are the usual suspects, (i) farmingintensification (habitat loss, eutrophication,deterioration of watercourses), (ii) urbanisation(habitat loss, especially grassland), and (iii)changes in woodland management, combinedwith the spread of deer. In the Lower WyeValley, which has many tracts of small-fieldsformed by squatters on former commons, (iv)the reduction in stock keeping and small-holding has been particularly damaging.

Recovery from past crises?Has the Lower Wye Valley recovered from pastcrises? The array of conservation designationssuggests that it has, but it is important to

understand how, and to recognise that recoveryis at best ambiguous. At least four processescan be distinguished:

- Natural processes: recolonisation by species;re-growth of semi-natural habitat-types.

- Mitigation: direct action to alleviate problemse.g., buying out the salmon nets, substitutingless-harmful pesticides, replacing plantedconifers with broadleaves.

- Learning to live with the consequences i.e.,accepting an ecologically impoverishedenvironment.

- Change in attitudes: valuing culturallandscapes, including industrial archaeology;coming to enjoy naturalised species as much asnatives.

Can the Lower Wye Valley recover inthe future?Some of the recovery in the past has been realreversal of ecological impoverishment, butsome has been a mixture to resignation andchanges in values. No doubt the psychologicaladjustments will continue, but can we actuallyreverse the continuing ecologicalimpoverishment?

First, we must maintain what we have now.This involves recognising and protectedsurviving natural features, such as grasslandremnants, coastal ecosystems and the form ofthe rivers. Much ancient woodland remains,much still semi-natural, but it is badly damagedby deer. Relict populations of specialised andslow-colonising species must be maintained,e.g. butterflies. This is the core of natureconservation effort, and it is reasonablysuccessful. However, in the Lower Wye Valleyand elsewhere, nature reserves have proved tobe necessary, but not sufficient.

Further recovery depends on restoring habitatsand reducing ecological isolation, i.e. ondeveloping a habitat network based onwoodland and associated semi-natural


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grassland. Some lost habitats are beingrecreated (e.g. heathland) and some restored(e.g. semi-natural grassland), and there is nowgreater care of riparian habitat-types.Encouragingly, various kinds of communityinvolvement in conservation have developed,e.g. several grassland projects. However, thereis no overall plan for the district.

Will recovery take place?Who knows? There are substantial pressures fordevelopment and for expanding developmentfor rural recreation. Whatever currenteconomics is telling us, there will be acontinuing need to produce food from the landi.e. little prospect of reducing the croppingintensity of farming.

Possibly the best solution is to build on afeature of the Lower Wye Valley, theconcentration of semi-natural habitat-types intodistinct zones. Partition would be into:

1. A network of moderate-usage habitat-types(woodland, semi-natural grassland, wetland),linked along watercourses, with core areasbased on existing habitat concentrations.

2. The majority of the area assigned tointensive farming. This would be distributed aslarge 'islands' in a matrix of semi-naturalhabitat-types.


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SummaryBritain's medieval woods, heaths, commons andbogs supplied most people with fuel. Alongwith essential energy for domestic use,medieval coppice woods fuelled much earlyindustry. However, the parallel development ofdifferent fuels (mineral coal, wood, charcoal,and peat or turf), and their impacts on thelandscape are rarely considered. Early accountsdescribe conflict over resource use, with forexample, medieval iron masters destroyingwoods. Yet most were sustainable coppicethough to the untutored eye, recently cutcoppice can appear devastated. Today's highforest re-growths seem almost pristine, but bothviews are mistaken.

Traditional, managed coppice operated inEngland for a thousand years, largely ceasingby mid-1900. Understanding interactionsbetween competing uses and different fuelshelps unravel the historic drivers of change inlandscape and its utilisation. The use andavailability of different fuels for energy incontrasting areas has left major landscapeimpacts and these may be defining in terms ofwhat we see today. Finding data to inform thisdebate and provide insight into the economicsunderlying the use of energy sources isdifficult. Information is often localised in timeand in place.

There are many sources of both anecdotal anddetailed information on fuel use and itseconomics. However, very few are to anyextent comprehensive. Some may relate to anindividual land holding or estate, and a fewcover a district or region. Hardly any allownational comparison and analysis. Thecompilation by Rogers (1902) provides data fora period from 1259-1793, from a diversity of

sources and areas. This unique eight volumework details prices of fuels, other rawmaterials, and manufactured products,providing a starting point for analysis. Theresearch is based on archival records, casestudies, and supporting archaeologicalevidence. It begins to show the extents to whichfuels use has driven landscape change, and tohighlight the balance between continuum andcrisis in this process.

IntroductionFuel is a basic commodity for human existenceand in particular for an advanced or at leastsophisticated society. The discovery of fire wasa key step in the development of humancivilisation. Pyne (2001) has discussed thedevelopment and impact specifically of fire andsociety. With the control and use of fire camethe ability and technology to use metals and toprocess and prepare foods and other necessarymaterials. The availability and use of fuel forenergy is a basic commodity in humanexistence. This serves not only to heat peopleand their dwellings, but to power machineryand processes of manufacture. The varyingdemands for energy and for heat in particular,have both influenced and themselves beenaffected by, the available sources of fuel. Thesources affect and influence possible uses; andthese uses impact on, and change theenvironment which provides them. Transportinfrastructure and costs also influence realavailability.

Fuel is not only needed to heat buildings andpeople, but it is essential for cooking too. Forthis, it is needed throughout the year, andirrespective of climate. Furthermore, the type offuel that may be used depends on the buildingconstruction and the type of fireplace or hearth

Fuel and Landscape - Exploitation, Environment,Crisis and ContinuumIan D. RotherhamShefield Hallam University


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available. Potential fuels are also influencedboth by ownership of land and materials, and insome cases by common rights too. Anti-socialand environmentally polluting effects of certainfuels burnt in particular ways also influencetheir usage and acceptability. The impacts ofdomestic fuel use are discussed by Bond et al.(2004), and the particular health effects ofcookstove emissions for example, by Saldivaand Miraglia (2004).

The need for and use of fuel has strong spatialand geographical influences. Higher latitudes,and higher altitudes, along with exposed orotherwise extreme environments demandincreased fuel availability and use. This is forheating people and spaces - living areas, forcooking, and for manufacture - part-burningand hardening of implements such as woodenspears, baking of clay, and the smelting andforging of metals.

It is important to distinguish between 'fuel' assuch, and other energy sources - that may or

may not be fuel-based. Furthermore, energysources such as fire can be and has been usedas both a fuel and a tool - for land clearance,for hunting and for defence. Both fuel and fireas a tool may have impacts on the landscapebut here the focus is specifically on theinfluences of fuel uses. Fuel is also distinctfrom heat energy that may be from passivebuilding design or from solar heating etc.

Fuel Needs

The demand for fuel increases with communitysophistication; often with a tendency towardsbigger settlements and more complex lifestyles,with more energy expended per capita. Thetrend is from basic uses for basic needs, andtowards complex uses to maintain sophisticatedexistence and social status. This is paralleled bya shift from immediate sourcing from nearbyenvironments, to more complicated acquisitionand processing. The consequent impactsbecome equally complicated.


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Table 1 Fuel Acquisition and Impacts

Acquisition – Extraction – Processing – Supply - Use

Primary Fuel Acquisition and Supply

Secondary Fuel Acquisition and Supply

Displaced Fuel Acquisition and Supply

Individual or group directly from immediate environment

Fuel gathered, prepared and processed by specialist tradesman and sold in a market system.

Fuel gathered and processed by corporate body and sold via market system but spatially displaced and in modified form.

Fuelwood, turf / peat; ling, gorse / furze, solar, surface coal, wind power, water power.

Fuelwood, turf / peat, charcoal, coal, Coke etc

Collective or communal acquisition

As above but organised on a communal basis e.g. common use of fuelwood, turf, peat etc.

Distribution and Processing

Coal , natural gas, town gas, oil, turf (Ireland), nuclear, electric, wind power, water power.

Domestic / Cultural versus Industrial / Manufacturing

Range of intensity of use and of impacts

Local Supplies / dependence

Diffuse / distant supplies – dependence??

Impacts

Immediate In time and space Diffuse Domestic space; immediate landscape; removal of forest, of bog, of vegetation or soil. Environmental Impacts – landscape change or creation, landscape maintenance, pollution, hydrological impacts, atmospheric impacts. Socio-economic Impacts – changed land-use and landscape, employment, economic development, conflicts over resources and rights, pollution and illness.


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1. Landscape MaintenanceThe use of land to provide a sustainable fuelresource may imply both gradual (andsometimes eventually, catastrophic) change,and continuity of both product and supply. Thisbecomes apparent with the consideration oftraditional and cultural landscapes.

Coppice and FuelwoodThe demand for reliable supplies of a particularfuel may lead to the maintenance of particularlandscapes or landscape features such aswoods. Traditional, managed coppice forexample, was a system applied in England forover a thousand years, though it was generallyin terminal decline by the mid 1900s. Thereasons for the decline are many, and theimpacts include the loss of associated wildlifespecies and the alteration to both landscape andto local economies. Understanding theinteractions between competing uses, anddifferent fuels helps to unravel the historicdrivers that have led to major changes in thewoodland resource and its utilisation.Furthermore, the use and availability ofdifferent fuels to supply energy needs incontrasting areas has left major impacts in thelandscapes still visible today. However, findingdata to inform this debate and to provideinsight into the economics that underlie the useof the various energy sources is difficult.Information is often localised in time and inplace.

The coppice woods of medieval Britain fuelledmuch early industry, and provided domesticheating too. In South Yorkshire the extensivenetwork of ancient woodlands is largely a resultof their maintenance as industrial, intensivecoppice to fuel the region's industries from the1600s to the 1800s. However, whilst thiseconomic importance ensured the physicalpresence of wooed landscapes in the region, theuse for industrial charcoal manufacturegenerated a crisis in terms of the woodlandecology. Five hundred years of charcoal andwhitecoal manufacture removed almost theentirety of the native woodland ground flora,and modified the surface hydrology beyondrecovery.

Distinction must be made between theproduction, harvesting and use of small woodfor domestic fuel consumption occurring inmany areas over centuries and from the earliestof times, and the impacts and demands ofindustrial coppice wood production. In Britainthis occurred from the late medieval andincreasingly into the early industrial periods,and had massive impacts on the landscape.Fowler (2002) notes the heyday of this activityin Scotland being from around the late 1600s tothe late 1800s, by which time it was falling outof use. The demands for tan bark and charcoalfrom coppice wood being replaced bychemicals for the former, and by coke for thelatter. The intensive period of activity beingonly around 200 years - must less than thepotential life-span of a single oak tree; but theimpact on landscapes was immense.

Perlin (1989) describes the interactions betweenindustrial and domestic demands for fuelwood,for charcoal, and for coal, and their effects onforestry and land-use. The intense pressures tofind and supply coppice wood for charcoal foriron smelting led to what were in effect agro-industrial coppice woods to supply theexpanding industrial demand. Urged by writerssuch as John Evelyn, and noted bycommentators such as Thomas Pennant andSamuel Johnson, the land-owning iron baronsestablished and maintained extensive coppiceoak woods to supply their needs for fuel andfor construction. Controversy especially interms of the need for large timber forconstruction, and particularly for the navy, wasstill rife since the iron smelting landownersfailed to maintain the specified numbers of bigtrees; or where they did so, they used them forcharcoal.

During Elizabethan times in England, theintense demands for wood to produce charcoalmeant that the towns and cities, and inparticular London were under frequent threat ofshortage of fuel. Bearing in mind that this wasa particularly cold period too, where theThames regularly froze over in winter, theconditions for the poor were harsh. According


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to the Elizabethan commentator Hollinshed'The meaner sort of people' had to live'unprovided of fuel' and Harrison reported thatwithout fuelwood many of the poor 'perish oftfor cold'. Fuel shortage meant hardship andpossibly death. One solution by a desperatepopulation could be the illegal taking of timberand food from sources they could find, but thisof course risked punitive retribution.

Heath, Common, Fen, and BogPeat and turf were not the only fuels to begained from heath and common. Clearly,particular use of materials would vary from siteto site, depending on the nature of the resource,ownership and rights, and the particular need atany one time. Gorse or furze for example wasused as an alternative fuel when wood and peatwere in short supply. It could also be used askindling or for processes where a hightemperature was required (such as baking).According to Humphries and Shaughnessy(1987), the amount of gorse being brought intoand stored in Dublin was so great that therewere a great many complaints about thehazards of having great stacks of it near the citywalls, where they 'doe overtopp the said wallesin height'. Gorse was also an important fodderfor cattle and horses, particularly in winterwhen other crops would be in very shortsupply. It is likely that many commons wouldalso have yielded some underwood and eventimber, but the latter would not be for fuel.Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) was also used,as was heather (Calluna vulgaris).

DiversificationAnother impact of fuel shortage was thediversification into alternative sources. Mineralcoal had been used since Roman times, but wasnot favoured, particularly due to the problemsof pollution that it caused.

For the peasant community fuel was bothimportant and often scarce. John Evelyn (1729)writing about 'fuel' notes: '-------------Butbesides the Dung of Beasts, and the Peat andTurf which we may find in our ouzy Lands andheathy Commons) for their Chimneys, Cow-sheds, etc. they make use of Stoves, both

portable and standing--------------. In manyPlaces (where Fuel is Scarce) poor peoplespread Fern and Straw inn the Ways and Pathswhere Cattle dung and tread, and then clap itagainst a Wall till it be dry:-----------.). TheRev. William Harrison writing in Tudor times,(in Withington, 1899) was concerned about thedepletion of woods and the lack of fuel:'Howbeit, thus much I dare affirm, that if woodsgo so fast to decay in the next hundred years ofGrace as they have done and are like to do inthis -------------------it is to be feared that thefenny bote, broom, turf, gall, heath, furze,brakes, whins, ling, dies, hassocks, flags, straw,sedge, reed, rush, and also seascale, will begood merchandise even in the city of London,whereunto some of them even now have gottenready passage,--------Of coal -mines we havesuch plenty in the north and western parts ofour island as may suffice for all the realm ofEngland; and so they do hereafter indeed, ifwood be not better cherished than it is at thispresent-------their greatest trade beginneth nowto grow from the forge into the kitchen and hall,as may appear already in most cities and townsthat lie about the coast, where they have butlittle other fuel except it be turf and hassock.’

With shortage of fuelwood the urban populationturned to coal. The rural population had to turnto other fuels, and in fact they always had done- peat, turf and furze, supplemented by smallwood and heather (Calluna) being the mainfuels of the common people over countlesscenturies. The use of turf or peat as fuel inmany cases meant the careful management ofthe resource and maintenance of the landscapeover centuries. According to Lambert et al.(1961), the turf consumed by a singlehousehold for fuel, litter and other purposes,may be roughly estimated at c.8000 turves peryear. In Wigtownshire in Scotland, six tons ofpeat was regarded as the equivalent of one tonof coal, and peat stacks were often as big as thecottages they are to heat during the wintermonths. There are similar descriptions forNorth Wales up to the 1970s In East Anglia atMartham, a household would use 5-8000 turvesper year, at Scratby c.10 000. All this isassumed to be for domestic use since in these


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instances there are no records of peat beingbought or sold.

According to Wright (1964), when wood wasscarce or at least protected in the UK:'Peat was the only alternative fuel to be had inany quantity. There is even more of it in Britainthan in Ireland, despite the poets and the travelbrochures; but it was too bulky to be carriedfar from its source. Peat burns readily; its meritis to smoulder without a blaze, though thismakes for a smoky fire. The 'peat-reek' ispleasant at a distance, and a whiff of it is notunwelcome in one's Harris tweeds; but in a'lum' cottage its pungency is dreadful. Peat hasbeen 'coked' to destroy the reek, powdered,mixed with pitch or rosin, and compressed intobricks that were claimed to be better than coal.Lacking true peat, some burn turf, or parings ofpeaty soil with roots of heather and gorse.(Peat and turf, accidentally ignited, havecaused slow, widespread and unquenchablefires, which have even consumed wholevillages.) Dried cowdung is a good fuel, andthe scent of its fire sweeter than might besupposed; it found some favour during thewood famine, but to burn dung that ought toenrich the soil is bad husbandry.’

However, this was often not sustainable in thelonger-term. When the fuel ran out eitheralternatives were found or the communitymoved on.

2. Landscape ChangeExploitation of landscape resources for fuelover many centuries brings about dramaticchanges. Upland landscapes across Britain havebeen shaped and manipulated by fuel-associated management. This changedvegetation and soil with associatedtransformation in colour and texture acrosssquare kilometres of high ground. Drainage andthe removal of metres of organic materialchanged water holding capacity and behaviourleading to huge impacts in both upland areasand in the lower drainage catchments. In low-lying areas such as the Humberhead Levels, theCambridgeshire Fens, or the Somerset Levels,vast amounts of peat and turf were removedcausing massive change to ecology andlandscape. However, as long as the fuel demandand other subsistence uses of the landscapepersisted, vast areas were maintained as peatmoor and fen.

In the Netherlands, the huge resource of peatand turf as fuel drove the economic andindustrial revolution - the so-called DutchGolden Age (TeBrake,1985;De Zeeuw, 1978).Not only did this fuel the transformation of theeconomy and of society, but the exploitationdramatically changed the landscape. Removalof peat eventually led to flooding of the cut ordredged areas. Later landscape change includedboth drainage and land recovery from the lakesand the sea.

Peat Cutting in Shetland


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In the East Anglia the impact of medieval peatfuel use was to create the now familiar Broadslandscape; not recognised as an industrialimpact until the 1950s. This provided fuel forthe common people of the region also for themajor towns and cities. In particular it suppliedthe ecclesiastical centre at Norwich. Thecommercial exploitation of peat and turf isdemonstrated very effectively by thedocumentation for the Norfolk Broads, and theuse by Norwich, and particularly the CathedralPriory, of peat from this source. Thechamberlains seem to have purchased c.5000turves per year during the 1300s and 1400s.During the same period, the purchases by thecellarer for the kitchens etc., amount to acolossal 300-400 000 turves per year. (Lambertet al., 1961).

Upland areas such as the English Pennines andparticularly the Peak District, the YorkshireDales, the North Yorkshire Moors, much ofWales and large areas of Scotland have seentheir landscapes changed dramatically throughfuel exploitation - mostly for peat and turf. Forparts of the Peak District and South Pennines asdemonstrated by Ardron et al. (1998) there wasmore medieval peat cut from the SouthPennines (c.34 million cubic metres), than fromthe Norfolk Broads at the same time (Ardron,1999). Most was in the early medieval period.Lower-lying sites were often exploited andprogressively destroyed during the sixteenth,seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This wasassociated with Parliamentary and private'enclosures' of heath, moor, common, bog and'waste'.

3. Landscape Removal and CreationMineral coal was used in Britain since at leastthe Roman period, but its intensive extraction,processing and utilisation began relatively late -from around 1500 onwards. By 1592 officialsin London noted that 'the use of coals …… is oflate years greatly augmented for fuel…' Priorto 1600 Cecil stated that: 'London and all othertons near the sea …. Are mostly driven to burn… coals, for most of the woods areconsumed….' 'Smiths, dyers and men of like

mysteries and occupations', also changed to thisrelatively abundant but dirty fuel. The seriousproblem that remained was of course that rawmineral coal was no use for smelting metal; sothe industrial dependence on wood continued.During the 1700s father and son both calledAbraham Darby developed and perfected themeans of making coke from mineral coal,bringing the coal 'to as near a resemblance ofcharcoal as possible'.

Whilst the urban population could resortrelatively easily to alternatives such as coal,rural and certainly remote rural areas could not,unless a supply was close to hand. Since untilthe 1500s most mineral coal came from coastaloutcrops and coastal transport, there wereserious limitations on this. Surface outcroppingcoal was utilised increasingly through theperiod, but deep mining didn't really impactuntil the 1700 and 1800s. When it did, thenover huge tracts of the landscape there was anirreversible change. Depending on the nature ofthe coalfield, and in particular its depth, thedate and technology of exploitation varies. Thelandscape impacts change accordingly. In SouthYorkshire and Nottinghamshire's deep mineareas the impacts were colossal and definingfor the landscape. Lowering of water tables,development of vast industrial developments,creation of mining settlements, and perhapsmost distinctive of all the tipping of hugeamounts of subterranean waste, generated adistinctive and extensive new landscape.

With the socio-economic and political crisis inthe British coal industry in the 1980s, theindustry has gone and once again the landscapeis changing. Recovery after abandonmentcombines with deliberate restoration to hew anew landscape from the old. Remarkably, a richpalimpsest of the former pre-industriallandscapes often survives to inject old ecologyinto the new environment. At Grimethorpe inthe heart of South Yorkshire's former coalfield amedieval deer park and coppice woods, withabandoned common heathland, and relictwetlands combine to provide a rich baseline forfuture recovery.


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4. Pollution and DegradationAlong with direct impacts on the landscape fuelextraction, processing and use causes pollutionimpacts that affect landscapes both localised tothe activity and through to globalenvironmental change. Coal processing andcoke factories have despoiled landscapes andenvironments through gross physical intrusionbut also through the discharge of noxiousmaterials. The Coalite works at Bolsover inNorth Derbyshire has directly affected an areaof maybe a square kilometre, but indirectlyaltered and polluted a zone extending over 10-20 kilometres by land and perhaps 50kilometres down river. Land, water, air (andsmell) have been totally affected by a hundredyears or so of fuel-related heavy industry.

Some of the impacts are not obvious. As notedearlier several centuries of intensive charcoalmanufacture in coppice woods has lead to theremoval of topsoil and its replacement with afew centimetres of charcoal dust.

Gale (2003) provides a useful overview of theenvironmental impacts of wood-basedindustrial fuels.

Landscape Continuum and PunctuatedCrisisObservations on a diversity of landscapes shows that fuel economy has major impacts.Moreover in some situations at least, fuel usecan be critical in maintaining a particularlandscape. In many ways the landscape reflectsthe continuum of natural forces and resources,affected by human modification and use. Thisusage may itself be in the form of a continuumor of a crisis. Continual exploitation of say apeat bog may itself precipitate a crisis in fueleconomy and indeed of communitysustainability. Changed political or economiccircumstances can create a crisis through lossof fuel supplies or complementation and theneed to exploit more difficult terrain or lesssuitable materials.

The dependence on particular fuels, and theloss or potential loss of access to fuels hasproved devastating for some societies andcommunities. This is particularly so for those inseasonally cold or moist climates where fuel isessential for life. History is littered withexamples such as from the Northern Isles ofScotland where when the fuel ran out, thesociety died. As noted by Kerr in 1905, life in

Grimethorpe, South Yorkshire


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northern latitudes implies the free use of fuel.Access to, and availability of, secure suppliesof appropriate fuels is hugely important, andthe implications of over-dependency on onetype or source have influenced and exercisedpeople and politicians over the centuries. Kerrwriting about Scotland notes 'the abjectdependence of the nation on coal owners, theminers, and the coal factors for the right tolive'. These issues resonate down the decades tothe current debates on oil, coal, and on nuclearpower, or alternative energy sources. Kerr'sargument in promoting the use of peat as a fuelis based on the need to diversify and to haveready alternatives available. This debate andindeed the issues in which it is immersed haveinfluenced society through many centuries.

The Rev. William Harrison (in Withington,1899) was concerned about the depletion ofwoods and the lack of fuel:

'Howbeit, thus much I dare affirm, that if woodsgo so fast to decay in the next hundred years ofGrace as they have done and are like to do inthis -------------------it is to be feared that thefenny bote, broom, turf, gall, heath, furze,brakes, whins, ling, dies, hassocks, flags, straw,sedge, reed, rush , and also seascole, will begood merchandise even in the city of London,whereunto some of them even now have gottenready passage,--------Of coal -mines we havesuch plenty in the north and western parts ofour island as may suffice for all the realm ofEngland; and so they do hereafter indeed, ifwood be not better cherished than it is at thispresent-------their greatest trade beginneth nowto grow from the forge into the kitchen and hall,as may appear already in most cities and townsthat lie about the coast, where they have butlittle other fuel except it be turf and hassock.'

Political change in the landscape can alsotrigger a crisis in fuel availability and use. Aconsequence of the over-use and exhaustion ofa particular fuel, or of the restricted access forsocial or political reasons, was the need to findalternatives and sometimes to use less suitablematerials. In some cases the competition orrestriction on use was due to the interactions of

differing and alternative demands - timber forthe navy, versus wood for charcoal driven ironsmelting. Both of these competed with the useof wood for fuel - for rich and for poor, butespecially the latter. Competition betweencommoner or peasant and landlord, andbetween industrial use and domestic have beencritical in determining the use of the woods andother natural resources of the landscape.Hayman (2003) describes how Britishlandowners in the eighteenth century tightenedtheir control over the landscape, withlegislation passed to restrict the customaryrights of forest communities to harvestunderwood. This was a contest between thecommunal resource and the private domain.The notorious Black Act of 1723 restrictedwoodland access, and affected not only fuel usebut also the essential felling of estate timber bytenants for building. Some concessions weresought such as the supervised access of thepoor on one day per month to gather deadwoodfor fuel from the Sheringham Estate in Norfolk.

The Future and Sustainability -lessons from the pastUnderstanding past impacts and the history ofinteractions between competing fuels usage caninform future strategies and policies, andconsequent landscape management.Additionally, a better knowledge of extraction,processing and utilisation etc. is vital tounderstanding landscape change and inparticular the roles of crisis and continuum inthis process.

Crises and CompetitionIn the event of crisis there is a tendency todiversify and to explore or use fuels otherwiseless suitable or less desirable. This may haveconsequent impacts on other activities - such asthe use of animal dung for fuel rather thanreturning nutrients to the land having adetrimental effect on farming.

Peckham (1874) considered the potential ofpeat and turf for domestic fuel supply inMinnesota. A key point that he makes is theimportance of competition with, and of scarcity


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of, more sought after fuels. Peat fuel might beviable if an area was remote from forests, andaway from coal transportation routes. Shaler in1895 examined the origin, distribution andcommercial value of peat deposits for the USA.He noted the relationship between peat use andthe lack of available fuel wood. In northernEurope he suggests that the greatest use of peatfuel was during the eighteenth century whenforests had been cleared but mineral coal wasnot in widespread use since transport to ruralareas was difficult. The bulk of the ruralpopulation of Northern Germany, Scandinavia,Russia, France, and the British Isles, except inthe case of the wealthier classes depended onpeat and turf for household fuel. He describesthe descendants of Native Americans in thetown of Gay Head being amongst the last touse peat fuel in that part of the USA. By thelate 1800s the availability of cheap anthracitecoal led a move away from peat. The decline inpeat use - which was free except for the cost ofcollecting, was the availability and low price ofcoal. The first commercial extraction andprocessing of peat fuel in the USA was in 1902,when a strike of the Pennsylvania minerscaused a fuel crisis (Soper and Osbon, 1922).However, in the USA for example, during theFirst World War, there was considerable interestin a move from coal and wood to peat or turf asdomestic fuel. Turp (1916) reported that littlemachine-processed peat fuel would be extractedin the USA in 1915, but by 1917 there wouldbe a resumption of operations. In 1918 Haanelnoted the difficulty in obtaining an adequateand cheap fuel supply in Canada. The reasonsrelated to war were complex and included alabour shortage in the USA that restricted coalimports to Canadian provinces. The situationwas considered very grave in that fuel could bereduced or even cut off completely. The reportargued for urgent attention to developing peatfuel as 'an excellent substitute for coal'. Hefinishes the paper with a plea '……. to theestablishment of a peat industry on a soundbasis in Canada, and thus insure the peopleagainst a possible shortage of fuel and thesuffering it would entail'. Blizard (1917)reported on the value of peat fuel for industrialsteam generation, and considered that the key

issue was price competition with coal. As coalprices rose, so peat would become competitive.According to Soper and Osbon (1922) thewartime coal shortage sin the USA in 1917 and1918 showed that peat fuel could be extractedand be competitive if coal was scarce andexpensive.

During both the 1920s depression, and the1980s miners' strike in England, miners inSouth Yorkshire reverted to coppice wood as afree fuel source.

Crisis may be the exhaustion of a fuel supply(such as peat of turf in the Western Isles), orperhaps competition from other users for this oran associated resource (such as demand forwood for industrial charcoal affectingcommunal fuelwood in early industrialEngland).

The issues are demonstrated very well by thesituation that arose in the South Pennines. Aninteresting example of competing uses and theirimpacts is shown by the farming communitiesof the Southern Pennines in Derbyshire andSouth Yorkshire in the 1700s. With theirtraditional fuels being a mixture of local woodfrom the valleys, and of peat or turf fromadjacent moorland, coal was expensive due tothe difficulty of transporting it to this isolatedarea. When intensive production of industrialcharcoal for smelting affected their fuelwoodresource the farmers petitioned the landownerfor better roads to enable coal to be morecheaply imported into the Upper DerwentValley. Three competing land-uses cometogether in this document first found in theChatsworth Archive by Paul Ardron, andquoted in Bevan (2004). Farmers had beenburning a mix of peat and wood for fuel,generally harvested according to traditionalcommon rights, probably gong back to beyondthe medieval period. Woods that had been oflesser importance in this landscape since thedisestablishment of the Royal Forest of theHigh Peak, became of value once again as thedemand for charcoal for local iron and leadsmelting grew from the 1400s onwards. Asindustrial production rose in the eighteenth


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century the woods became increasingly valuedas a source of fuel for three forges lying to theeast of the area and served by packhorse routes.Heightened economic importance meant thatlandowners saw their woodlands once again asvaluable commodities to be usefully exploitedand not merely difficult areas of uncultivatedland. This brought to a head issues of fuelavailability, and of transport infrastructure andcosts. The circumstances were linked to otherchanges in the industrial and economiclandscape of England. Britain was becomingindustrialised and urbanised, coal was tobecome king, and better roads, firstly throughturnpikes, would revolutionise transportation.Here the improvement of transport was seen asthe key to resolving an acute and immediatefuel crisis.

Fuel Competition and Political CrisisJohn Perlin's account A Forest Journey: Therole of Wood in the Development of Civilization(1989) gives a detailed insight into the issuesand demands for wood as fuel and for otherpurposes. The extreme impacts of fuel in crisiscan be seen by the example of the boycott ofcoal supplies from Newcastle, initiated inLondon when King Charles I's party tookNewcastle. Parliament enacted 'An Ordinancefor stopping the coal trade [with] Newcastle'.The intention of the embargo was to impoverishthe City of Newcastle to such a degree that itwould yield to the Parliamentarians. However,the impact on Londoners in particular wassevere. Newcastle was their main source ofcoal, and as autumn approached they turned outin masses and cut down any trees they couldfind. To quell the unrest Parliament madeavailable to the Londoners the woods and parksof the King and of his supporters. Fuelremained in dangerously short supplythroughout the winter, affecting both theavailability and price of basic commoditiessuch as bread and ale. The poor suffered inparticular and were driven to stealing posts,seats, benches, doors, rails and even the stocks- all to burn to ward off the biting cold.

The Economics of Fuel UseMany factors combine and influence fuels usedand their impacts on the environment, and thelandscape. Availability and transport, mode andefficiency of use, and social or other controls orbarriers all have an effect. The overall situationcan be gauged to an extent by comparativeprices of these commodities through time, andat different geographical locations.Furthermore, the effects of geographicallocation change with demographic trends, andwith the evolution and development oftransportation infrastructure. This wasaddressed by Rotherham and Egan (2005).

Detailed assessment of these trends andinteractions is difficult and presents basicchallenges of the understanding andtransference of nomenclature of commoditiesand the comparability of financial measures.This is where the work of researchers andcompliers such as James E. Thorold Rogerswith A History of Agriculture and Prices inEngland (1902) are of such immense value.However, Rogers does acknowledge andaddress the difficulties. He also raisesinteresting points on the availability ofinformation, much of which he gleans from theaccounts of great colleges and halls. However,he does identify the fact that many estatesmanufactured or harvested their own fuel,particularly charcoal or fuelwood, and so it maynot be accounted for by payments.

He notes that in attempting a money estimate ofvarious utilities it is of great interest todetermine, as accurately as possible, theproportionate price of fuel. In rural areas of lowpopulation density, he suggests that the forestsand chases, and similar open grounds, thatpeople sourced their supplies of fuel. The saleand value of such fuels were important to theland owners and users. Rogers suggests thatuntil the use of mineral coal became general,and its transport over land relatively easy andcheap, all inland places must have depended onother sources of energy. These were woodgrown locally, and where possible cutting ofturf was employed. He considers theinteractions of availability and prices of


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fuelwood and of sea coal, and the modes oftransport and supply to centres such as London.The River Thames was the main transportroute, either upstream from the sea, ordownstream from inland.

Rogers felt that he could reasonably assess thecomparative prices of charcoal and sea coal,and even for turf. However, measures andvalues for wood present difficulties. This wasdue to the need for a uniform measure - such asthe thousand or the hundred of a particularitem, usually straightforward, but with clearlydefined names for units. Here lies a problem.Rogers identifies the familiar fagot and thefardel, along with spelden, tosards, kiddles,bavins, billets, bobbelyns, Shrof faggots,ascels, astells, kydes, kedys, brushwood, andtallwood (or tall wood). He notes a furtherproblem in that faggots (or fagots) may refer tobundles of fuelwood of varying size; and theymay be sold by the load, which is a quarter of ahundred. Fuel or focalia was sold by thehundred, as were standards, shides, sheddings,pole wood, great wood, and furze.

Rogers also introduces the issue of buildingstatus and design and the nature of the fuelconsumed for heating and for cooking.Considering the medieval period he notes thatchimneys were only used in castles and in greathouses. In the typical manor houses of lessergentry, and certainly in the cottages of the poor,the fire was made against a hob of clay, andsmoke escaped via a hole in the roof, or eventhrough the door. Where no chimney existedthen either turf or charcoal would be thepreferred fuel, though cost would restrict thelatter to the wealthier households. Rogers notesthat charcoal was used in most college hallsuntil relatively modern times, and was still usedin some Cambridge colleges in the 1800s;being laid in an iron frame in the centre of thehall, and the fumes escaping through a lanternin the roof.

Rogers suggests that for the late sixteenth andseventeenth centuries there is a wealth ofinformation on comparative prices of fuels.Whereas for earlier periods the bulk of the

entries are as wood, faggots, firewood, andcharcoal, for these the most numerous are seacoal, pit coal, and charcoal. He suggests thatcharcoal was manufactured very generally fordomestic use in heating and cooking. It wassold by the quarter and there no great variationin its value. It was not affected to any notableextent by the Plague and the consequentscarcity of labour. He notes the impact oflocation on price, with Oxford being morecostly due to transport from the place ofmanufacture. Through the fifteenth andsixteenth centuries, charcoal was commonlyused for both heating and for cooking, boughtby the quarter, the load and the sack, andsometimes by the tuntyte, seam or the skep orbyn. Generally the price was around 6d to 16dper quarter. A load of charcoal probablycontained ten to twelve quarters.

Through the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies charcoal prices rose steadily and thenremained level. The rise in price apparentlyencouraged the use of alternatives such as seacoal and turf in colleges of Cambridge, thoughcharcoal was more commonly used by those atOxford. The latter was closer to extensivewoodland and wood colliers than Cambridge.

Sea coal is described by Rogers from quiteearly dates, with records from Dover in 1279.He intimates that it was carried by coastaltraffic and it was purchased for the Castle to beburnt in a fire with a chimney. It was noted asused at a number of other sites in Suffolk andin Hertfordshire, in Kent and in Southampton.In subsequent decades it was recorded for Kent,for Essex, and by 1378, in London. It was soldby the chaldron and at Southampton was halfthe price as it was in London. Rogers alsosuggests a complication in the transport costs ofsea coal in that it may have been carried alongthe coast as ballast for ships that had takengrain north from southern England, and also theimposition of a sea coal tax that affected price.He also indicates that the price rose enormouslyas a result of the Plague. Sea coal was used bysmiths and for burning in houses. There is anadditional complication in that mineral coalmined inland in counties such as Derbyshire


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was increasingly available and sometimescalled seacole; the first Derbyshire reference tocoal mining being in 1285 when Hugh deMorley 'granted and confirmed to Simon,Abbott of Chester, free entrance and exit to hismines of sea coal wheresoever they may befound in his lands of Morley and Smalley……'. Another early reference was in 1322when an Emma Culhane was killed 'by thedamp while drawing water from a colepit'(Heath, 1982).

By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries sea coalbecomes more frequent and is sold by thechalder, chaldron, the fother, the quarter, andthe bushel. The price varies according toproximity to, or ease of transport from, thecoalfield. But sea coal was always moreexpensive than charcoal at this time, except inthe immediate vicinity of the mine. In the1600s and 1700s the price of sea coal inCambridge was very affected by poor weatheraffecting transport by both land and water. By1652 Eton College began to purchase sea coal;thereafter using little else. Sometimes the costof carriage is specified or else included; and itmeans the transport from the wharf to thecollege coalyard. By the 1700s it was clear thatcoalfields were being worked in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Durham, Lancashire, Derbyshire,the Midlands (especially around Leicester), theForest of Dean, of South Wales, and ofSomerset, and Southern Scotland. In 1403 athousand cart-loads of dry wood and a largebarnful of coal was suggested for a two-dayfeast in Savoy. Yesterday's Countryside (Porter,2000).

In the early records, Rogers found turf in 1337with the amounts given as by the thousand(1200) or the last (12,000). In Cambridge in1334 the turf was specified as heather. Averageprice was around 9d per thousand. Turf wasused frequently in Southampton and in Kent.Between 1415 and 1450 the Cambridgecolleges used turves extensively, bought by thethousand at around 2s; but after this time theyare disused there. Hartley and Ingilby in theirwonderful account, Life and Traditions in theMoorlands of North-East Yorkshire, state:

'Rights of turbary appear frequently inmonastic charters and peat and turf were dugin more places than would appear possiblenow, including the Carrs of the Vale ofPickering almost to the coast near Filey. Untilthe seventeenth century, fuel used atScarborough was mostly got from themoorlands north of it and from the extensiveAllerston Moor near Pickering. Special areaswere sometimes allotted on the moors for theuse of the tenants of a manor, and the sale ofpeat and turf , regulated by manor courts oftencaused trouble and ill feeling. From thefourteenth to the nineteenth century, recordsshow that this occasionally took the form of thethrowing down and burning of the stacks dryingremote from the Company in the wide Moors.’

According to Arthur Young in the General Viewof Norfolk (1804) the fuel allotment was 1.75acres at Northwold, supposed to produce 12000 turves a year, the calculated consumptionof one hearth. Cottagers of twenty years'standing who had no common rights weretreated meanly, being awarded permission onlyto cut up to 800 turves each a year - quiteinsufficient to keep a hearth alight - and thiswas made subject to the control of the fenreeves.

Fuelwood was bundled as faggots, but theseappear to vary in size, with great faggotsquoted for Castle Rising in Norfolk. The pricewas variable from year to year and from placeto place. Faggots cut from coppice weregenerally around 2s-6d per hundred, butvarying from 8d to 8s. Tallwood prices aresimilar to those for faggots, but this probablyrefers to lop and top of tall trees, or frompollards.

From coppice woodland productioncomparisons can also be made with the price ofunderwood (boscum) per acre. Rogers suggestthat information of this sort is not abundant butthat prices in the thirteenth and fourteenthcenturies were around 6s an acre, but could beup to 13s8d. Underwood apparently producedfrom 300to 600 faggots per acre depending on


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the quality of the coppice woodland; with thefaggots selling at about 20s per 100.Exceptionally woods are recorded in thesixteenth century producing 1700 faggots peracre. Underwood capable of producing around400 faggots might sell for £5-5s per acre.Rogers estimated a rise in the product price ofabout eight times from the medieval period;and of the raw material of about twenty times.Rogers found the price of wood to rise steadilythrough the seventeenth century; but hesuggests they are difficult to interpret, andthose of faggots even more so. The price of tallwood for example varied from 26s-9¾d in1650, to 13s-2¾d in 1657. Whin was sold at 4sper acre presumably as faggots.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries thevalues of timber and of fuel werecomparatively high. Periodic sales were madeof timber from the larger trees, and a portion ofthe underwood cut regularly each year was soldfor faggots, or for hurdles, or for 'coaling' ascharcoal. The sales were announced to thepublic of nearby towns by a crier.

In considering the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies Rogers comments on the issue ofwhether the price of the commodity includeslabour. It can be the principal cost. In Englandat this time no land was without an owner, andthe privilege of cutting event the cheapest typeof fuel was either as a common right, orgranted on payment for a licence. Underwoodwas selling at 20s to 50s an acre; and faggots ataround 7s-11d per hundred delivered.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries theeastern counties of England also extensivelyused sedge as a source of fuel, and thiscontinued well into the 1800s. This was a fuelwhose price remained fairly level but whichdepended on labour costs. Rogers notes that inthe early sixteenth century another fuel calledthack was available. The price was around 2½dto 8d and it was soon abandoned, and it isunclear what it was.

Available literature and records give a usefulinsight into the uses and availability of fuels.

The compilations such as those of Rogers havethe potential for more detailed interrogation toprovide information on comparative values,costs and trends of the various fuels. Thisapproach begins to help in the interpretation ofthe impacts of fuel utilisation at the landscapelevel.

In terms of the utilisation for fuel, in somecases the prime reason was competition fromeither cheaper more easily accessible or betterquality, fuels. Mann (1993) in The FirstStatistical Account of the Scotland for theParishes of Anworth and Girthon, 1792, notesthat for coastal areas of south-west Scotland:'Peats, the fuel used by the farmers and cottars,are dear, owing to the distance of the mosses,and, the bad roads which lead to them.---------------------------Coals are the general fuel here.They are imported from Whitehaven, Newcastle,etc. and run from 30s to 40s a ton.'

'Peats are not used so widely as in formeryears. Prices are high normally £2 and overper cartload. Coal is brought to the door bymotor lorry from Aberdeen and sells at the highprice of £5 a ton for English coal and £4-15 forScottish coal' (Smith,1951).

In mid Wales, around Rhayadder, the arrival ofcoal brought to the valleys by train in the1860s/1870s, was the main reason. In theYorkshire Dales, and the North York Moorsextensive cutting probably finished by the1930s-1940s.

From this brief account the complexity of theinteractions becomes obvious. The gradual andsometimes sudden shift from Primary FuelAcquisition and Supply, to diffuse FuelAcquisition and Supply is apparent. Political oreconomic crisis may cause reversion to earlieror less sophisticated sources and uses, albeit ona temporary basis. The environmental andlandscape impacts may result from thesechanges, but themselves may precipitate crisisin supply and use.


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ConclusionsThe nature and intensity of exploitation haveaffected many landscapes such as thosehighlighted across Great Britain. This may bethrough the actual direct impact of extractionand processing, or of harvesting andprocessing, and of use. It may be the indirectimpacts through landscape change, throughpollution, and through the disposal ofassociated wastes.

Fuel use has also had major effects through thesocial need to protect or even to establish theresource - such as coppice wood, peat bog, fen,or common heath, at times when otherwisethese would have been removed from thelandscape.

Literature and records give insight into fuel useand availability, providing data for detailedinterrogation on comparative fuel values, costsand trends. This aids interpretation of fuel useimpacts, the nature and intensity of exploitationaffecting many landscapes. They may be directimpacts of extraction or harvesting, processing,and use, or indirect landscape change, throughpollution, and disposal of waste. Fuel usedetermined protection or establishment ofresources, such as peat bog, fen, common orheath, and coppice wood, when they mighthave been destroyed. In determining thesechanges, both crisis and continuum have playeda part. Environmental conditions and resources,economic and political or social forces, and theinteractions or competitions involved in thesehave been crucial in determining the impacts onland-use and landscape. In many ways thelandscape provides a continuum that ispunctuated by crises for the community and forthe environment.

The interaction of community, fuelrequirement, and environment has been adriving force in many landscapes. For some ithas been the defining element in shaping thecontemporary scene.

ReferencesArdron, P.A. (1999) Peat Cutting in UplandBritain, with Special Reference to the PeakDistrict. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Universityof Sheffield, Sheffield.

Bevan, W. (2004) The Upper Derwent 10,000years in a Peak District Valley. TempusPublishing Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire

Bingham, R.K. (1987) The Chronicles ofMilnthorpe. Cicerone Press, Milnthorpe.

Blizard, J. (1917) The Value of Peat Fuel forthe Generation of Steam. Government PrintingBureau, Ottowa.

Bond, T., Venkataraman, C., and Masera, O.(2004) Global atmospheric impacts ofresidential fuels. Energy for SustainableDevelopment, VIII, (3), 20-32.

De Vries, J. (1974) The Dutch Rural Economyin the Golden Age, 1500-1700. Yale UniversityPress, New Haven and London.

De Zeeuw, J.W. (1978) Peat and the DutchGolden Age - The historical meaning of energy-attainability. A.A.G. BIJDRAGEN, 21, 3-31.

Evelyn, J. (1729) Silva. (1979 reprint of thefifth edition), Stobart and Son, London.

Fowler, J. (2002) Landscapes and Lives. TheScottish Forest through the ages. CanongateBooks, Edinburgh.

Gale, R. (2003) Wood-based industrial fuelsand their environmental impact in lowlandBritain. In: Murphy, P., and Wiltshire, P.E.J.(Eds.) The Environmental Archaeology ofIndustry. Oxbow Books, Oxford.

Godwin, H. (1978) Fenland: its ancient pastand uncertain future. Cambridge UniversityPress, Cambridge.

Haanel, E. (1918) Peat as a Source of fuel.Commission of Conservation, Canada, Ottowa.


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Hartley, M. and Ingilby, J. (1972) Life andTradition in the Moorlands of North-EastYorkshire. Smith Settle, Otley.

Hayman, R. (2003) Trees. Woodlands andWestern Civilization. Hambledon and London,London.

Heath, J. (1982) The Illustrated History ofDerbyshire. Barracuda Books Ltd.,Buckingham.

Humphries, C.J. and Shaughnessy, E. (1987)Gorse. Shire Publications Ltd., Aylesbury.

Lambert, J.M., Jennings, J.N., Smith, C.T.,Green, C. and Hutchinson, J.N. (1961) TheMaking of the Broads. A Reconsideration oftheir origin in the light of new evidence. JohnMurray Ltd., London.

Kerr, W.A. (1905) Peat and its Products. Begg,Kennedy & Elder, Glasgow.

Mann, S. (1993) Cattle Cotton and Commerce.Life around Gatehouse of Fleet in 1792. AReprint of the First Statistical Account ofScotland for the Parishes of Anworth andGirthon 1792. Beechwood Publishing,Cambridge.

Peckham, S.F. (Ed.) (1874) Peat for DomesticFuel. The Geological and Natural Historysurvey of Minnesota. Tribune PublishingCompany, Minneapolis.

Perlin, J. (1989) A Forest Journey. HarvardUniversity Press, Massachusetts

Porter, V. (2000) Yesterday's Countryside.David and Charles, Devon.

Pyne, S.J. (2001) Fire - A Brief History. TheBritish Museum Press, London.

Rogers, J.E.T. (1902) A History of Agricultureand Prices in England Volumes 1-8.ClarendonPress, Oxford.

Rotherham, I.D. (1999) Peat cutters and their

Landscapes: fundamental change in a fragileenvironment. In: Peatland Ecology andArchaeology: management of a culturallandscape. Landscape Archaeology andEcology, 4, 28-51.

Rotherham, I.D. (Ed.) (1999) Peatland Ecologyand Archaeology: management of a culturallandscape. Landscape Archaeology andEcology, 4.

Rotherham, I.D., Ardron, P.A. and Gilbert, O.L.(1998) Peat-cutting and upland landscapes :case-studies from the South Pennines. In:Landscapes --- Perception, Recognition andManagement: reconciling the impossible?Proceedings of the conference held in Sheffield,UK, 2-4 April, 1996. Landscape Archaeologyand Ecology, 3, 65-69.

Rotherham, I.D., Ardron, P.A., and Gilbert,O.L. (1997) Factors determining contemporaryupland landscapes ----a re-evaluation of theimportance of peat-cutting and associateddrainage, and the implications for mirerestoration and remediation. In: Blanket MireDegradation. Causes, Consequences andChallenges. Proceedings of the BritishEcological Society Conference in Manchester,1997. British Ecological Society and theMacaulay Land Use Research Institute,Aberdeen. 38-41.

Rotherham, I.D. and Egan, D. (2005) TheEconomics of Fuel Wood, Charcoal and Coal:An Interpretation of Coppice Management ofBritish Woodlands. In: Agnoletti, M., Armiero,M., Barca, S., and Corona, G. (Eds.) Historyand Sustainability. European Society forEnvironmental History. 100-104.

Rotherham, I.D., Egan, D. and Ardron, P. A.(2004) Fuel economy and the uplands: theeffects of peat and turf utilisation on uplandlandscapes. Landscape History, (In press).

Rotherham, I.D. and Jones, M. (2000) TheImpact of Economic, Social and PoliticalFactors on the Ecology of Small EnglishWoodlands: a Case Study of the Ancient Woods


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in South Yorkshire, England. In: Forest History:International Studies in Socio-economic andForest ecosystem change. Agnoletti, M. andAnderson, S. (Eds.), CAB International,Wallingford, Oxford. 397-410.

Saldiva, P.H.N. and Miralia, S.G.E.K. (2004)Health effects of cookstove emissions. Energyfor Sustainable Development, VIII, (3), 13-19.

Shaler, N.S. (1895) Origin, Distribution, andCommercial Value of Peat Deposits.Government Printing Office, Washington D.C.

Soper, E.K. and Osbon, C.C. (1922) Theoccurrence and uses of peat in the UnitedStates. Government Printing Office,Washington D.C.

Smith, D. (Ed.) (March 1951) The ThirdStatistical Account of Scotland, XX1X. TheCounty of Kincardine. Scottish Academic Press,Edinburgh.

TeBrake, W.H. (1985) Medieval Frontier.Culture and Ecology in Rinjland. A.&M.University Press, Texas.

Turp, J.S. (1916) Peat in 1915. GovernmentPrinting Office, Washington D.C.

Withington, L. (Ed.) (1899) ElizabethanEngland. Scott, London.

Wright, L. (1964) Home Fires Burning----TheHistory of Domestic Heating and Cooking.Routledge.

Young, A. (1804) General View of theAgriculture of the County of Norfolk. TheBoard of Agriculture, London.


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Beetle faunas, woodland history and thepalaeoenvironmentDavid Smith1 and Nicki Whitehouse²

¹ Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birmingham² School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queens University Belfast

IntroductionThis paper summarises a number of recentdiscussions concerning the insect faunas ofprehistoric woodlands and forests. The questionthat this paper primarily seeks to address is:

'How reliable are insect remains as indicatorsof the nature of woodland’?

A palaeoentomological viewpoint of thefollowing issues is therefore taken:

What is the nature of early and midHolocene Woodlands circa 8500- 1000cal. BC?Insect faunas from a number of early middleHolocene deposits suggest that it is a mistake toview 'forest/ woodland' as an unvarying anduniform countrywide ecological zone. It is clearfrom the insect evidence that contemporaryforests and woodlands may be dominated byvastly differing species of tree. For examplepine at Thorne and Hatfield Moors, SouthYorkshire (Whitehouse 1997, 2000, 2004), limeat Langford, Notinghamshire (Howard et al.1999) or alder at Bole Ings, Nottinghamshire(Brayshay and Dinnin 1998) and several sitesfrom the Somerset levels (Girling 1982, 1985)and the Thames Valley (Robinson 1993, 2000).This diversity is illustrated in Figure 1. Thedominance of species is probably determinedboth by prevailing climate and local conditions.This is not a surprising conclusion but it needsto be stated. It is also possible that the 'true'range of the types of woodland in Britain,either natural or influenced by human actionmay be very large.

Are insect faunas from the Early andMid Holocene necessarily'Urwaldrelikt' in composition?Several palaeoentomological faunas from themid Holocene contain insect species that are nolonger encountered in the British Isles, or areconsidered to be generally 'Urwaldrelikt'(Buckland and Dinnin 1993, Whitehouse 1997,2000). It is suggested that this is a reflection ofthe absence of these specific types of woodland(pine on one hand and alder carr on the other)from the modern landscape (Smith andWhitehouse 2005). The insects from theNeolithic site at Langford, Nottinghamshire(Howard et al., 1999) may also indicate that theclosed canopy lime woodland from rivervalleys may not contain this category of species'as a norm'. This is also made clear by thevariations in the proportions of such'Urwaldrelikt' species is compared between thesites (See Figure 2). An argument will also bepresented that suggests that the longevity ofwoodland (in the order of several 100s) yearsmay also be a factor in the formation of insectfaunas that contain these now apparently rarespecies. This obviously is a point of interest tomodern conservation.

Large herbivores and clearance: Dothe insects help?Nearly all-insect faunas recovered from theearly and middle Holocene deposits containinsects that are associated with clearance,pasture and animal dung. It is tempting to usethese as evidence to support the proposition byFrans Vera (2000) that large ungulates are adriving force in the formation and maintenance


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of woodland in the Early and Mid Holocene.Though supportive of this argument, this paperwill outline a number of taphonomic,theoretical and data problems with using thisinsect evidence in isolation (Whitehouse andSmith 2004). This is particularly apposite giventhe recent paper by Svenning (2002).

Crisis and Continuum: do the insectshelp?We are sure that insect faunas potentially mayhave a role to play in considering issues of'crisis and continuum'. However we feel thatthis is an issue that needs careful consideration.In addition to the normal doubts over dating,issues of resolution in the data and theproblems of interpretation there is anotherquestion that needs to be asked. This is 'crisisfor whom and for how long?' For example fireclearly has a role to play in both forest andinsect fauna maintenance (i.e. Whitehouse2000) and therefore, from the insects eye, couldbe seen as an opportunity. Equally, changes inriver courses and flood can be dramatic butthey are important in the maintenance of rivervalley and floodplain diversity (Brown 1999,Greenwood and Smith 2005). Equally, eventsthat last for several hundreds or thousands ofyears, such as the clearance of forests forfarming between the Late Bronze age and EarlyIron age, may not in human terms beconsidered a 'crisis'. However, in terms of thegeneral composition of insect faunas, this lossof habitat was clearly critical. This is argued interms of the evidence for clearance ofwoodland and alluviation in the Trentcatchment.

In terms of the original question asked at thestart of this paper the answer must be'somewhat reliable but in need of further andthoughtful study'. One thing that is clear is thatthere is a need for better stratified and datedinsect faunas from the early Holocene. Suchfaunas could help to address many of the issuesraised above. We believe that the paucity ofsites from these early periods cannot be justexplained as a result of a failure to 'find them'

but rather their intrinsic rarity in Holocenerecord in some places, and/or their lack ofstudy elsewhere. This view is supported by theexample of the Trent Valley where EarlyHolocene deposits are very likely to have beenreworked and destroyed by river action in laterperiods. In terms of funding, conservation andcuratorial priorities deposits of this date shouldbe given precedence.

References:Brown, A.G. 1999. Alluvial Geoarcheology.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brayshay, B.A. and Dinnin, M. 1999.Integrated palaeoecological evidence forbiodiversity at the floodplain-forest margin.Journal of Biogeography, 26, 115-131.

Buckland, P.C. and Dinnin, M.H. 1993.Holocene woodlands the fossil insect evidence,pp. 6-20 in Kirby K.J. and Drake C.M. (Eds.)Dead wood Matters: the Ecology andConservation of Saproxylic Invertebrates inBritain. (English Nature Science 7).Peterborough, English Nature.

Girling, M.A. 1982. Fossil insect faunas fromforest sites. In Bell, M. & Limbrey, S. (Eds.)Archaeological Aspects of Woodland Ecology(British Archaeological Reports, InternationalSeries 146), Oxford: British ArchaeologicalReports. 129-46.

Girling, M. A. 1985. An 'old forest' beetlefauna from a Neolithic and Bronze Age peatdeposit at Stileway. Somerset Levels Papers,11, 80-5.

Greenwood, M. and Smith, D.N. 2005. Asurvey of coleoptera from sedimentary depositsfrom the Trent Valley in Smith D.N., Brickley,M.B. and Smith, W. (eds) Fertile Ground:Papers in Honour of Professor Susan Limbrey.(AEA symposia no. 22). Oxford: Oxbow books.


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Howard, A.J., Smith, D., Garton, D. Hillam J.and Pearce, M. 1999. Middle to LateHolocene environmental change in the Middleand Lower Trent Valley in A. G. Brown and T.A. Quine (eds.), Fluvial Processes andEnvironmental Change. London: Wiley andSons. 165-178.

Robinson, M. 1993. The Iron AgeEnvironmental Evidence. In Allen, T.G. andRobinson, M.A. (eds.), The PrehistoricLandscape and Iron Age Enclosed Settlement atMingies Ditch, Hardwick-with-Yelford,Oxon.(Thames Valley Landscapes: The WindrushValley Volume 2), Oxford: OxfordArchaeological Unit. 101-20.

Robinson, M.A. 2000. Middle Mesolithic tolate Bronze Age insect assemblages and anearly Neolithic assemblage of waterloggedmacroscopic plant remains. In Needham, S.P.(Ed.) The Passage of the Thames: HoloceneEnvironment and Settlement at Runnymede.(Runnymede Bridge Research Excavations,Volume 1) London: The British MuseumsPress. 146-67.

Smith, D.N. and Whitehouse, N. 2005. Notseeing the Trees for the Woods; apalaeoentomological perspective on Holocenewoodland composition. In Smith D.N.,Brickley, M.B. and Smith, K.W.S. March 2005(Eds.) Fertile Ground: Papers in Honour ofProfessor Susan Limbrey. Oxford: Oxbowbooks.

Svenning, J-C. 2002. A review of naturalvegetation openness in northwestern Europe.Biological Conservation, 104, 133-48.

Vera, F.W.M. 2000. Grazing ecology and ForestHistory. Oxon: CABI Publishing.

Whitehouse, N.J. 1997. Insect faunas associatedwith Pinus sylvestris L. from the mid-Holoceneof the Humberhead Levels, Yorkshire, U.K.Quaternary Proceedings, 5, 293-303.

Whitehouse, N.J. 2000. Forest fires and insects:palaeoentomological research from a sub-fossilburnt forest. Palaeogeography,Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 164, 231-246.

Whitehouse N. J. 2004. Mire ontogeny,environmental and climate change inferredfrom fossil beetle successions from HatfieldMoors, eastern England. The Holocene, 14, 79-93.

Whitehouse, N.J. and Smith, D.N. 2004."Islands" in Holocene forests: implications forforest openness, landscape clearance and"culture-steppe" species. EnvironmentalArchaeology, 9(2), 203-212.


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Figure 1. The relative numbers of species of Coleoptera with differing obligate tree hostsfrom a range of Early and Mid Holocene sites.

Thor

ne m

oor

Hatfi

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oor

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ands

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er

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Alder

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Site

obligate tree hosts

Figure 2. The number of species with restricted distributions from a range of Early and MidHolocene sites.

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r

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s

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101214

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The Scottish Coasts - An Archaeological Landscape InCrisisChris SmoutUniversity of St Andrews

IntroductionThe coast of Scotland is extremely long -considerably longer, calculating all the inletsand twists and turns of headlands and the islandshores, than that of England. It is alsoextremely (though variably), vulnerable toerosion, through sea-level rise and increasingstorminess. Partly this is due to climate change,with its well-known if uncertain predictionsabout the possible effects of melting polaricecaps and increasing oceanic temperatures,and its associated predictions of more extremeweather events: the latter were givenplausibility, to say the least, by the string ofgales and hurricane-force winds that haveswept across the north of Britain this winter.Partly it is due to the effects of isostaticrebound following the melting of the ice-capsof the last Ice Age. This introduces the elementof predictable variability, since there is a centraloval, stretching from Galloway to the BeaulyFirth and from Fife Ness to Jura, within whichsea-level rise is predicted to be comparativelysmall, and an area beyond where it willprobably be much greater, notably along thecoasts of Orkney, Shetland and the Outer Isles,which are also the areas most exposed to storm-force winds. In places in the Outer Isles, up toten metres of shore were lost in one weekendthis January.

Archaeology of Scottish Coastal areasThe Scottish coasts are also exceptionally richin archaeological sites, many highly sensitive tothese forces of erosion. Some are very famous,like Skara Brae in Orkney, the Broch of Mousain Shetland, the Dun of Carloway on Lewis, themedieval castles of Dunotter, St Andrews and

Dunbar, and the Wemyss Caves in Fife. Someare among the most ancient settlements knownin Scotland, like the Mesolithic sites on Rumand elsewhere. Others are comparatively recent,like the relics of sixteenth to eighteenth-centurysalt pans at Brora in Sutherland. Others againare very recent, but evocative and of highheritage value, like the Churchill barriers inScapa Flow and other Second World Wardefences up and down the coast. Some are notrare, but are numerous and little studied, likethe fish trips of undetermined age along allcoasts, or the traces of jetties and landingsaway from the known harbours, many ofundoubted antiquity and interest. Many more ofthem are yet to be found, as a systematic surveyof the Scottish coast has only covered onequarter of their length and then to varyingstandards. An initial projection by HistoricScotland suggests that 12,000 sites may be atrisk.

Scottish coastal archaeology is so varied andrich because the natural resources of the coastwere exceptionally plentiful. In prehistory thesea was the highway. The interior was at firstdifficult mountain, forest and bog, but the coastwas rich in marine and littoral life for huntergatherers. When the Neolithic farmers arrivedup the west coast, they initially turned theirback on the wealth of fish but found easilytilled machairs or lightly wooded fertile islandsthat were readily cleared and settled. Iron Agepeople defended the resource with brochs.Medieval people established sites for tradingburghs and defended the ports with castles.Early industrial people found coal and madesalt in close proximity to the sea. Twentieth-century people were concerned about invasion


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and raids, and built shore defences and navaland air bases. Scotland has been a home tomankind for 10,000 years. For the first 8,000years, archaeology is our only way of knowingtheir story, for the next 1000 years after that itis the prime way. For the next 500 years afterthat, so poor is the survival rate of Scottishmedieval written records, archaeology is ofvery great value, proportionately of greatervalue than in England or in most of WesternEurope. Even for the last 500 years it can oftenadd significantly to the depth of ourunderstanding of the past. So for 80% of thetime the only record of the Scottish past isarchaeological, and for 95% of the time it is ofgreater value than, or of almost equal value to,with written evidence. A very significantproportion of that archaeological evidence isnow at high risk of obliteration from inundationor storm damage.

Strategies and solutions?So what strategies are available to confront thisproblem? To hold back the sea on any scale,'Canute-like', is impossible, though for a fewhighly important sites like Skara Brae, it isappropriate to attempt the best that moderntechnology can buy. To excavate the betterknown sites in advance of certain destructionmay be highly desirable, but to carry outexcavations to modern standards is extremelyexpensive, and fights for resources in a politicalenvironment where money for excavation hasbeen dwindling in real terms for many years.Some sort of more rough and ready rescueexcavation may yet come to be regarded asbetter than allowing everything to wash out andbe lost for ever. Recording what is there, byproviding a proper inventory is the obvious firststep, but even this is one not yet taken forthree-quarters of the coastline.

It was to confront these problems that SCAPE(Scottish Coastal Archaeology and the Problemof Erosion Trust) was formed in 2001, a smallactivist charity composed of archaeologists,historians and various stake-holders in thecoastal heritage scene, with Tom Dawson as its

energetic operations manager. SCAPE runsShorewatch, an initiative that won the Councilfor Archaeology's Silver Trowel Award in 2004,for the best initiative in British archaeology ofthe year. Shorewatch, funded by HistoricScotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund,encourages members of public to go out, locate,record, and monitor coastal archaeological sitesthroughout Scotland, following training byprofessional archaeologists. There are nowfifteen to twenty teams in Scotland, involvingover 100 members of the public - an impressiveexample of 'citizen science' in action, and onecapable of remarkable results. The group atLoch Hourn, for instance, increased the numberof known archaeological sites on their stretchof coast from a mere handful to over 400. Allthe work is already co-ordinated with HistoricScotland and carried out to the recordingstandards of the Royal Commission of Ancientand Historical Monuments of Scotland.

ConclusionsSo far so good, but much more is going to beneeded. Above all, there is a crying need for astrategic view. What, in effective detail, is mostat risk? What is most valuable, and by whatcriteria? What must be protected? What ishighest priority for excavating to the higheststandards? What must be protected? Whatlower standards might be acceptable forexcavation and under what conditions andsafeguards? What most can be done by way ofnon-intrusive recording?

SCAPE has plans, though not yet funding, for anumber of interlinked initiatives. It is hoped toinvolve geographers and geomorphologists inmodelling the threat in order to produce mapsof the coast of Scotland showing where thethreat is greatest. The intention is to examinethe distribution of known coastal archaeologicalsites in order to help to predict locations forunknown sites, and to bring new methods ofgeophysical survey and airborne remote sensingto bear to find them. The work will explore theproblem of how much of an eroded site needsto be left to make it worth excavating, and if


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hard choices have to be made, to find ways ofvaluing excavation in intellectual and in socio-economic terms.

It is important to see what the currentapproaches are to prioritising work at coastalsites elsewhere in Europe. And, at the end ofthe day, a robust and defensible prioritised list

of sites will be produced to ensure that limitedresources are spent wisely. For one thing,regrettably, is quite certain: the erosion of thecoast of Scotland and the loss of archaeology isgoing to accelerate, and there is only havelimited time to retrieve this rich evidence of thepast lives of our forebears.

Waves on Churchill Barriers


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Mound

Bagging Mound

Eroding Mound


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Coping with Climatic Stresses: Climate Change,Prehistoric Farmers and the Transmission ofKnowledgeRichard TippingSchool of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA e-mail [email protected]

Climatic Stresses and PrehistoricFarming Communities in ScotlandThe most commonly defined environmentalstress thought to have threatened themaintenance of prehistoric agriculture in north-west Europe has probably been climatic. This iscertainly so in the Scottish uplands, the focus ofthis paper (Tipping, 2002). The most commonlyidentified response to this threat has been theabandonment of farms, sometimes of entireregions in a 'retreat from the margins' (Parry,1978; Burgess, 1984; Barber, 1998). Theresultant impressions formed of prehistoricfarming communities from these cause-response models are ones of structural fragility,of constant vulnerability to the whims of thenatural world, of failure to adapt or to learn andof being habitually unable to cope with thelandscape. This contribution will argue thatthese interpretations are probably incorrect, andare at least unproven, and that there is a majorneed to explore the more positiveunderstanding of adaptive strategies and copingmechanisms, social and technological.

The 'Little Ice Age' as a Paradigm forPrehistoryIt will be posited firstly and briefly thatestablished and highly influential analyses ofsettlement abandonment in the 'little ice age'(Parry, 1975, 1978; Lamb, 1995) are flawedbecause the chronology of abandonment couldnot be adequately defined, correlations withclimatic stress were poorly resolved and, atleast initially (cf. Parry & Carter, 1986) short-term climatic variability was not appreciated.Economic support structures that bufferedisolated upland farmers from stress were not

recognised and macro-scale economic changeas the reason for desertion not considered(Tipping, 1998, 2002). Palaeoecological datacan show that the specific climatic mechanismthought to have forced abandonment, cropfailure, did not occur (Tipping, 1998).Prehistorians too enthusiastically adopted thisanalysis as a paradigm for their period(Burgess, 1984, 1985, 1989), seeking anexplanation for purported populationfluctuations that have not in themselves provedvalid. Archaeologists then sought to identifyperiods of settlement abandonment without aconsistent or valid set of criteria by which toidentify them. The crux of this problem is todo with absences of evidence (Barber, 1998;Caseldine, 1999). As an example, at Lairg innorthern Scotland an apparently impressiveabandonment at c. 1000 cal. BC of a village ofround-houses, defined from a cessation of 14Cdated human activity, can instead be interpretedfrom close 14C dating to be a gradual loss overseveral centuries of houses one by one(McCullagh & Tipping, 1998), which providesa different sense of change. Data which bypassthis problem using continuous records of landuse from palaeoecological analyses in theScottish highlands will be used in this paper toshow that settlement abandonment in prehistorywas exceedingly rare (Tipping, 2002; Davies,Tisdall & Tipping, 2004). Where it happened itcan be argued in the few well-understoodlocalities, such as in the Cheviot Hills, to havebeen part of a larger-scale economic andagrarian restructuring perhaps akin to that inthe later historic period (Tipping in prep.). Suchrestructuring may itself have been a response toclimate stress but it should not be seen asabandonment.


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It is argued that we have too easily acceptedour inherent vulnerability to a natural worldseen as antagonistic to our mistakes. We havebeen overly-influenced by the major 'green'critiques of the 1960s which sought toreposition human beings within nature byemphasising how far outside it we had come(Coates, 1998). Our error was in presuming thatprehistoric communities were as distant fromthe natural world as we are. It is suggested thatsubsistence farmers in isolated farmsteads had avery different understanding of their place inthe natural world.

Exploring Settlement Resilience in theUplands in PrehistoryIt is not new to think that prehistoricpopulations differed from us in their relation tothe natural world, but myths of prehistoricanthropogenic landscape degradation havedistorted our understanding of how people livedwithin nature. Woodland clearance in Scotlandprobably operated at the scale of small fieldsuntil the late Iron Age (Tipping, 1995, 2003),except in the mountains and in the north whereclimate change had greater effects. Soils andrivers frequently show little evidence ofcatchment-scale instability before this periodalso (Tipping, 1997), and in Scotland blanketpeat formation is almost certainly of naturalorigin (Tipping in press). It is this capacity notto alter things that we might pay attention to inexplaining the persistence of people. This couldhave been the most important adaptivetechnique to people. Our focus on Neolithicpeople consciously 'altering the earth' (Bradley,1993), for instance, comes from their ritualbehaviour, not from how people lived theirlives. We need to explore much more fullyanother concept of the 1960s, that of humanecology.

One contention in this paper is that landscapehistorians, through too readily accepting theassumption of failure, have not developed theimmeasurably more interesting analysis ofclimatic adaptation (McIntosh, Tainter &Tainter, 2000). By not looking beyond retreat

we have sometimes neglected the need tomeasure the delicate, intricate process ofcoping. Because of this our understanding ofthe character and chronology of adaptivestrategies is very poor. In upland and highlandlandscapes the balance in prehistory betweenwild and domesticated resources remainscontroversial (e.g. Richmond, 1999; Fairbairn,2000) and the use of marine resources amongcoastal communities equally so (Schulting,1998; Richards & Hedges, 1999). Theintroduction of new cereal crops can onlybroadly be defined (Smith & Mulville, 2004),the routine use of vegetables poorly so and thechronology of cultivation techniques remainssketchy (Carter, 1995; Carter & Holden, 1999).The purpose of maintaining herds, for meat ormilk, is still to be securely established (Craig etal., 2000) as is the practice, often assumed forprehistory, of transhumance (Tipping, Edmonds& Sheridan, 1993). Analyses of agriculturalintensification are comparatively rare (e.g. vander Veen, 1992; Bond, Guttmann & Simpson,2004) and assessments of resource switchingand diversification very difficult. We need asubstantial investment in new and establishedtechniques to establish these. The stability androbustness of upland farmers in Glen Affric, forexample, was argued to be due to the simplicityof their agricultural economy (Davies, Tisdall& Tipping, 2004), but this impression is basedon an absence of detailed evidence forcomplexity from the rather blunt tool of pollenanalysis.

The Significance of Climate Change inPrehistoryOne interpretation that upland farmers in themost stressed environments were more resilientthat we have thought might be that climaticpressures were less. This is not the view in thispaper. The rapidly expanding palaeo-climaticdata-set has moved from a view in the early1990s of a stable Holocene climate to one ofperiodically abrupt dislocations of at leasthemispheric scale (National Research Council,2002). This data-set indicates that climaticevents probably sufficiently large or extreme to


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have stressed human populations wereinfrequent: frequencies of around 800 years to1500 years are now being suggested (O'Brien etal., 1995; Bond et al., 1997, 1999; Bianchi &McCave, 1999; Chapman & Shackleton, 2000;Chambers & Charman, 2004) with the eventsthemselves of much shorter durations.Disruptions to different natural systems can bedemonstrated for these extreme events (Gear &Huntley, 1991; Macklin & Lewin, 2003) suchthat some stress on human communities mustbe expected, and yet if the argument in thispaper is correct, people coped. The centralquestion must now be - how?

The Transmission of Knowledge orRepeated Invention as AdaptiveStrategiesFinally, this paper argues that, although acritical question, there are complexities that wemust think through. The construction of achronology of extreme climatic events withinthe Holocene should allow us to test humanresponse by developing a new chronology ofadaptive strategies (Tainter, 2000; Tipping,2002; Tipping & Tisdall, 2004). Lest webecome too mechanistic and determinist wealso need to recognise that new ideas canemerge without environmental stress. A climaterecord that stresses short-lived events allows usmore easily to identify these.

As we begin to sort in time the relationbetween adaptive response and climatic stress,it is likely that deeper issues will emerge. Oneof these will be how people learnt to cope.There is a 'missing link' here, however. Asimple model might presume that adaptiveresponses to increasing climatic stress drew ona pre-existing memory of how to cope (Tainter,2000). Yet our understanding of thetransmission of knowledge in pre-literateagricultural communities stresses thecomparatively short term nature (a fewhundreds of years at most) of folk memories(Fentress & Wickham, 1992). Given thatextreme climatic events probably occurred atlonger periodicities (above) one major difficulty

is this gap in time between what peopleremembered of former climatic events and theevents themselves.

There are ways that this gap might have beenbridged. The role of myth and 'old wive's tales'is critical, although a brief diversion to explore16th century weather lore will suggest thatpredictions are surprisingly short-term, mostlyseasonal rather than of longer-term use. Socialmemory is a key topic in prehistory (Edmonds,1998) but the ways in which monuments arethought to prompt the remembrance of tenuremay be different to how people rememberedcoping strategies. One is an enduring ever-present reminder, the latter so rarely needed asto fade with time. For example, how long willthe once-valued aphorism to 'cast ne'er a clouttill May is out' be maintained when it losesvalue in the 21st century. We need to knowmuch more about how weather myths work andwe may find out that people could notremember how to respond to these rare climaticexcursions. Adaptations may have had to be re-invented.

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Bianchi, G.G. & McCave, I.N. (1999) Holoceneperiodicity in North Atlantic climate and deep-ocean flow south of Iceland. Nature, 397, 515-517.

Bond, G., Showers, W., Cheseby, M., Lotti, R.,Almasi, P., deMenocal, P., Priore, P., Cullen,H., Hajdas, I. & Bonani, G. (1997) A pervasivemillennial-scale cycle in North AtlanticHolocene and glacial climates. Science, 278,1257-1266.

Bond, G.C. et al.(1999) The North Atlantic's 1-2kyr climate rhythm: relation to HeinrichEvents, Dansgarrd-Oeschger Cycles and theLittle Ice Age. In Clark, P.U., Webb, R.S. &Keigwin, L.D. (eds) Mechanisms of GlobalClimate Change at Millenial Time Scales.


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Washington: American Geophysical UnionGeophysical Monograph 112, 35-58.

Bond, J.M., Guttmann, E. & Simpson, I.A.(2004) Bringing in the sheaves: farmingintensification in the post-broch Iron Age. InHousley, R.A. & Coles, G. (Eds.) AtlanticConnections and Adaptations. Economies,environments and subsistence in landsbordering the North Atlantic. Oxford: Oxbow,138-145.

Bradley, R. (1993) Altering the Earth.Edinburgh. Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

Burgess, C. (1984) The prehistoric settlementof Northumberland: a speculative survey. InMiket, R. & Burgess, C. (Eds.) Between andBeyond the Walls: Essays on the Prehistory andHistory of North Britain in Honour of GeorgeJobey. Edinburgh: John Donald, 126-175.

Burgess, C. (1985) Population, climate andupland settlement. In Spratt, D.A. & Burgess,C. (Eds.) Upland Settlement in Britain. Oxford:BAR British Series 143, 195-230.

Burgess, C. (1989). Volcanoes, catastrophe andthe global crisis of the late Second MillenniumBC. Current Archaeology 117, 325-29.

Carter, S.P. (1995) Radiocarbon datingevidence for the age of narrow cultivationridges in Scotland. Tools and Tillage 7, 83-91.

Carter, S.P. & Holden, T.G. (1999) Interpretingprehistoric cultivation using the combinedevidence of plant remains and soils: an examplefrom northern Scotland. In Huntley, J.P. &Stallibrass, S. (Eds.) Taphonomy &Interpretation. Oxford: Oxbow, 1-13.

Caseldine, C.J. (1999) Archaeological andenvironmental change on prehistoric Dartmoor:current understanding and future directions.Quaternary Proceedings, 7, 575-584.

Chambers, F.M. & Charman, D.J. (2004)Holocene environmental change: contributionsfrom the peatland archive. The Holocene, 14, 1-6.

Chapman, M.R. & Shackleton, N.J. (2000)Evidence of 550-year and 1000-year cyclicitiesin North Atlantic circulation patterns during theHolocene. The Holocene, 10, 287-292.

Coates, P. (1998) Nature. Western Attitudessince Ancient Times. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Craig, O.E., Mulville, J.P., Pearson, M.P.,Sokol, R., Gelsthorpe, K., S. & Collins, M.(2000) Detecting milk proteins in ancient pots.Nature, 408, 312-312.

Davies, A.L., Tisdall, E. & Tipping, R. (2004)Holocene climatic variability and humansettlement in the Scottish Highlands: fragilityand robustness. In Housley, R.A. & Coles, G.(Eds.) Atlantic Connections and Adaptations.Economies, environments and subsistence inlands bordering the North Atlantic. Oxford:Oxbow, 2-11.

Edmonds, M. (1998) Ancestral Geographies ofthe Neolithic. London: Routledge.

Fairbairn, A.S. (2000) Plants in NeolithicBritain and Beyond: Neolithic Studies GroupSeminar Papers 5. Oxford: Oxbow.

Fentress, J. & Wickham, C. (1992) SocialMemory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Gear, A.J. & Huntley, B. (1991) Rapid changesin the range limits of Scots Pine 4000 yearsago. Science 251, 544-547.

Lamb, H.H. (1995) Climate, History and theModern World. London: Methuen.

Macklin, M.G. & Lewin, J. (2003) Riversediments, great floods and centennial-scaleHolocene climate change. Journal ofQuaternary Science 18, 101-106.

McCullagh, R. & Tipping, R. (1998) The LairgProject 1988-1996: The Evolution of anArchaeological Landscape in NorthernScotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Trust forArchaeological Research.

McIntosh, R.J., Tainter, J.A. & McIntosh, S.K.(2000) The Way The Wind Blows: Climate,History and Human Action. New York:Columbia University Press.

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O'Brien, SR, Mayewski, PA, Meeker, LD,Meese, DA, Twickler, MS, Whitlow, SI. (1995)Complexity of Holocene climate as


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reconstructed from a Greenland ice core.Science 270, 1962-1964.

Parry, M.L. (1975) Secular climatic change andmarginal land. Transactions of the Institute ofBritish Geographers 64, 1-13.

Parry, M.L. (1978) Climate Change,Agriculture and Settlement. Folkestone:Dawson & Sons.

Parry, M.L. & Carter, T.R. (1985) The effect ofclimatic variations on agricultural risk. ClimaticChange 7, 95-110.

Richards, M.P. & Hedges, R.E.M. (1999) ANeolithic revolution? New evidence of diet inthe British Neolithic. Antiquity 73, 891-897.

Richmond, A. (1999) Preferred Economies: thenature of the subsistence base throughoutmainland Britain during prehistory. Oxford:BAR British Series 290.

Schulting, R.J. (1998) Slighting the sea: stableisotope evidence for the transition to farming innorthwestern Europe. Documenta Praehistorica15, 203-218.

Smith, H. & Mulville, J. (2004) Resourcemanagement in the Outer Hebrides: anassessment of the faunal and floral evidence. InHousley, R.A. & Coles, G. (Eds.) AtlanticConnections and Adaptations. Economies,environments and subsistence in landsbordering the North Atlantic. Oxford: Oxbow,48-64.

Tainter, J.A. (2000) Global change, history andsustainability. In McIntosh, R.J., Tainter, J.A. &McIntosh, S.K. (Eds.) The Way The WindBlows: Climate, History and Human Action.New York: Columbia University Press, 331-356.

Tipping, R. (1995) The form and fate ofScottish woodlands. Proceedings of the Societyof Antiquaries of Scotland 124, 1-54.

Tipping, R. (1998) Cereal cultivation on theAnglo-Scottish Border during the 'Little IceAge'. In Mills, C.M. & Coles, G. (Eds) Life onthe Edge: Human Settlement & Marginality.Oxford: Oxbow, 1-12.

Tipping, R. (2002) Climatic variability and'marginal' settlement in upland British

landscapes: a re-evaluation. Landscapes 3, 10-28.

Tipping, R. (2003) Living in the past: woodsand people in prehistory to 1000 BC. In Smout,T.C. (Eds.) People and Woods in Scotland: AHistory. Edinburgh: University Press, 14-39.

Tipping, R. in press. Blanket peat in theScottish highlands: timing, cause, spread andthe myth of environmental determinism.Biodiversity & Conservation.

Tipping, R., Edmonds, M. & Sheridan, A.(1993) Palaeoenvironmental investigationsdirectly associated with a neolithic axe 'quarry'on Beinn Lawers, near Killin, Perthshire,Scotland. New Phytologist 123, 585-597.

Tipping, R. & Tisdall, E. (2004) Continuity,crisis and climate change in the Neolithic andearly Bronze Periods of North West Europe. InShepherd, I.A.G. & Barclay, G. (Eds.) Scotlandin Ancient Europe. The Neolithic and EarlyBronze Age of Scotland in their EuropeanContext. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries ofScotland, 71-82.

van der Veen, M. (1992) Crop HusbandryRegimes - An Archaeoethnobotanical Study ofFarming in Northern England 1000 BC - AD500. Sheffield: Sheffield ArchaeologicalMonograph 3.


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Crisis, what crisis? Towards a 'third way' in landscapearchaeology ?Robert Van de NoortDepartment of Archaeology, University of Exeter

IntroductionThe study of landscapes and landscape change,past and present, offers a diversity and varietythat is not easily defined or categorized. Eventhe word landscape means different things todifferent disciplines, and it has certainly diversemeanings and resonances to the numerouspractitioners of landscape archaeology. TheOxford English Dictionary defines landscape(as a noun) as:

1) All the visible features of an area of land,

2) A picture representing an area of countrysideand

3) The distinctive features of a sphere ofintellectual activity, as in the politicallandscape.

All three meanings (and many more) arerepresented in the diversity of currentarchaeological landscape studies.

This multiplicity of the meaning of landscape isreflected in the diversity of theoreticalapproaches used to understand landscape andlandscape change. Understanding thesetheoretical points of view of the researchers,whether these are implicit or explicit in thework, is critical in appreciating what is actuallystudied, and what the role of crises andcontinuums was in the shaping of landscapes.

This paper sets out to examine these theoreticalperspectives. I will argue that attributingsignificance to terms such as crisis andcontinuum to landscape change are as muchdetermined by the theoretical approach takenby the researcher as by the data andinformation that form the bases of the analyses.

For example, historical and archaeologicallandscape studies conducted from theperspective of the Annales school, or usingneo-Marxist approaches, inevitably see the(natural) environment as providing the 'longduree' component, but human agency beingresponsible for the 'evenements' (e.g. Braudel,1949; Bintliff, 1990; Barret et al. 1991).

A Very Short Analysis of LandscapeArchaeologyAn overview of the study of landscape inarchaeology (and to some degree geographyand history), would allow the majority oflandscapes studies produced over the last halfcentury to be classified somewhere along twoaxes (Figure 1).

The first axis has as its extremes environmentaldeterminism and environmental relativism. Fewmodern studies are 'purely' environmentaldeterministic, in the sense that humans have noagency whatsoever, as illustrated by recentconferences on 'human ecodynamics' or'human-environment interactions', which cameto the fore in the 1990s (e.g. Bailey et al.,1999). Nevertheless, the concept thatenvironment determines at least some importantaspects of culture remains strong amongstenvironmental archaeologists (e.g. Baillie,1995). However, many recent landscape studiesare wholly environmental relativistic, especiallystudies of the monumental Neolithic (e.g.Tilley, 1994 and many others using thephenomenological approach), where theenvironment has become the mere backdrop ofa political stage.

Figure 1: The two axes of landscape studies, and studies mentioned in the text placed againstthese axes.


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The second axis has as its extremes thefunctionalist approach to landscapes, and theapproach to landscapes as social discourse. Thebest known proponent of the functionalistapproach was W.G. Hoskins, whose The Making ofthe English Landscape, published in 1955,provided a significant stimulus to the study oflandscapes (rather than places or sites). Thefunctionalist approach explains the features in thelandscape through their function in predominantlyeconomic terms, be it the hedges that enclosepastureland, the nucleation of settlements or therole of ecclesiastical institutions. Much of thework in medieval landscape studies continues touse the environment as the first, or most important,port of call to explain variety in the medievalcountryside (e.g. Wiliamson, 2003; Rippon, 2004).Much of the prehistoric landscape, on the otherhand, is seen in recent studies as the setting forsocial discourse, whereby the monuments andtheir location within the landscape form the basisfor understanding social reproduction or past (andcurrent) political debate (e.g. Barrett, et al., 1991;Bender, 1993).

There are obvious correlations between the twoaxes. Functional approaches to landscapes tendto be towards the environmental determinismend of the first axis, studies of landscapes associal discourse towards the environmentalrelativism end, and vice versa. Thefunctional/environmental determinism approachpredominates studies of the medievallandscape, and the social discourse/environmental relativism approach dominatesstudies of the prehistoric landscape, especiallythat of the monumental Neolithic and earlyBronze Age. An approximate distribution of thestudies referred to so far have been set againstthe two axes in Figure 1 (see bibliography for 1to 10), showing these correlations.

Towards a Third Way in LandscapeArchaeology?Having observed how most landscape studiescan be classified in a simplified systemcomprising two axes is one thing - to propose away forward that goes beyond this duality ofapproaches is quite something else. A simple

Landscapes as social discourse

Functional landscapes

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compromise, sitting at the intersection of thetwo axes, is unlikely to produce satisfactoryanswers; this would produce rather uninspiringresults, and may have as little relevance of howpast people engaged with their landscapes aseither of the extreme alternatives.

The work of the Humber Wetlands Project(1992-2000) required a different approach. Theproject's brief included both prehistoric andhistoric archaeological and historical remains,and was designed to develop our understandingof palaeo-environmental change throughout theHolocene. Adopting the functional approachprevalent in other wetland archaeologicalprojects would not serve to explain the region'sdiverse archaeology, and similarly, seeing thelandscape as a scene for social discourse mightexplain some, but certainly not all phenomenaobserved. Likewise, the palaeo-environmentalwork was showing increasing diversity withinthe region, especially in terms of the impact onthe vegetation from human activity, and suchdiverging developments could not continue.

In my work of the Humber Wetlands, the 'thirdway' I have taken is one I described asfocussing on past peoples' perceptions oflandscape; this perception is interpreted throughthe archaeological evidence of material cultureand environment and this approach is to acertain extent 'empathetic' (Van de Noort, 2004:12). This is not phenomenology by anothername. Rather, it represents an embracing of therecognition that all societies have in-depthunderstandings of the natural history of, andcontinued intimacy with, the landscapes theyinhabit or avoid. These natural histories may ormay not be what we consider natural history tobe. But, the inclusion of land and landscape instories and myths, and the naming of landscapefeatures, can be used to reconstruct their naturalhistories, or their perceptions of landscape.Similarly, using archaeological data, rangingfrom the locations of settlements to the localesselected for the 'votive deposition in wet places'offer insights how people in the past viewedtheir surroundings. This approach is well

established in cultural anthropology (e.g.Nelson, 1983; Lopez, 1986), andanthropologists talk about seeing the land with'the native eye' in order to understand theinteraction between nature and culture. Incultural geography, Dennis Cosgrove (1998:15) has taken a similar stance, and hisstatement that 'landscape is an ideologicalconcept representing a way in which peoplewould have signified themselves and theirworld through their imagined relationship withnature', requires an understanding of the 'nativeeye' to understand what landscape really is. Inarchaeology, Richard Bradley's (2000) AnArchaeology of Natural Places adopts similarconcepts for specific unaltered (but encultured)locales.

In the Humber Wetlands, this approach seemsto have worked rather well. In the argumentswhy certain wetlands were exploited in aneconomic sense and others were not, functionaland social arguments seem to be mutuallyreinforcing when past people's perceptions areconsidered. The selection of specific locales inthe landscape for ritual(-ised) activities areequally underpinned by functional and socialconsiderations, when seen through the 'nativeeye'. Marginality does not equate to liminality,but neither are the two concepts mutuallyexclusive. The dynamic landscape change,under influence of post-glacial sea-levelchanges, adds an environmental deterministicaspect to living in lowlands but, again, thedynamic nature of the wetlands may well havebeen understood in social terms, and themanner in which people acted or reacted to theexpanding wetlands was as much culturallyinformed as environmentally determined. Wemust recognise that the perception of landscapechanged with time, and that the outsiders'perception was very different from that of thepeople who lived in and from the wetlands.


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Bibliography:1. Bailey, G., Charles, R. & Winder, N. (Eds.)

(2000) Human Ecodynamics : Proceedings ofthe Association for Environmental ArchaeologyConference 1998 held at the University ofNewcastle upon Tyne. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

2. Baillie, M. (1995) A slice through time:dendrochronology and precision dating.London: Batsford.

3. Barrett, J.C., Bradley, R. & Green, M.(1991) Landscape, Monuments and Society: thePrehistory of Cranborne Chase. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

4. Bender, B. (Ed.) (1993) Landscape: Politicsand Perspectives. Providence: Berg.

5. Bintliff, J. (1990) The Annales School andarchaeology. Leicester: Leicester UniversityPress.

6. Braudel, F. (1949) La Méditerranée et leMonde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II.Paris: Librairie Armand Colin.

Cosgrove. D. (1998) Social formation andsymbolic landscape. Madison, WI: Universityof Wisconsin Press.

7. Hoskins, W.G. (1955) The Making of theEnglish Landscape. London: Hodder &Stoughton.

Lopez, B. (1986) Arctic Dreams. Imaginationand Desire in a Northern Landscape. NewYork: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Nelson, R. (1986) Make Prayers to the Raven.Koyukon View of the Northern Forest. Chicago:Chicago University press

8. Rippon, S. (2004) Historic LandscapeAnalysis. York: CBA Handbook.

9. Tilley, C. (1994) A phenomenology oflandscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments.Oxford: Berg.

Van de Noort, R. (2004) The Humber Wetlands.The Archaeology of a Dynamic Landscape.Bollington: Windgather Press.

10. Williamson, T. (2003) Shaping MedievalLandscapes. Settlement, Society, Environment.Bollington: Windgather Press.


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Large ungulates - driving forces behind a non-linearsuccessionFrans W.M. Vera

AbstractIt is a long-accepted theory that in the naturalsituation in the lowlands of Central andWestern Europe, large ungulate populationsfollowed the succession in the vegetation. Theywere not able to steer it, and do not do so now.If they do, then the situation is considered to beunnatural.

An example is wood pasture. Here the livestockprevent the regeneration of trees in the forestby trampling and browsing. They make itincreasingly open, changing it towards a park-like landscape, and eventually into opengrassland or heath. This process of destructionof the forest is called a retrogressivesuccession. It was not only the grazing andbrowsing of livestock as such that made thewood pasture 'unnatural'; it was also the factthat the livestock itself was considered to bealien, because it was introduced by people.After humans and their destructive livestockdisappeared from the scene, a linear successionbegan that ended in a closed canopy forest.

It was concluded that if livestock is removed,the vegetation rebounds to its original state.Therefore, the closed canopy forest wasconsidered to be the natural vegetation. Itperpetuates itself by the regeneration of trees ingaps in the canopy or in windblown areas.According to this theory forest reserves wereestablished by removing livestock from woodpastures. These reserves are supposed todevelop as modern analogues of the originalundisturbed vegetation.

However, in these reserves shade tolerantspecies like beech (Fagus sylvaticus), broad-

leaved lime (Tilia platyphyllos) and small-leaved lime (Tilia cordata), elm species (Ulmusspp.) and hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) replacethe light-demanding pedunculate oak (Quercusrobur) and sessile oak (Quercus petraea) aswell as the light-demanding hazel (Corylusavellana). The light-demanding species hardlyregenerate, or do not so at all. They occurneither in gaps in the canopy, nor in windblown areas. However, oak and hazel are verywell represented in pollen diagrams in thepresence of shade tolerant species, dating froma period in the Holocene (Flandrian) that thevegetation is supposed to be undisturbed byhumans. Therefore, both oak species and hazelshould be able to maintain themselves in theseforest reserves, if these reserves are indeedmodern analogues of the primeval vegetation.

On the other hand, both species of oak as wellas hazel regenerate very well in the presence ofshade-tolerant species in wood pastures. Theydo so in open grassland grazed by true grazerslike cattle and horses. They grow upsuccessfully within or close to thorny or spinyshrub species like sloe (Prunus spinosa),hawthorn (Crateagus monogyna), juniper(Juniperus communis) and bramble (Rubusspp). These shrub species are also lightdemanding. They establish successfully ingrazed grassland because they are defended bythorns and spines.

These almost unpalatable shrub species act asso-called 'nurse-species' for the palatable treeand shrub species. Single growing hawthornwill nurse a single tree, while the clonallyspreading sloe will eventually give rise to agroup of trees, forming a grove. The process isthat in grazed grassland, thorny scrub


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establishes in which trees grow up protectedfrom damage by grazing.

When the trees are above the shrubs and spreadtheir crowns, the light-demanding shrub speciesare shaded out. The groves therefore lack ashrub layer. In the groves there is no successfulregeneration of trees, because of the presenceof the animals. By the well-known process ofthe so-called retrogressive succession, the grovechanges again into open grassland. Fungi and"catastrophes" such as drought, and storms canspeed up this process. In the open grasslandeventually unpalatable thorny species willestablish themselves again, as nurse-speciesgiving way to palatable trees and shrubs. Thisprocess is a cyclical non-linear succession, inwhich large herbivores play an essential,steering role.

This interaction in wood pastures between largeungulates such as horses and cattle, andvegetation, resulted in a dynamic park-likelandscape consisting of grassland, shrub, scrub,solitary trees and groups of trees, the groves.The result is that various biotopes varying fromgrassland, scrub, to groves (forest) arepermanently present, but not always in thesame place. Although people introduced cattleand domestic horses, these species are nothowever aliens. They are domesticated forms oftwo indigenous species, namely aurochs andtarpan. Therefore cattle and horses in woodpastures can be considered as proxies of thetrue grazers of the indigenous fauna, and thepark-like landscape of the wood pasture, as aproxy of the originally present wilderness.


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Parliamentary Enclosure: a Crisis for UplandLandscapes and Communities?Ian WhyteUniversity of Lancaster

IntroductionThe landscapes of the upland areas of Britainare valued and cherished as wild country. Wildthey may be, but it is now widely appreciatedthat they are not 'natural'. They are instead acultural artefact. Indeed, plans are currentlyunderway to put forward the Lake District as aUNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape - acategory which has been specially createdbecause of previous failures to have the areaaccepted purely on the strength of either itsphysical or its human attributes. Thisemphasises that the landscapes of such areasrepresent a complex integration of physical andhuman elements. Northern upland areas arelandscapes under pressure today: arguably theyare in a state of crisis. This has been due in partto the impact of a widening range ofrecreational activities, and the collapse of thehill farming economy, due to general economicconditions seriously exacerbated by the 2001outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth Disease1.

Other periods can be identified as phases ofcrisis in these upland areas, even if there is stillconsiderable debate about the nature and scaleof the difficulties involving such periods werecharacterised by an expansion of settlement andan intensification of land use in the uplandsfollowed by a marked retreat. For example thecollapse, around 1200 BC, of Bronze Agesettlement associated with the use ofcairnfields2 , or the stresses imposed onfarming and settlement in the post-medievalphase of cooler conditions which is popularlytermed the Little Ice Age3. In recent centuriesa further period of expansion followed by theretreat of settlement and improvement wasassociated with Parliamentary enclosure. Towhat extent did Parliamentary enclosure reallyreflect or precipitate a crisis in upland

landscapes and communities? The aim of thispaper is to determine this by investigating theeconomic, social and landscape background toParliamentary enclosure on the northernuplands using examples drawn mainly fromCumbria.

In lowland areas of England such as theMidlands Parliamentary enclosure has beenwidely viewed as having precipitated a crisis inrural society. It has been seen as a processwhich, by dispossessing small commoners anddriving out small owner occupiers, removedsurviving elements of an English peasantry,creating in their place an ordered, commerciallyefficient rural society of landowners, substantialtenant farmers and subservient, impoverishedwage labourers4.

But parliamentary enclosure in the upland areasof northern England was different in manyrespects, particularly in Cumbria. First itinvolved, overwhelmingly, the enclosure ofwaste rather than open-field arable. The bulk ofthe common fields in this region had beenenclosed by private agreements by the mideighteenth century5. Some of the waste waslowland common, peat moss and coastal saltmarsh but much of it was upland rough pasture.

But parliamentary enclosure did not occur inisolation. It represented continuity in thelandscape as much as change. Just as inlowland England it was the culmination ofprocesses which had been operating at variouslevels of intensity since late medieval times.The enclosure of upland common pastures andwastes in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies represented part of a long-continuedprocess of intake, encroachment andimprovement. Beyond the townfields of


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Cumbrian villages are zones of small,irregularly-shaped closes, often bounded bymassively-constructed walls, which representearly intakes from the surrounding manorialwaste. From the later fifteenth century itbecame common in the valleys of the LakeDistrict and the Pennines for individuals orsmall groups of farmers to ring-fence stintedcow pastures or cow closes on the bettergrazings of the lower slopes. Such enclosureswere tolerated by lords and manorial courts aslong as rent was paid for them6, as was theintake of land by local people and incomingsquatters during the period of populationgrowth in the late sixteenth and earlyseventeenth centuries7. By the early eighteenthcentury some of the cow closes and moreextensive areas of pasture were being dividedamong those with grazing rights on the basis ofprivate agreements which often leave little orno documentation8. Parliamentary enclosurerepresented a continuation of these processes,albeit on a larger scale within a comparativelylimited period.

Parliamentary Enclosure andCumbrian Society: a Social Crisis?To what extent did parliamentary enclosureprecipitate a social crisis comparable to the onewhich has been widely claimed for lowlandEngland? To examine this question thedistinctive structure of Cumbrian rural societyin the eighteenth century needs to beappreciated. Cumbrian society wascharacterised by a limited number of largerproprietors, many of whom were absentees,relatively few leasehold tenants and wagelabourers, and large numbers of customarytenants. A high proportion of small farms withrelatively widespread access to land was afeature of communities throughout the region9.Cumbria preserved a distinctive structure ofrural society based on the prevalence ofcustomary tenures which, while retainingelements of feudalism, gave tenants rightsregarding the disposal of their property whichwere effectively equivalent to freehold, togetherwith rents which had failed to keep pace withinflation. These rights stemmed from pre-

seventeenth century Border tenures in whichsecurity of occupation was granted in return formilitary service against the Scots10. Thecontinuation of these rights had beenacknowledged by the courts in various testcases during the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies11. Customary tenants still held atleast a third of the land in eighteenth-centuryCumbria12. Their status was fully recognisedby enclosure commissioners when it came todetermining common rights13. Commonerswho were customary tenants were virtuallyalways awarded allotments no matter howsmall their holdings.

Farms in general employed relatively few wagelabourers14. Most of the work was done byliving-in farm servants and, especially, byfamily members. Most customary tenantsoccupied holdings with less than 50 acres15,but to compensate most of them also had accessto the resources of extensive commons. Only inthe southern part of the Lake District is therelikely to have been a substantial landlesselement in the population due to employment inwoodland industries, iron smelting anddomestic textile manufacture16.

A key feature of Parliamentary enclosure wasthat it enlarged holdings substantially. Whereland enclosed by parliamentary act was mainlyopen field arable the allocation of shares to thelord of the manor and the tithe owner couldcause a net reduction in the area returned to aproprietor as an allotment. In Cumbria,however, substantial allotments of formercommon pasture were added to the 'ancientenclosures' already held by customary tenantsand freeholders. Analyses of mid nineteenthcentury enclosure awards, which often containconsiderable details of the sizes of the holdingson which the original common rights had beenbased, show that some landowners experiencedan increase in holding size of 50 per cent oreven 100 per cent. Indications are that the ratiobetween numbers of commoners and size ofcommons were comparable in the lateeighteenth and early nineteenth century. In theprocess of gaining an allotment, of course,proprietors lost the value of their former


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common rights, but there are indications that bythe late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies many small landowners wereprobably receiving little benefit from theircommon rights17.

Evidence of the sale of allotments beforeenclosure awards were drawn up indicates thatonly about a fifth of smallholders sold theirland in whole or in part. Some of those who didwere demonstrably only part-time farmers whomay have wished to raise capital for investmentin non-agricultural activities. Most of thepurchasers of such allotments were local men,listed in the same awards, rather than outsiders

and incomers. Some large proprietors such asthe earls of Lonsdale and Thanet pursued anexpansionist policy of buying up the allotmentsof smaller proprietors. A fuller analysis of thesocial impact of Parliamentary enclosure mustawait more detailed investigation of the landtax data. However, the impression is that theexisting structure of rural society was notdrastically altered. Small farms, many of themoccupied as freeholds after enclosure, continuedto be a characteristic of this region into the latenineteenth century and beyond.

Table 1. Average increases in holding size with parliamentary enclosure in Westmorland.

Enclosure Date % increase Asby Mask 1855 70 Asby Winderwath 1874 65 Colby 1854 28 Grayrigg 1868 75 Great Musgrave 1859 59 Hillbeck 1859 136 Kirkby Stephen 1855 85 Lambrigg 1886 37 Little Musgrave 1853 41 Newbiggin 1850 55 Maulds Meaburn 1858 37 Smardale 1849 135 Waitby 1855 72

A Crisis of Commons ManagementPrecipitating ParliamentaryEnclosure?There is evidence for a crisis for many smallcommoners in the later eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries in terms of the value oftheir common rights and their ability to accessthem. The first wave of enclosure in the 1770swas at least partly initiated by the growingimpact on Cumbrian commons of theflourishing cattle-droving trade. The profitsfrom this encouraged freeholders andcustomary tenants, particularly the larger ones,to buy large numbers of lean Scottish animals

and fatten them on the commons. In the processthey often ignored management rules andstinting agreements18. The result was severeovergrazing on many commons, anddeterioration in the quality of the pasture. Insome areas, such as Cartmel, the commonswere also under pressure from widespreadencroachment19.

In addition to severe overgrazing, on manycommons smaller customary tenants foundthemselves, common rights notwithstanding,excluded from what pasture there was. Largercustomary tenants were sometimes able


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virtually to monopolise access to the commons.The livestock of smaller commoners were oftendriven off the best grazings by the dogs of thelarger landowners20. Manorial courts appear tohave been increasingly powerless to check suchabuses. In circumstances like these theenclosure of a common and the awarding of anallotment which could be managed individuallyin lieu of common rights which were difficultof access and limited in value might have beenseen as an attractive option even by smallcustomary tenants21.

Although the influence of the cattle trade wasundoubtedly an important factor encouragingenclosure, it also took place in the context of agrowing demand for grain in Cumbria.Population in the region was growing, as werethe industrial areas of west Cumbria, southLakeland and the lead-mining districts in thePennines22. The region was a net importer ofgrain23. The views of Arthur Young and otherimprovers on the contemporary state ofagriculture in Cumbria in the later eighteenthcentury were, inevitably, that it was backwardand unproductive24. However, their views ofthe prospects for the reclamation of waste landwere often over-optimistic. Even so there weremany lowland commons on reasonable soilswhich, if divided, were suitable for conversionto arable, especially in west Cumbria and thesandy soils of the Eden Valley.

However, the management of at least some ofthis newly enclosed land was very poor. Insome areas over-liming and over-cultivationwith a succession of cereal crops ruined theland so badly that after a few years of luxuriantcrops yields fell so badly that the land had to beleft to revert to permanent pasture, sometimesfor a generation or more, as happened at CastleSowerby in Cumberland in the 1760s and Ellelin north Lancashire in the 1750s25. Whereenclosure took place at slightly higher altitudes,on poorer soils, cultivation was often shortlived, as on a belt of soil described as being 'acold, ungrateful clay, very profitless to thefarmer' which ran through the townships of

Bleatarn, Great Ormside and King's Meaburn26.This was not exclusively a problem for uplandareas, of course - Arthur Young, in the 1790s,commented on the poor state of extensive areasof enclosed land in Lincolnshire - but badmanagement may have had more permanenteffects on thin upland soils27.

Parliamentary Enclosure: a Crisis ofFinance?Parliamentary enclosure, whether in upland orlowland setting inevitably involved costs whichwere passed on to proprietors and are likely tohave borne more heavily on smaller over-occupiers. The costs of Parliamentary enclosurecan be divided into public and private ones.The former involved the administrative andlegal costs, the fees and expenses ofcommissioners and surveyors, the expense ofmaking the access roads and the ring-fencing ofthe tithe holder's allotment when tithes werecommuted at enclosure. A range of mechanismswas adopted to reduce public costs. In manyenclosure processes the commissioners sold offportions of the commons to raise money withwhich to offset the public costs. It was also lessusual than in lowland England to commutetithes at the time of enclosure so that the needto allocate a share of the former common to thetithe holder was often avoided. Specialprovisions were also applied in some cases toreduce the cost of ring fencing large blocks ofpoorer-quality land, and very smallallotments28.

The private costs included ring fencing theallotments and improving the land to convert itto better-quality pasture or arable. While thepublic costs of enclosure may often have beenlower than in the south the private costs maywell have been higher due to the considerableexpense of improving land which was oftenrelatively marginal.

The high cost of enclosure in lowland Englandhas been widely seen as having put pressure onsmaller commoners and owner-occupiers who


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were forced to sell out to their largerneighbours. An element in the financialproblems of smaller Cumbrian proprietors wasundoubtedly the cost of improving the landwhich was awarded as allotments. Even whenthe public costs of enclosure were offset byland sales the expense of ring fencing, liming,paring and burning, removing stones andmaking drains could be considerable. The costof ring fencing allotments in the earlynineteenth century may have been in the regionof £3-5 per acre, and improving the land asmuch as £13-15. On owner-occupied farms it islikely that much of the labour for fencing andimprovement was done by family members butthis nevertheless represented an indirect cost asit diverted them from other work. If the privatecosts of enclosure were as high as £16-20 peracre one can appreciate why many communitiesappear to have considered the possibility ofenclosure and then drawn back.

Searle has suggested that enclosure in Cumbriawas generally favoured and was rarelyproblematic because there is little evidence offormal opposition to enclosure bills, andbecause the limited number of cases that doexist often involved purely local issues ratherthan opposition to the idea of enclosure perse29. However, a study of local newspapersduring the Napoleonic Wars suggests a slightlydifferent story. There are many instances wherea notice announcing the intention to submit anenclosure bill to parliament appeared but failedto lead to an enclosure act immediately, or evenat all30. It is likely that virtually everycommunity with common land in Cumbriaconsidered the desirability of enclosure at sometime between c1750 and 1850, and somedemonstrably did this on more than oneoccasion31. But the large extents of survivingcommon, particularly in the old counties ofCumberland and Westmorland, indicate thatquite frequently the idea of enclosure wasrejected. 21 per cent of the County ofWestmorland was enclosed under Parliamentaryact but 27 per cent still remains today asunenclosed common. The most likely reasonfor this was the cost of enclosure.

The number of small proprietors, together withthe fact that major estate owners were few innumber and mostly absentees, gave customarytenants, even small ones, much more say in theenclosure process that small owners elsewhere.In many cases it was the small owner-occupiersrather than the large landowners who wereresponsible for initiating enclosure as well,possibly, for deciding not to go ahead with it32.

So, while Parliamentary enclosure in Cumbriaundoubtedly caused some changes in ruralsociety it does not seem to have precipitated amajor social crisis. In some parts of Englandwhere the rural population contained asubstantial landless element, such people mayhave lost out with enclosure, but this elementformed a much smaller proportion of the ruralpopulation in most parts of Cumbria.

A Crisis During the Napoleonic Wars?But what about the impact of Parliamentaryenclosure on the landscape and the environment? We have seen that enclosure provided apotential solution to a growing ecological crisisin terms of the failing management of manycommons. Parliamentary enclosure has usuallybeen seen as involving better (morecommercial) land management and a significantincrease in agricultural productivity, though notall historians agree on this33. But this argumenthas been largely developed in the context of theenclosure of open-field arable and lowlandcommons. What were the environmentalimpacts of the enclosure of upland roughpasture? We have seen that in the first burst ofenclosure, during the 1760s and 1770s, themanagement of allotments was sometimes poor.To an even greater degree, between 1793 and1815 productivity gains were often short-livedand unsustainable. Poor land management andconcern for quick profits rather than long-termsustainability created elements of anenvironmental crisis which in due courseplaced at least some elements of rural societyunder stress.


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After a slump in the 1780s the pace ofenclosure accelerated rapidly during the Frenchwars between 1793 and 1815, under thestimulus, in particular, of rising grain prices.This reflected a background of populationgrowth, poor harvests, the wartime demands ofthe military and the activities of Frenchprivateers: food prices in north-west Englandwere at famine levels by 1812. It was seen as apatriotic duty for farmers to bring waste landinto cultivation through enclosure. In the 1830sfarmers looked back at what they called the'Bonnyparte time' when it was impossible not tomake a profit - for a few years at least34. It issurprising how little we know about thisNapoleonic plough-up campaign, though itsexistence and significance have long beenappreciated. Much of the straight, narrow ridgeand furrow which occurs in marginal uplandsettings in northern England probably datesfrom this period but there has been littleattempt to map its extent and to relate it to themanagement of specific farms and estates.

The ecological implications of the ploughing upof substantial areas of marginal land during theFrench Wars have also received little attention.There has been a lack of detailed study of justhow much land, and where, was ploughed up atthis time, and for how long cultivation wasmaintained. Local studies based on acombination of detailed estate records andlandscape evidence might provide someindication. One might expect that the ploughingup of pasture, in upland marginal areas, withdrainage, road and wall construction mighthave led to localised erosion, sedimenttransport and deposition, especially where thepatterns of allotments laid out by the surveyorspaid scant attention to the topography, as wassometimes the case. In palaeo-environmentalstudies the tendency has been to look forphases of deforestation and soil disturbance inlater prehistoric and early medieval times ratherthan in recent centuries.

The acceleration of parliamentary enclosureand the expansion of cultivation during the

Napoleonic Wars turned both Cumberland andWestmorland, for a time at least, into grainexporters35. The tendency to over-crop land toits long-term detriment in the pursuit of short-term profit that we saw in the 1760s and 1770swas even more evident at this time. The landwhich was being enclosed was often at higheraltitudes and more marginal in quality than inthe earlier period. As a result it was especiallyvulnerable to the effects of poor management.

Some of the best indications of mismanagementcome from the evidence given by WilliamBlamire, landowner and MP for eastCumberland, to a Commons Select Committeeon the state of agriculture in 1833. Blamiresuggested that many Cumbrian owner-occupiershad borrowed heavily during the war years tofinance enclosure and improvement. Theproprietors of small estates thought that theycould not invest too much in the improvementof their land36. The increase in the extent ofimproved land following enclosure encouragedthe rebuilding and extending of outbuildings,and the upgrading of farm houses on top of theoutlay required for fencing and landimprovement37. Many Cumberland farmers, awry contemporary commentator noted, literallybuilt themselves out of doors at this period38.This was because after 1815 prices collapsed.As a result loans had to be paid off from landwhose productivity had often deteriorated sobadly that, Blamire claimed, he would notaccept any of it even as a present because thepublic burdens on the land greatly exceeded theincome which could now be gained from it39.Extensive areas of land which had beencultivated temporary during the NapoleonicWars were returned to rough pasture andBlamire considered that very few farmers whohad cultivated inferior land at this time had notsuffered from doing so. An increasing numberof smaller owner occupiers were forced to sellout, causing a greater change in the structure ofrural society than at any time in livingmemory40. Their story, chronicled in auctionsand bankruptcy sales in local newspapers, hasyet to be investigated in detail.


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Parliamentary Enclosure in the Mid-nineteenth Century: No Crisis?The two phases of enclosure that we haveconsidered so far paralleled trends in the southof England although, as we have seen, withdifferent effects. In northern England, however,there was a third phase of Parliamentaryenclosure which did not occur in the south. Theadministrative costs of enclosure were greatlyreduced by the streamlined processesintroduced under the 1845 General EnclosureAct. This encouraged the intake of a significantarea in Cumbria during the late 1840s and1850s. Some of this land, along with landwhich had been enclosed earlier in thenineteenth century, was improved by means ofunder-soil drainage. There is a possibility thatwhere extensive under-drainage occurred insome smaller catchments like the Troutbeckand Kent valleys, it may have caused morerapid runoff and an increase in flooding. Bythis time, however, the area under crop inCumbria had diminished markedly and the ruraleconomy had shifted to an emphasis oncommercial livestock production, encouragedby the spread of the railway network whichprovided improved access to the markets ofnorthern industrial centres and even London41.Mid-nineteenth century enclosure is less likelyto have been associated with environmentalproblems as enclosure in earlier times as it wasnot associated with the expansion of cultivationbut the improvement of pasture: significant soilerosion is less likely to have occurred. From1876 the better regulation of survivingcommons appeared as an alternative toenclosure as official attitudes became lessfavourable towards dividing them.

Upland Parliamentary EnclosureLandscapes: a Modern Crisis?From the late nineteenth century, however,agriculture became less profitable and therewas a gradual withdrawal from the uplands.The amalgamation of holdings led to theabandonment of many upland farmsteads and,in the second half of the twentieth centuryfalling profits and rising labour costs caused a

general reduction in the maintenance of thelandscapes created by parliamentary enclosure.Hedges were no longer laid, stone walls wereallowed to fall into disrepair; drainage systemsbecame choked allowing coarse sedges toinvade the allotments. Frequently, where aboundary wall separated a surviving commonfrom an area of parliamentary enclosure it isimpossible to tell from the vegetation whichland is an enclosed allotment and which isunenclosed common suggesting that ifimprovements were indeed carried out on theland they have long ceased. This deteriorationof a landscape once laid out so carefully andregularly by the commissioners and theirsurveyors represents the final 'landscape crisis'associated with parliamentary enclosure.

ConclusionWas Parliamentary enclosure then associatedwith a crisis for upland landscapes andcommunities? For Cumbria, at particularperiods, in certain respects, in specific locationsand for particular landowners the answer is acautious, qualified 'yes'. Cautious and qualifiedbecause, as this paper has attempted to show,there is much they we still do not know aboutsociety and land use in the northern uplandseven at this comparatively recent period.

As crises go this may seem a fairly tame andunspectacular one, not the stuff that newspaperheadlines are made of. But this may be becausewe are close enough to it to appreciate itscomplexity and variability at a small scale.Possibly other landscape crises, when studied atthis level of detail, might tend to lose coherencetoo and break up into smaller-scale, morecomplex patterns. Cumbrian society, whileundoubtedly being changed in some respects bythe impact of enclosure nevertheless displayedimpressive continuity.


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Footnotes1Potter, C., Simmons, I., White, R., Williamson,T. & Winchester, A.J.L., (2001) 'The foot andmouth disease outbreak, 2001: theconsequences for the rural landscapes ofBritain', Landscapes 2 pp.3-28.2Burgess, C. (1985) 'Population, climaticchange and upland settlement', In Spratt, D. &Burgess, C. (eds.) Upland Settlement in Britain:the Second Millennium BC and After. BritishArchaeological Reports, British Series,(Oxford), pp.195-219.3Parry, M.L. (1978) Climatic Change,Agriculture and Settlement. Folkestone. Grove,J.M. (1988) The Little Ice Age, (London).4The literature on parliamentary enclosure andits social impacts is huge but the classic volumeis Hammond, J.L. & B. (1911) The VillageLabourer. (London) For more recent surveys ofthe long-running debate see: Allen, R.C. (1992)Enclosure and the Yeoman. The AgriculturalDevelopment of the South Midlands 1450-1850(Oxford), Neeson, J.M. (1993) Commoners:Common Rights, Enclosure and Social Changein England 1700-1820 (Cambridge) , Mingay,G.E. (1997) Parliamentary Enclosure inEngland: an Introduction to its Causes,Incidence and Impact (London.). For a recentdiscussion of the landscape impact ofparliamentary enclosure in southern Englandsee: Chapman, J. & Seeliger, S. (2001)Enclosure, Environment and Landscape inSouthern England (Stroud).5Elliott, G. (1973) 'Field systems of northwestEngland', In Baker, A.R.H & Butlin, R.A.(Eds.) Studies of Field Systems in the BritishIsles, (Cambridge) pp.41-92. Tyson, B. (1992)'Murton Great Field near Appleby: a case studyof the piecemeal enclosure of a common fieldin the mid eighteenth century', Transactions ofthe Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarianand Archaeological Society, 92 pp.116-82.6Winchester, A.J.L (2000) The Harvest of theHills. Rural Life in Northern England and theScottish Borders 1400-1700. (Edinburgh)pp.68-73.

7Appleby, A.B. (1978) Famine in Tudor andStuart England. (Liverpool).8Whyte, I.D. (2003) Transforming Fell andValley: Parliamentary Enclosure and theLandscape in North West England. (Lancaster)pp.18-21. Whyte, I.D. (2000) 'Patterns ofparliamentary enclosure of waste in Cumbria: acase study from north Westmorland', LandscapeHistory, 22 p.84.9C.E. Searle, 'Customary tenants and theenclosure of the Cumbrian commons'. NorthernHist 29 (1993), 126-53. J.D. Marshall,'Agrarian wealth and social structure in pre-industrial Cumbria', Econ Hist Rev 33 (1980),pp.503-21.10R.W. Hoyle, 'An ancient and laudable custom:the definition and development of tenant rightin north western England in the sixteenthcentury', Past and Present 116 (1987), pp.24-55.11A.J.L. Winchester, 'Wordsworth's 'PureCommonwealth'? Yeoman dynasties in theEnglish Lake District, c.1450-1750', ArmittLibrary Journal. 1 (1998), pp.86-113. Searle,Customary economy, pp.106-33.12Searle, Customary economy, p.128.13Searle, Customary economy, pp.147-5114Searle, Odd corner, p.4915Marshall, Agrarian wealth, p.202, Searle,Odd corner, pp.54, 68.16Winchester, Pure commonwealth, p.92.17Searle, C.E. (1986) Custom, class conflict andagrarian capitalism: the Cumbrian customaryeconomy in the eighteenth century. Past andPresent 110 pp.106-33.18Winchester, A.L.L (2000) op.cit. pp. 78-84.19Whyte, I.D. (2003) op.cit. pp. 9-10.20Ibid pp. 34-35.21Searle, C.E. (1993) Customary tenants andthe enclosure of the Cumbrian commons.Northern History 29 pp. 126-53.


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22Bouch, C. & Jones, G. P. (1962) A ShortEconomic and Social History of the LakeCounties 1500-1830. (London.).23Select Committee on Agriculture, House ofCommons Parliamentary Papers 1833 V p.305,para 6612.34Whyte (2000) op.coit. pp.26-7.35Select Committee on Agriculture, House ofCommons Parliamentary Papers 1833 V p. 324para 6948. Anon (1869) Lancaster Records orLeaves from Local History 1801-1860,(Lancaster) p.81.36Select Committee on Agriculture, House ofCommons Parliamentary Papers 1833 V p310para 6718.37Select Committee on Agriculture, House ofCommons Parliamentary Papers 1833 V p.303-26.38Dickinson, W. (1852) 'On the farming ofCumberland', Journal of the Royal AgriculturalSociety of England 13 p.277.39Select Committee on Agriculture, House ofCommons Parliamentary Papers 1833 V p.325para 6963.40Select Committee on Agriculture, House ofCommons Parliamentary Papers 1833 V p.310p.308 para 6697-8.41Shepherd, M.E (2003) From Helgill to BridgeEng. Aspects of Economic and Social Changein the Upper Eden Valley 1840-95. (Hatfield)pp.155-71.


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Crisis, Continuity and the 'Natural Frame': aspects ofAnglo-Saxon settlement Tom WilliamsonUniversity of East Anglia

IntroductionMany British archaeologists are hostile tostudies of past societies that place particularemphasis on their environmental context. Suchperspectives are widely castigated as being'environmentally determinist' and consideredless appropriate or worthwhile than, forexample, attempts to the recover pastperceptions of the physical environment. Butwe have perhaps gone too far in our neglect ofwhat I would call the 'large geographies' of thepast. In the past, as in the present, lives weremoulded by forces which were often distant,complex and beyond the understanding of theindividual, as much as by those influenceswhich were local and familiar. Moreover, suchforces were often more closely related to, andstructured by, the natural environment than isthe case today. Soils and climate were of vitalimportance in shaping societies: but so too wastopography - the configuration of land-forms.

Scholars working in the field of English localand regional history, especially those associatedwith the Leicester School, have shown moreinterest in relating past societies to theirtopographic context than most archaeologists.Several have adopted some version of AlanEveritt's 'river and wold' model. According tothis, the earliest settlements in most districtswere located in major valleys, where there wereabundant supplies of water and meadow land,and where the more fertile soils were to befound. The higher ground between majorvalleys - towards the watersheds - was settledlater, and usually less densely. These areas wereoften characterised by heavy clays or acidsands, and lacked good supplies of runningwater. But they were, above all, spatially

marginal to the core areas of settlement. Whenpopulation levels were low these uplands wereoccupied by tracts of woodland or pasture,exploited perhaps by seasonally-occupiedfarmsteads. As population rose they were moreintensively used and came to be permanentlysettled, but they remained marginal, andconstituted cut-off points in patterns ofcommunication and interaction. They were, forexample, on the edges of the territories of themarket towns which, in the course of themiddle ages, developed on the valley floors.Indeed, even in the nineteenth century,according to some research, major watershedscoincided with marriage horizons. Over time, inother words, social territories tended tocorrespond to drainage basins and, while theprecise character of such territories mightchange over time - from tribal group, to royalestate, to administrative district or urbanhinterland - their outer boundaries displayedmuch stability.

Landscapes, Spatial Patterns andSocietiesThis is, of course, only a model - a theoreticalstructure, good to think with - and should notbe taken too far. To be used effectively it alsorequires more elaboration, and more subtlety. Inparticular, we need to recognise that highwatersheds were not the only topographic 'cut-off points' in patterns of social interaction. Forexample, in their upper courses rivers mightform the core areas of territories, but as theyapproached the sea and became wider, andharder to cross, they tended to becomeboundaries between societies dwelling on eitherbank. And the configuration of the coast mightalso encourage, or discourage, movement or


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contact between particular areas, adding afurther layer of complexity. Versions of theEveritt model have been applied in a numberstudies of local societies and also, in the workof Peter Warner and Harold Fox especially, tothe study of medieval settlement. It issurprising that it has not been more widely usedin archaeology, and especially in theinterpretation of patterns in prehistoric, andearly historic, material culture.

Debate has continued for many decades overthe interpretation of the new modes of burial,and new forms of material culture, whichappeared in lowland Britain in the fifth andsixth centuries, after the collapse of the Romanempire. Both the cemeteries themselves, andthe material culture accompanying theindividual burials, have close parallels inScandinavia and North Germany, and they havetraditionally been interpreted as signalling thearrival in England of new people from theseareas. Such a movement of people is, of course,described in the earliest written accounts wehave of the period, those provided by Bede andthe Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. To somearchaeologists, the character and volume of thismaterial clearly indicates a true 'folkmovement', on such a scale that indigenouspeople were largely displaced across greatswathes of south eastern Britain. Others,however, have argued that the archaeologicalevidence need indicate no more than a take-over by a relatively small but powerful elite,whose social dominance ensured thesubsequent acculturation of the indigenouspopulation. The most extreme version of thelatter view, as put forward for example byRichard Hodges, comes close to dismissing anynecessary association between the movement ofpeople and changes in material culture,regarding the latter as representing instead theadoption of a north European 'cultural package',a new form of cultural identity, by societies insouthern Britain, regardless of their ethnicorigins. Certainly, few archaeologists wouldnow see the relationship between ethnicity, andmaterial culture, in the kind of simple anddirect way envisaged by such early twentieth-

century archaeologist as Kossina. Many acceptthat ethnic identities can be actively chosen, bygroups or individuals, rather than beingnecessarily 'inherited' in a mindless or passiveway.

In these debates, little attention has been paid tothe character of the marked spatial patternsexhibited by 'Anglo-Saxon' cemeteries andmaterial culture, patterns which an earliergeneration read with more confidence. Earlytwentieth-century scholars often interpreted thedistribution of cemeteries in terms of the routesof immigration, and the pace of conquest, ofthe barbarian invaders, as they passed alongrivers, Roman roads and in particularprehistoric long-distance trackways like theIcknield Way, their movement constrained bysuch physical obstacles as uncleared forest andundrained fens and swamps. The forests havelargely disappeared from the imagination ofarchaeologists - everyone agrees that RomanBritain was already extensively cleared andsettled - and some of the suggested paths ofmovement used by the invaders are also nowbeing questioned. Recent work has, forexample, cast doubt on whether the IcknieldWay or the Berkshire Ridgeway ever reallyexisted as early trackways, arguing that thesewere both, in large measure, medieval or post-medieval inventions. But more importantly, it isdifficult to use the distribution of cemeteries inthis kind of simple way given that most areonly partially excavated, and thus imperfectlydated: and it has also been shown that mostwere in use over very extended periods, ofseveral decades or more, and their grave goodsindicate continuing contacts not only withcommunities living in other parts of Englandbut, indeed, with the continental homelands.Rather than showing patterns of conquest andmigration, in other words, they indicate insteadchronologically and spatially extended patternsof interaction and exchange. As Catherine Hillshas put it:

'People did not get into their boats and sail toEngland, never to return. The communities on


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both sides of the North Sea remained incontact. The connections between them couldhave owed as much to the exchange of goodsand ideas through trade, religion, and politicalrelationships as to migration.’

Traditionally, various early Anglo-Saxonarchaeological distributions have also beenexplained in tribal or ethnic terms. In particular,in certain parts of England - northern EastAnglia, the Midlands, and the north east - bothcremation, and inhumation with grave good,were practised in the fifth and sixth centuries,often in the same cemeteries; but in the southeast of England cremation was always rare, andinhumation the dominant rite. These differenceshave been considered by some to reflect thesettlement areas of the ethnic groups mentionedin the historical sources: the cremation areasrepresenting the territories occupied by theAngles, from southern Scandinavia, and theinhumation areas those occupied by the Saxons,from north Germany. A number of distinctiveartefacts have distributions which mirror, inbroad terms, these patterns, such as sleeveclasps, which are - like the cremation burials -largely restricted to northern East Anglia, theMidlands and the north east. Manyarchaeologists now place the word 'Anglian' ininverted commas when discussing this material,but such an affectation does no more thanindicate that the old 'ethnic' explanation havenot, so far, been replaced by anything morecogent.

One other feature of these distribution patternsis worthy of note. In the English Midlands, forthe most part, early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries arewidespread, at least on the more amenable soilsonto which settlement evidently retreated in thepost-Roman period. In the south of England, incontrast, there are a number of significant gapsin the distribution, large lacunae which asuccession of historians and archaeologists hasinterpreted as evidence for 'enclaves' ofRomano-British 'survival'.

These contrasts between the Anglo-Saxonarchaeology of the Midlands and north east,and of south eastern England, become muchmore explicable when we consider theirtopographic context. The Everitt / PhythianAdams model has already been outlined, but tothis we must add - given the fact that we aredealing with distributions with an internationaldimension - information about the character ofthe contemporary coastline. The essential pointhere is that the distribution of shoals, shallowsand mudflats ensures that boats coming acrossthe North Sea from Scandinavia can makelandfall on the coast of eastern England moreeasily to the north than to the south of the Stourestuary. This point - roughly, where theboundary between the modern counties ofEssex and Suffolk meets the cost - does notform a fixed barrier to coastal movement but,like the high watersheds, potentially representsa cut-off zone, an area of decreased socialinteraction.

With this modification of Everitt's model inmind, it immediately becomes evident thatthere is a close relationship between spatialpatterns in the material culture of early SaxonEngland, and the topographic frame. Thedistribution of 'Anglian' material simplycorresponds with the drainage basins of riversaccessed with ease from the North Sea; in theMidlands, the north east and in East Anglianorth of the Stour estuary. It is within thesedrainage basins that cremation cemeteries, and'Anglian' forms of material culture, are found.Moreover, the boundary of this 'cremation zone'is a sharp one, and corresponds with the majorwatershed running along the crest of theChiltern Hills, the East Anglian Heights, andthen - gradually becoming less defined, andmore diffuse - on into northern Suffolk.

'Anglian' culture thus represent areas which, inthe fifth and sixth centuries, enjoyed easycontacts with the North Sea world, contactswhich, as Hines has shown, continued wellbeyond the period of settlement, into the sixthand even seventh centuries. The societies in this


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region evidently embraced the material cultureof Sacndinavia, and to some extent thesecontacts were reinvigorated in the ninth centurywhen the main areas of Viking influence, asindicated for example by place name evidence- the east Midlands, northern East Anglia, northeast England - replicate closely the zone of'Anglian' culture. Similar topographicconstraints appear to have structured patterns ofcommunication and contact, and choices ofcultural identity, over a very long period oftime.

What of the areas of England lying to the southof the Chiltern watershed in the fifth and sixthcenturies, areas that generally eschewed the riteof cremation, and in some districts employed aburial rite which has left no archaeologicaltrace - like that which had been used by most ofthe Romano-British population? It isnoteworthy that in the immediate pre-Romanperiod this region had enjoyed close contactswith the Mediterranean world - wascharacterised by what an earlier generation ofarchaeologists used to call the 'Belgic culture',with its sprawling 'proto-urban' oppida, wheel-turned pottery, and wealthy burials featuringamphorae and other continental imports. Thedistribution of this late Iron Age material isclearly structured by the same topographicpatterns which seem to shape the key post-Roman distributions under discussion here:embracing south east England, Hertfordshire,Essex, but only the south west of Suffolk. Ifthe material culture of this zone exhibited closecontacts with France and the Mediterraneanworld in the immediate pre-Roman period, thenit seems plausible the its distinctive features inthe post-Roman period might also, to someextent at least, be explained in a similar way. Inhis context, one might query whetherinhumation with grave goods, the sole visibleburial rite employed in this region, was really amanifestation of an immigrant barbarianculture; and to what extent it developed withinthe late Roma world of the western Empire. Toquote again the words of Catherine Hills:

'The later fourth century saw the appearance inBritain and northern Gaul of inhumations

accompanied by weapons and belt fittings.Although these have often been interpreted asthe burials of German mercenary soldiers,there is not really any reason to see them inpurely ethnic terms …These burials may havecontributed to the development of the rite [ofinhumation with grave goods] seen throughoutwestern Europe and southern Britain betweenthe fifth and seventh centuries.’

ConclusionsThe recognition that these patterns inarchaeological data are structured by the kindsof topographic constraints discussed byhistorians like Phythian-Adams or Everitt hasimportant implications for our understanding ofearly Anglo-Saxon society and, indeed, of thecharacter of the Anglo-Saxon settlement itself.It suggests that the distribution of differentburial rites, and of certain kinds of artefact,reflect not the settlement areas of particularethnic groups, but long-term patterns of contactand exchange, and perhaps of the culturalallegiances derived from these. The Midlandsand northern East Anglia looked towards theNorth Sea and Scandinavia; the south east ofEngland maintained strong ties with the formerimperial lands across the channel. It is, indeed,a moot point how far the latter region was everreally drawn into the world of the barbariannorth in this period, or how far its culture reallydiffered, in the immediate post-Roman period,from that of Gaul.


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Poster Summary:'Connectivity in the Landscape: The ZoologicalSociety of London's conservation work atWhipsnade Wild Animal Park'

When people think of the Zoological Society ofLondon (ZSL), exotic species such as tigers andelephants immediately spring to mind. It is truethat ZSL does a great deal to conserve exoticwildlife, but we also have a long history ofworking to conserve native species andhabitats. UK conservation is one of ZSL's sixprincipal conservation programmes, and ourdiverse programme of UK conservation workincludes captive breeding (and subsequentrelease) of threatened species such ascorncrakes and field crickets, research into theecology, behaviour and genetics of rare Britishinsects, research into the decline of Britishhouse sparrows, monitoring the health of wildanimal populations (e.g. dormice and poolfrogs) and investigating the causes of wildanimal mortality (e.g. red kites and cetaceans).

ZSL does not just focus its efforts at the specieslevel. It has become apparent in recent yearsthat conservation must be implemented at thelandscape level in order to ensure the long-termviability of many populations of native species.Our two principal sites, London Zoo andWhipsnade Wild Animal Park, offer anexcellent opportunity to demonstrate bestpractice in nature conservation management.We have been striving not only to manage oursites effectively for British wildlife, but also tolink up with adjoining landowners to createconnectivity in the landscape.

Whipsnade Wild Animal Park occupies an areaof 245 hectares and offers a range of importanthabitats for wildlife including ancientwoodland, chalk downland and wetland. Thesite supports 20 mammal species and over 200bird species. The majority of the chalk

downland area is designated as a Site of SpecialScientific Interest, and is particularly importantfor wildlife. ZSL has recently received aCountryside Stewardship grant to link theexisting woodland areas within the site bystrategic planting of new woodland, gapping upexisting hedgerows and planting newhedgerows. In addition, a Woodland GrantScheme application has recently been approvedto manage the existing woodland for wildlifeand to educate the visiting public aboutpractical native species conservation throughinterpreting this work. The landscapeconnectivity theme has also been extendedoutside the artificial boundaries of the site, withtransboundary planting schemes beingdeveloped in conjunction with the NationalTrust at Dunstable Down to encourage bird andbat movement. Managing Whipsnade WildAnimal Park for the benefit native speciespresents ZSL with many interesting andunusual issues, for example how does grazingby bison, wallabies and other exotic mammalsaffect the composition of the chalk grasslandflora?

Our poster presentation will give a broadoverview of landscape-level conservationmanagement being implemented at Whipsnade,and will also highlight some of the uniqueissues we face when delivering conservation fornative species.

Crisis and Continuum in the Shaping of LandscapesLandscape Archaeology and Ecology, Volume 5, 2005

Edited by Ian D. Rotherham

ISSN 1354 - 0262

Printed by: B&B Press (Parkgate) Rotherham

Published by: Wildtrack Publishing, P.O. Box 1142, Sheffield, S1 1SZ

Supported by: South Yorkshire Biodiversity Research Group, Landscape Conservation Forum, HallamEnvironmental Consultants Ltd, Tourism Leisure and Environmental Change Research Unit at SheffieldHallam University, English Nature, Windgather Press

Price £15

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