A Certain Wood...

"A certain wood called Helewode which contains 80 acres by estimate. Of the underwood of which there can be sold every year, without causing waste or destruction, 11 acres of underwood which are worth 55 shillings at 5 shillings an acre"

                             - Survey of the Bishop of Ely's Estates, 1356

                             (occasioned by the Bishop being wanted for murder).

And Hayley Wood is still there today. Would you like to come and see?

To get there we must park on the roadside then walk down this lane. The hedge on the right, as we look at it here, has been in existence for at least 800 years, as is evidenced by many maps that have been drawn down through the centuries. As old hedges mature they come to include more and more hedgerow species and there's a feast of berries here for birds in winter time.

Once within the wood you may be surprised to find it divided up by dead straight "rides" which, though they may look modern, have been here since medieval times and were vital to the life of the wood, as they divided it into separate plots and provided the routes by which the timber could be extracted.

Whereas modern forestry plants trees, lets them grow, then fells the lot of 'em, medieval foresters were (as I've explained before) more subtle, more sustainable. Parts of the wood are still treated in the old way for conservation purposes - some trees are felled, but others are left to grow into fine trees for timber. Where a tree is cut down....

...it re-generates itself by sending up shoots from the old stump. These shoots are the "underwood" mentioned in the quote at the beginning of this post, which were harvested on a seven-year rotation. The light poles thus obtained were used for making hurdles which were used for penning sheep at night, for making the framework for wattle-and-daub cottage walls and all manner of light tasks. And, most importantly, they'd worked out that this harvest could take place "without waste or destruction" of the woodland.

When the wood is opened up in this way, more sunlight reaches the ground and wild flowers benefit tremendously in the next couple of years before the wood grows up again. Hayley Wood has one rather special flower which I can show you several pictures of.

At first sight you might think it's a Cowslip....or maybe a Primrose. You wouldn't be far wrong, but it's actually an Oxlip. They occur in suitable habitat throughout Europe, but in England are restricted to a narrow band stretching through Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire. So here we're at the western extremity of its range.

The Oxlip was first described by John Ray in 1660, but in the following years people began to think that he was mistaken and the Oxlip was just a hybrid between a Cowslip and a Primrose. This state of affairs persisted till 1842 when a naturalist called Henry Doubleday was wandering near the village of Great Bardfield and wondering at the splendour of the fields of Oxlips, as many others must have done.

Doubleday, however, noticed something which everyone else had overlooked - there were no Primroses growing anywhere nearby - and you can't have hybrids of plants which are not present! He therefore concluded that John Ray must have been right all along. And he wrote a letter to Charles Darwin about it. The great man found that a cross between a Cowslip and a Primrose did give a very similar looking plant, one that today is known as a False Oxlip, but those growing around Bardfield were true Oxlips, as are those growing in Hayley Wood.

We met a couple who'd driven down from Birmingham just to see the Oxlips, which makes me feel guilty for all the years when I haven't bothered to make even the short journey from home. There were other flowers there to enjoy as well...

... a few violets here and there...

....our friends, the Wood Anemones, growing along with Celandines, though not in such profusion as in the last post...

.... and, of course, plenty of English Bluebells. But I'm told there are even more of them at nearby Gransden Wood. We'll go there just as soon as we find our way back to the car.

Which leaves me just one thing to find out concerning that opening quotation - Was the Bishop of Ely ever tried for his crimes, or did he get away with murder?

Take care