The Way Through The Woods

Rainy old England. Even down here in the south of the country, which largely escaped the attentions of storm Babet, there seems to have been rain or showers every day for the past couple of weeks. But it's getting to the time of year when the first signs of autumnal colour should start to shine forth. Time to head for the woods.

Counter-intuitively, perhaps, we head down the A10 road towards London, turning off down a rabbit warren of minor roads till we reach White Stubbs Lane and attempt to find one of the two small car parks that give access to Bencroft Wood, Nut Wood and Westfield Grove. 

All these variously named patches of woodland join up and form the Broxbourne Woods National Nature Reserve.

In the vicinity of the road and the car parks, there's well surfaced and heavily signposted network of paths. We always visit during weekdays but I imagine that it must get busy here on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. 

But we'll leave behind these well worn routes and turn off along narrower, muddier paths that lead into the heart of the woodland - not that it's really remote and you'll still run into the occasional dog-walker or horse-rider, even during the week.

This is what we'd hoped to see - plenty of fungi. During a wet, soggy autumn they pop up everywhere, especially in woods, forests and plantations. I'm not going to try to identify them all as it's easy to make mistakes and I always forget them all by the next autumn anyway!

The only problem with photographing them - apart from the increasing difficulties of bending down and getting back up again - is that once you get your eye in you see them everywhere and it's easy to forget to photograph anything else.

I've recently been reading a book about fungi by the prodigiously knowledgeable and wildly eccentric Merlin Sheldrake which has further impressed upon me just how vital it is to have a thriving population of fungi in woodland areas. It looks as though these woods are doing OK, at least for the time being.

Our path has led us to the edge of the trees where the shafts of sunlight make me raise my head for a few moments. There are many meadows breaking up the tree cover and giving variety to the landscape.

But how did this pattern of land use come about, so close to London? Before the days of easy and efficient transport it was vital that the growing city had a nearby supply of timber (for house-building, ship-building, furniture-making and fuel) and of fresh milk. This part of Hertfordshire, with its heavy soils which could not easily be drained and ploughed, fitted the bill perfectly. And now, of course, it's part of the Metropolitan Green Belt and protected from large-scale development.

Heads down for more dainty mushrooms!

We met a woman who told us that there were "proper fairy-tale mushrooms, you know, the red ones with white spots" in a certain part of the wood - "in the place where I walk my dog". Hmmm....

Another person we met explained how, despite appearances, the reserve is under pressure in these modern times. The population around here has grown, is more mobile and now information is shared so easily by social media. Whereas there were once just a few local people picking mushrooms, there are now large numbers descending on the area. There is a theoretical limit imposed on how many 'shrooms you can take, but it's not enforced.

In spring there was a "secret" bluebell meadow, known only to a few. Then someone thought it was a good idea to mention it on national television, and irresponsible visitors trampled the area to get their "selfies".

Across the centre of the wood there's a wide, rough road that follows a dead straight line, crossing a couple of small streams. Absolutely ideal to ride motorbikes up and down! They'd been there at the weekend and churned up the path so much that we abandoned our plan to follow it, after I'd made a closer-than-intended inspection of Hertfordshire's heavy, ill-drained soils.

This old tractor has been here for many years. I photographed it some ten years ago, when there was slightly more of it than there is now.

Back to the fungi. I noticed that there were fewer of them as we got nearer to the road - was that the result of foraging or maybe just that the road follows drier ground which is less suited to the growth of fungi. Oh, but how did I forget this one...

The star of the show, the unmistakable Fly Agaric or amanita muscaria. It is poisonous and contains psychoactive substances. I always wondered if its association with elves and fairies is due to people eating it and hallucinating.

As usual the bracken beneath the trees is changing colour before the leaves. 

Despite its occasional problems it remains a wonderful place to wander and observe the changing seasons. With any luck we're on the path which will lead us back to the car.

*******

On the way home we passed this remarkable structure....

It stands in the village of Little Berkhamsted and is called Stratton's Tower. Admiral John Stratton had it built in 1789, allegedly so that he could see the ships on the Thames. It's made of old hand-made bricks which had been salvaged from a large house nearby. They are at least 250 years older than the tower itself. The idea that you might see ships from here is usually rubbished by all modern writers. But it is only 17 miles away as the crow flies, and you can easily see the towers of Canary Wharf from ground level a few miles north of here. So, with the height of his tower and a good telescope might Admiral Stratton have been able to at least see the masts of ships navigating the Thames?

Take care.

                                       

Blue

In our last post we explored Hayley Wood and I said we were moving on to Gransden and Waresley Woods to see the bluebells. It's really all one wood, though part is in Gransden and part in Waresley. A stream, which at this time of year is just a muddy dip in the woodland floor, marks the boundary between the two parishes. By the time we arrived the midday sun was shining brightly and the birds were singing.

Now, the Bishop of Ely: In my last post I quoted a bit about Hayley Wood from a survey of the Bishop's lands done in 1356, when he was wanted for murder. I said I needed to find out more.

The first thing to realise is that back in the fourteenth century the Fens surrounding the Isle of Ely were a wild and unruly place. The King had no power in this watery wilderness, which formed a hideaway for all kinds of outlaws and vagabonds. He relied on the Bishops of Ely to maintain some kind of order and they "ruled with a crozier of iron". 

In the early thirteen-fifties some of the Bishop's men burned down some houses which it turned out were owned by one Blanche of Lancaster. Blanche was a child at the time but had inherited her father's vast wealth. King Edward III had plans for Blanche to marry his third son, John, so burning down her houses was not a bright move. The King rebuked the Bishop and forced him to pay damages.

Soon after this the Bishop, Thomas de Lisle, had one of Blanche's servants murdered and the King retaliated by seizing all the Bishop's possessions and making him beg forgiveness. The survey of his properties was to enable the king to be sure he'd confiscated everything.

Blanche went on to marry the king's son, who is known to history as John of Gaunt, when she was just fourteen. She bore him seven children, three of whom survived infancy, including one who later became King Henry IV. She died from the Black Death when she was only in her early twenties.

Take care.

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

Stars Beneath The Trees

To the Medieval mind woodlands were places of mystery, though they also knew their economic worth. We're off to the woods today to see if we can find beauty, a little history and maybe even some of that mystery.

The wood I have chosen to explore on this fine day is Hoddesdon Park Wood in Hertfordshire, which is within a larger area known as Broxbourne Woods, parts of which are a National Nature Reserve. The Hornbeam trees are just coming into leaf and look spectacular as the sun shines through the delicate new leaves.

To reach the wood we need to walk down this long, straight footpath. Believe it or not this was once one of the most important roads in England, built by the Romans to link London with Lincoln and York. We don't know what the Romans called it, but it later became known as Ermine Street, taking its name from the Earningas tribe, whose land it crossed.

And where did the Earningas reside? Well, exactly where I do, on the boundary of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. The village of Arrington, just down the road from me, was once Earningas-ton; strange how these old names have changed over the centuries. But once we've crossed this shallow ford we're in Hoddesdon Park Wood itself.

Landscape historians would classify this wood as an ASNW, or Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland. "Semi-natural" because human influence has done much to shape it for several centuries. "Ancient", in this case, means that woodland has existed in this place since before 1600 (though not the same trees, obviously). Prior to 1600 there was so much natural woodland that nobody ever planted woods, so anything in existence then had probably been like that since trees recolonised these islands after the last ice age. Pretty old then - but the title of this post said something about "stars".

Here we are: a Wood Anemone, star of the woodland floor, blooming early before the leaves appear on the trees blocking the sunlight. They are not rare; you find small numbers in many woods around here.

In the English climate they spread very slowly - about six feet (2 metres) every century - so if you find a lot of them then you can be sure it's an ancient woodland.

And there are certainly plenty of them here, spreading all along the eastern and southern part of the wood, where more sunshine gets in. It's a member of the buttercup family and is also known by the old name of Windflower, perhaps because it grows in the more open parts of the wood where there is more sunshine - and wind. They also vibrate prettily in the breeze, just like twinkling stars.

To add to the fun you can search for occasional pink flowers. These occur naturally and I'm told that some are tinged with yellow or blue, though I've never seen any.

Wild flowers like these are just one of the more obvious differences between old woods and new plantations for, while it's easy enough to plant trees, it's impossible to re-create the complex mosaic of life which gives these ancient woodlands their special character and value.

It's only very recently that scientists have begun to unravel the complicated relationships between trees and fungi. If you want to know how trees cooperate and talk to each other, you need to read The Hidden Life Of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, which is most readable explanation for the non-scientist. But there's still a good deal of mystery lurking here: the complete story of what mosses, lichens, insects and plants like Wood Anemones play in the woodland ecosystem may yet be undiscovered.

What we do know about is the history of this wood; not as much as we'd like to know, but far more than we know about many others.

It's first mentioned in a document of 1277 when it belonged to the Brassington family, who owned much of the land around here. And the ownership of this parcel of land can be traced right through to the modern day. But far more interesting is how the wood was used in the past.

For woods were not just nice places to wander and relax, but were a resource which was exploited by the local population. And, since that exploitation went on for years and years, we can assume that it was a sustainable system which did the wood no long-term harm.

Large parts of the wood were coppiced; that is the trees were cut off near to ground level, which does not kill them but encourages them to send up many straight poles from the remaining stump. These could be used for a variety of purposes and could be harvested every ten years on a rotational system. This frequent cutting back allowed light in to the forest floor which encouraged the growth of wild flowers. That still happens today where coppicing is undertaken for conservation purposes.

But that's not all. We also learn from the historical record that ten of "the best and fairest trees" were left on every acre of land (about 0.4 hectares) to grow into timber trees for building (and shipbuilding in some places). The bushes and fallen branches were left for the local villagers to collect as firewood.

And that's by no means the end of the wood's value - nuts and berries were collected as food, leaves were fed to animals, pigs were turned into some woods to feast on the acorns, deer and wild boar were hunted, young birds of prey were taken for falconry and so on and so on. But nobody ever planted a tree; they just relied on the trees' ability to renew the woodland naturally.

There are earthen banks within the wood which are thought to date back to the Iron Age and that system of management carried on till the nineteenth century. There's even an ancient moat within the wood which is probably the site of the head forester's house - they were important people back in their day.

All too soon it's time to end our little ramble into the beauty and history of this fragment of the British landscape. The Wood Anemone show is one which passes most people by; if you look online you'll find plenty of information about "bluebell woods", "bluebell walks" and even a "Bluebell Railway", but these galaxies of tiny white stars are largely ignored. Mid-April is the time to go out and search for them.

Take care.