Introduction to woodland and forestry

Woodland is an important feature in the landscape of south-east Shropshire. The Wyre Forest is the largest single area of woodland, but there are also extensive areas of tree cover in Kinlet and Stottesdon as well as along stream valleys elsewhere. Woodland today has been shaped by human activities going back many hundreds of years. Woodland has always been important; trees provided timber for building, bushwood for firewood, grazing for animals and sport for hunters. The balance of these has however has changed over the ages as a result of management.

Woodland Management

Woodland that has not been altered by human activity is known as wildwood; apart from a few small patches in Scotland, such this woodland ceased to exist in Britain many centuries ago. The most characteristic form of management is coppicing. It is based on the principal that if a broad-leafed tree is cut down, it will shoot again from the stump and regenerate, provided browsing animals are controlled and sufficient time is left between fellings. The entire wood can be felled in one operation or some trees left to grow to a greater diameter. Coppicing-with-standards is essentially this form of management but where some trees are allowed to grow from acorns straight to full maturity. The alternative to coppicing is high forest, where all the trees are allowed to mature. Typically they are then clear-felled in one operation and replaced by new saplings.

Woodland can yield different types of products. The underwood normally refers to species such as hazel or holly (although it could include oak); these give thin rods which could be woven into hurdles, baskets or panels. They also could be bound into bundles and used for firewood. Species such as oak can produce a variety of products if coppiced, but historically the most important was cordwood; wood a couple of inches in diameter that was turned into charcoal. Mature trees yielded timber, used for building.

Woodland is also important for animals. For wild animals such as deer, it is their native habitat; particularly in the Middle Ages, woods were carefully managed to provide deer for hunting. However, many other animals can also graze in woods, particularly in clearings. Pigs were frequently allowed to enter woods in the autumn to feed on acorns; the custom known as pannage. However, grazing animals will also destroy young trees and so it was not possible to simultaneous allow uncontrolled grazing and produce young coppiced wood. This problem could be solved either by dividing a wood into compartments and excluding animals from areas where trees would be vulnerable to browsing, or by pollarding. Here, the tops of the trees were cut off above the height to which an animal could reach. New stems could then safely grow whilst the animals grazed below.

Prehistoric and Roman Woodland

At the end of the last ice age, the whole of the country would largely have been covered in woods. Although settled farming first became properly established in Neolithic times, substantial wood clearance started to occur in the Bronze Age around 2000BC. This continued apace in the Iron Age until by Roman times the amount of woodland was probably similar to that found today. It is difficult to get more than a fragmentary picture of the process of woodland clearance; however, light fertile soils would have been more attractive for farming than heavy clay soils, just as today. Consequently, it is reasonable to suppose that at a very general level, poor quality land today that is wooded would have been woodland in earlier periods. Whilst in Neolithic times most woodland would have been wild-wood, left entirely to its own devices, by Roman times it is plausible that most woodland would have been managed for a combination of grazing, hunting and wood production.

Anglo-Saxon Woodland

At the end of the Roman period, the population fell sharply and much land ceased to be cultivated. As a consequence, much was recolonised by trees, as secondary woodland. The Wyre Forest appears to have been that tract of land in mentioned in an 8th Century Worcestershire Anglo-Saxon charter as Weogorena Leage, the wood of the Weogoran, west of the Severn. Corresponding documents do not exist for Shropshire but place name evidence shows that by the time of the Saxon occupation of Shropshire, in about 700AD, woodland extended beyond the forest’s current boundaries to cover Highley, Billingsley, Chorley and Glazeley; the –ley element in these names is likely to indicate a woodland clearing. As the population recovered, woodland clearance again began; this work was to continue, with a few interuptions, until the 13th Century. However, woodland carried its own value, for rough grazing, as a source of wood and for hunting. It is possible to interpret the pattern of land-owning that existed in middle and late Saxon times as attempts to ensure that large estates at Chetton, Morville, Stottesdon and Kinlet all had a share in the Wyre Forest. Domesday notes the presence of woodland in Cleobury, Stottesdon and Highley, perhaps reflecting the use of this resource for activities such as grazing.

There can be little doubt that parts of the Wyre Forest were set aside for hunting; indeed this would be compatible with other activities such as underwood and timber production if properly managed. It is possible that at some point the entire forest was a single hunting estate belonging to the rulers of Mercia; however, by the time of the Domesday book matters were more complicated. Ribbesford, in Worcestershire, which is likely to have included some of the south-eastern parts of the forest, had belonged to the priory of Worcester since around the 10th Century, although after the Conquest for a short period it belonged to the crown and the woodland associated with the manor was incorporated into a royal forest. Arley, now also in Worcestershire, belonged to a religious establishment at Wolverhampton. Alton, which probably included woods south and east of Cleobury Mortimer, was in private hands by the time of the Norman conquest. However, both Kinlet and Cleobury Mortimer were royal estates in 1066 and so the parts of Wyre in these manors were probably royal hunting grounds. Stottesdon may have had a share in the Wyre Forest; however, it seems to have been part of an estate belonging to the Earls of Mercia rather than the crown. Thus the forest was broken up amongst numerous owners, only one of which was the crown.

Apart from the Wyre Forest, there were other woods. The Shropshire Domesday survey records rather few woods and it is likely that significant under-reporting occurred. Domesday was essentially a taxation assessment; if a wood was not commercially exploited in some form or other, there would have been no reason to mention it. West of the Severn, woods are mentioned in Cleobury Mortimer,Chetton, Oldbury, Upton Cressett, Highley and Stottesdon, although, curiously not in Kinlet. The latter is unlikely to mean that there was no woodland in the parish; it is more likely that it was part of a former royal hunting estate. On the east of the Severn, Quatt, Alveley, Romsley, Nordley and Astley all had extensive woodlands but in 1086 none of these estates were in Shropshire.

Later Medieval Woodland

The work of woodland clearance was disrupted by the aftermath of the Norman Conquest, probably as it had been by Danish incursions in preceding centuries, but it soon resumed. It is difficult to tell how much woodland still existed at Domesday; it is notoriously difficult to convert measurements given in the survey into acreages. However, it is probably fair to assume that in Highley, Kinlet, Billingsley and the eastern parts of Stottesdon, there was signficant woodland that was still to be cleared. In the north of Highley, an area of wood-pasture called Higley Wood remained until the early 17th Century. Either side of it were a series of estates that never appear to have been part of the common fields of the village; Sturt, Jenkin’s Harries and Green Hall to the west, and Haslewells, Thatcher’s, Pountney’s, Barnards and Woodend to the east. These are plausibly woodland clearances dating from the 12th-14th Centuries. At that period, whilst some woodland was cleared by the community as a whole to be taken into the open fields, other areas were granted as private estates to individuals, to turn into their own farms. These were known as assarts. In Stottesdon, a similar pattern to that in Highley can be seen around Northwood and Chorley. The community of Earnwood seems to largely have been created by assarting. In Kinlet, there is documentary evidence of the process; an inquisition of 1304 speaks of “1 carcuate [about 60 acres] newly enclosed from the waste by Walter Hakelut”

As in Saxon times, there were pressures to ensure that woodland clearance did not go too far, in particular by the creation of enclosed parks. A park was fundamentally a deer farm, designed to ensure that there were sufficient animals to hunt and to supply venison for the table. It would be surrounded by a ditch and wooden fence, to stop the animals from escaping. There were sometimes deer leaps in the fence which allowed deer on the outside to jump in, but not to get out again. Within the park, there were frequently internal boundaries so the deer could be rotated from one part to another, to stop overbrowsing of trees. Their were also “launds”; open areas where deer could graze on grass. A parker would be responsible for the upkeep of the park and he might live at a house within the park that could also serve as a hunting lodge when the owner and his guests were staying. The park might be associated with a larger area of unenclosed wood over which the lord had hunting rights; a chace. If the chace belonged to the crown it was termed a forest. “Forest” was simply a legal term; much medieval forest was essentially tree-less.

Locally, the chace of Wyre belonged to the Mortimer family. The first record of an associated park is in 1225, when Henry III gave Hugh de Mortimer 10 does from his forest at Feckenham for Earnwood Park. By the start of the 14th Century the chace of Wyre was also served by parks based on Cleobury and Bewdley. In 1274, the jurors of Stottesdon complained how Roger de Mortimer destroyed the fences designed to keep the deer within their parks and the chace of Wyre, to extend the area over which he could hunt. In this case, the fences around the chace of Wyre were probably the property boundaries between the parts of the forest in Mortimer’s ownership and those of his neighbours. Mortimer was trying to claim hunting rights over the entire woodland area, regardless of who actually owned the land. This had as its basis laws introduced by William the Conquer to protect royal hunting rights. It is unlikely that Mortimer was able to uphold his claims; the ownership of the forest as a whole was as fragmented as it had been in Saxon times. Indeed in subsequent years when the Mortimer parks were temporarily in royal hands, it is apparent they were frequently the targets of mass poaching raids, sometimes organised by neighbouring landowners.

Whilst the Mortimer parks associated with the Wyre Forest were the largest and best documented local parks, other existed. By 1296, Nicholas de Segrave had a park in Kingswood, a part of his manor of Stottesdon in the Wyre Forest. There was also a park in Stottesdon itself at around this period, a little to the north of the main village. This may have at one time been associated the Woodhouse, which was close to it. In1353, this park in Stottesdon seems to be represented by a wood of six acres, recorded in an inquisition. The same document notes that the manor house in Stottesdon was in ruins, but it appears that the park and manorial complex and Kingswood was still thriving. It may be that the de Segrave family, absentee landlords, preferred to administer their manor from what amounted to a hunting lodge in the Wyre Forest than from a house in the centre of the settlement.

Not all medieval woodland was parkland. As noted above, in Highley around 130 acres of wood in the north of the parish was maintained as common wood-pasture. In Chorley, Common Heath, located in the far east of the township, sounds as though it was another area of communal grazing. In this case it seems that the grazing had been allowed to take precedent over trees, converting the area to heath. It may be significant that it was close to another area called Chorley Hay. A hay is typically an enclosed wood. Whilst it can be a deer park, it is possible that in this case the fence was to keep animals out, to allow uninterrupted growth of trees.

There is little evidence to indicate how extensively local woods were managed for timber and wood production. Coppicing was being practiced in the Wyre Forest by the 14th Century. In 1373/4 a fence was erected around a new “vallet” within Earnwood Park, in Kinlet. A vallet denotes an area where trees are felled regularly. Coppicing was also happening in smaller woods; in 1478 an area in Highley was known as Sturt Vallets. Occasionally there are records for the sale of underwood: in 1479/80 underwood worth £1 was sold from Midwinters wood in Chorley to three individuals from Kinlet and Stottesdon. Some wood is also likely to have been used for charcoal production. Le Colliers is a medieval place name in Kinlet and there were medieval ironworks in Billingsley and Chorley. However overall there is little evidence for regular sales of underwood in the 14th and 15th Centuries, although only a small number of accounts have been examined. Coppices are regularly mentioned in the 16th Century. Equally, the evidence for large-scale timber production is difficult to find. In 1373/4 25 trees were felled for repair of the fence of Earnwood Park but more usually when timber trees were sold, they had been blown over in gales. There was clearly some commercial wood and timber production from local woods and this was associated with coppicing. By the 16th Century it was widespread; it remains an open question as to how well developed it was at earlier periods.

Post-Medieval Woodland

The late 16th century was crucial for the development of the local woodland. By now, the fashion for hunting had gone; the parks were emptied of deer. There were growing pressures on the woods to provide timber for building and fuel for domestic and industrial uses. At the same time, landowners were keen to increase the amount of arable and grazing land. A 1565 survey of Earnwood notes how 40 acres of Bennes Vallets and Corbet’s Oak Vallets were “spoiled with cattle [grazing] for the want of inclosure”. Earnwood Park by this stage had been completely converted to farmland. Michael Drayton, a noted poet lamented the loss of trees in the Wyre Forest in verse; commercial coal mining first appeared in the area around 1600, stimulated by the shortage of firewood. With the growth of enclosure, the common wood-pastures were divided up between local landowners and turned into fields; Higley Wood suffered this fate just after 1615. Commercial woodland survived because of the growing commercial value of charcoal needed by the local iron industry. Elsewhere, the transformation of parks into pleasure gardens and ultimately whole landscapes fashioned for the benefit of the aristocracy, ensured the survival of amenity woods.

Coppicing resulted in almost all of commercial woods being divided into plots of between 25 to 100 acres, and regularly cropped at around 19 year intervals. Virtually the entire Wyre Forest was managed in this fashion. The main product was cordwood for charcoal. Deer vanished and did not return until some escaped from the park at Mawley Hall in the 19th Century; sheep, cattle and swine were henceforth confined to fields outside of the forest. Wood for charcoal was probably the main product of the commercial foresters until the late 18th Century. Despite the introduction of coal as a fuel in iron-making, there was still a market for charcoal for the production of high quality iron. As the cordwood market finally shrank it was replaced by that for oak bark. Whilst this had been sold since medieval times, the trade grew rapidly in the 18th Century as the bark was used in vast quantities by tanners. In the early 19th Century, the woods were the most profitable part of the Kinlet estate. The main products were oak poles, sold to timber merchants and the bark. The estate employed three full-time woodmen. They maintained the fences around the coppices, selected trees to be cut down, controlled the growth of underwood and supervised felling operations. The poles were often hauled to the Severn at Bargate to be taken away by water. The bark was stripped off the trees by women and children and sent to Bewdley, either be barge or cart. A variety of woodland crafts also flourished in Button Oak; for example, basket and besom making. Typically one or two families were employed in these crafts.

The parks of the Wyre Forest suffered contrasting fates. Earnwood and much of Bewdley were cleared and turned into farmland. Some of Cleobury Park became Lodge Farm in Neen Savage. However, much elsewhere became coppice. Indeed, areas which may have been originally kept as grazing such as the Lawns, in Kinlet or Nailings in Cleobury, seem to have become new coppice. Kinlet Park was turned into a vast backdrop for the new Kinlet Hall, built in 1728. The extent of the earliest landscaping for the hall is not known, but a map of 1782 clearly shows how geometrical plantations had been laid out on a hill behind the hall, centred around what may have been an obelisk. By 1812 this plantation had gone, but there is little doubt that many of the clumps of trees around Kinlet Hall were carefully planted, to enhance views, provide privacy or shelter from the wind or to provide cover for game and foxes.

The Kinlet account ledgers also provide evidence of changing fashions in woodland management. Since Tudor times, coppicing followed by natural regrowth had dominated. However, from the end of the 18th Century it is clear that the estate had its own tree nurserys, to provide new saplings and that these were then used to establish new plantations. Some of these may have been developed into coppices but it is likely that in many cases the intention was that all the trees would be allowed to grow to maturity before felling; high forest. Thus was modern forestry introduced. The estate account books also provide the first evidence for the cultivation of conifers, grown in plantations. Whilst documents are lacking for many other estates, there is evidence that these new practices were being more widely adopted. For example, in Chorley, Cowlsow near High Green was apparently farmland in around 1800. It now has a substantial number of beech trees, all of which appear to be around 200 years old.

Twentieth Century Woodland

As the 19th Century progressed, it is likely that the traditional small timber products became less attractive. Certainly the markets for both charcoal and bark would have declined, although both continued to be important commodities well into the 20th Century; in 1901 there were seven woodmen and woodcutters living in Kinlet. The coppicing process grew more complicated. The wood cutters would leave trees at many different stages of their development, so that a whole range of products would eventually come from felling a coppice, with diameters ranging across many inches. Increasingly after the First World War, traditional hardwoods were replaced by softwoods. As these do not regenerate, coppicing died out and high forest became the dominant management system. Most of the woods of the Kinlet Estate were sold in 1919 and eventually the Forestry Commission became the largest owner in the forest. Other substantial areas passed to local timber merchants such as Pains of Cleobury. After the Second World War the industry was mechanised with tractors and chain saws. Most recently there has been a modest swing back towards greater planting of hardwoods and managing to maintain wildlife. However, the Wyre Forest remains an important commercial forest, with woods being worked by Forest Enterprise and private owners.

Outside of the Wyre Forest, the main area of woodland is between Kinlet, Billingsley and Chorley. Although there is some conifer plantation here, there is also a significant amount of broadleaf. Most of the latter is, like the Wyre Forest, a SSSI. Stream valleys also carry significant wood coverage, although most of this is of little commercial value. There are also a few areas of small, commercial plantations.