A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside. Johnny Scott

considerable trouble to protect woodland by building massive ‘wood-banks’ round them to establish ownership and keep livestock and deer out, similar to those that survive in a number of places, such as Poundwood in Essex. Wood pastures were re-established, which combined grazing animals with widely spaced trees which had often been pollarded. (Pollarding is cutting the top out of a tree about three metres from the ground, above the height that livestock could get at the regrowth, and harvesting the rods and poles that grew from the stump in the same way as when coppicing.) There were also wooded commons or heaths, on which there were common rights for grazing cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. Pigs were an important part of the Anglo-Saxon farming system, and during the autumn and winter pigs were driven considerable distances to graze ‘pannage’, the beech mast or nuts, and acorns.

      THE HERITAGE OF PUCE NAMES

      These woodland grazing places were known as denns, the Saxon word for swine pasture, and this is the origin of place names ending in-den, such as Tenterden. Any place name with the prefix ‘Swill’, as in Swilland in Suffolk, or Swillington in West Yorkshire, and ‘Swin’, as in Swindon in Berkshire, Swingfield Miniss in Kent, Swinhoe in Northumbria or Swinton in North Yorkshire and Berwickshire, are all associated with keeping swine. The Saxons also left us a heritage of place names associated with woods: any word ending in‘-ley’, ‘-leigh’ (from the Saxon, leah) was once a settlement in a clearing of substantial woodland, as in Chiddingly in Sussex, Hadleigh in Essex; those ending in‘-hurst’ (Saxon, hyrsf) were beside a wood or large grove of trees, as in Sissinghurst in Kent. Names with ‘-field’ (Saxon, field) refer to an open space in sight of woodland, not a field in the modern sense. Places ending in ‘-shaw’ are derived from the Saxon sceaga, meaning a thin strip of woodland;‘-hanger’, as in Colehanger, from hangra, a wood on a slope, or ‘-grove’, as in Bromsgrove, from the Saxon graf.

      There is also every reason to believe that the Saxon nobles in the late Anglo-Saxon period had started to preserve deer in wooded, fenced parks on their estates for hunting, after the manner of the French and Normans. After all, there were family ties between France and England; Eadgifu, the sister of King Edmund I, was married to Charles III of France in AD 919 and her son, Louis IV of France, spent his early life in the English court. Hunting with hounds was the favourite pasttime among the nobles in France and Normandy, and King Edmund’s miraculous escape whilst entertaining envoys from East Anglia at his palace at Cheddar, described in the Catholic Encyclopaedia of 1913, substantiates the custom in Britain:

      … the king rode out to hunt the stag in Mendip Forest. He became separated from his attendants and followed a stag at great speed in the direction of the Cheddar cliffs. The stag rushed blindly over the precipice and was followed by the hounds. Edmund end eavoured vainly to stop his horse; then, seeing death to be imminent, he remembered his harsh treatment of St Dunstan [Edmund was in the process of banishing St Dunstan from court] and promised to make amends if his life was spared. At that moment his horse was stopped on the very edge of the cliff. Giving thanks to God, he returned forth with to his palace, called for St Dunstan and bade him follow, then rode straight to Glastonbury. Entering the church, the king first knelt in prayer before the altar, then, taking St Dunstan by the hand, he gave him the kiss of peace, led him to the Abbot’s throne and, seating him thereon, promised him all assistance in restoring Divine worship and regular observance.

      Curiously enough, the enormous value of deer and their importance to the monarchy during the Middle Ages is the reason why Britain is unique in possessing a few remaining areas of ancient and semi-natural woodland. The fact that we have a handful of national treasures such as the New Forest, Ashdown Forest, Epping Forest and the Forest of Bowland, to name only a few, is due to the formation of Royal Forests by William the Conqueror immediately after the Norman Conquest in 1066. These Royal Forests were large areas of unenclosed countryside, consisting of a highly variable mixture of woodland, heath, grass, scrub and wetland, providing the optimum habitat for various game species, particularly deer, which were reserved for the sole use of the King. The word ‘forest’ did not mean an area of densely wooded land as it is understood today; it was derived from the Latin forestis silva, which is literally translated as ‘outside wood’, but in the context of Royal Forests was interpreted as land outside common law.

      The Forest Laws introduced by the Normans were designed to protect the habitat and certain designated species within Royal Forests. Offences under Forest Law were divided into two categories: trespass against the vert, the vegetation of the forest, and venison, the game. The first, and in many ways the most serious, was creating any disturbance to the habitat of game. Vert, from the Latin viridis, meaning green, was every tree, underwood or bush, growing in a forest and bearing green leaves which might provide cover or feed for deer. It was of two sorts: the over vert, or haut bois, and the nether vert, or sous bois — mature trees and underwood. Bracken and heather were not accounted vert. Trees which bore fruit, such as oaks and beech, were accounted as special vert, and these could not be felled in any man’s freehold within the limits of a Royal Forest except by permission of the foresters and verderers. Later on, in the thirteenth century, by an Ordinance of the Forest, freeholders dwelling within a forest could not cut housebote nor haybote (firewood) within their own woods without the permission of the foresters.

      THE WORD ‘FOREST’ DID NOT MEAN AN AREA OF DENSELY WOODED LAND AS IT IS UNDERSTOOD TODAY; IT WAS DERIVED FROM THE LATIN FORESTIS SILVA, WHICH IS LITERALLY TRANSLATED AS ‘OUTSIDE WOOD’, BUT IN THE CONTEXT OF ROYAL FORESTS WAS INTERPRETED AS LAND OUTSIDE COMMON LAW.

      The five animals of the forest protected by law were the hart, the hind of red deer, boar, hare and wolf. There were two other categories: the beasts of chase, the buck and doe, fallow deer, fox, marten and roe deer; and the beasts and fowls of warren, the hare, coney, rabbit, pheasant and partridge. The rights of chase and of warren, i.e. to hunt such beasts, were often granted to the nobility and clergy as gifts or for a fee. The King owned the game in his forests, but not necessarily the land; in some, such as the Forest of Dean, he owned the land, in others, it belonged to someone else but was subject to Forest Law.

      A Royal Forest could be extended at the whim of a monarch to cover a colossal area; Waltham Forest, for example, which included Epping Forest, sprawled over 25,000 hectares and took in numerous manors, farms, hamlets, villages and the town of Waltham Abbey, all within the legal boundary of the Royal Forest. The landowners and farmers within a Royal Forest were forbidden to convert their land from pasture into arable or cut down their woods and were proscribed under Forest Law by the legal terms assart, purpresture and waste. These covered making an enclosure which would not allow the larger game to pass freely in or out of the land; causing any encroachment to the detriment of the forest, or which was hurtful to the vert or venison; spoiling and destroying the coverts or pastures of a forest by cutting down trees or lopping them, or by ploughing any meadow or grass land. All offenders who made assarts, purprestures or waste were fined, and if the land was their own freehold it was taken into the King’s hands until the fine was paid. Disafforested lands on the edge of the forest were known as the purlieu; agriculture was permitted here, but game that strayed onto the purlieu was still the property of the King. Furthermore, inhabitants of the forest were forbidden to bear hunting weapons or keep either gaze hounds or scent hounds; mastiffs were permitted as watchdogs, but they had to be expeditated by having one of the toes of a forepaw amputated to prevent them from hunting.

      As some mitigation of these hardships and disabilities, concessions were made which gave inhabitants of the forest, depending on their location, a variety of strictly controlled rights, some of which exist to this day: estover, the right of taking firewood; pannage, the right to pasture swine in the forest; turbary, the right to cut turf or peats for fuel; various other rights of pasturage known as agistment; and harvesting the products of the forest in the form of nuts and berries. Abridging the rights in the Royal Forests was an