[Sca-cooks] Back to the Forest! Fwd: RE: forestry reference?

[Laura C. Minnick]

Hi there!
A day or two ago I mentioned that Countess Morwyn had been doing some 
research on forests and forestry- well this is what I got back from her- Enjoy!

>The book I've been referring to most is _Trees & Woodland in the British 
>Landscape: The Complete History of Britain's Trees, Woods & Hedgerows_ by 
>Oliver Rackham, first published in 1976 and revised 1990, ISBN 
>1-84212-469-2 (paperback). I also am reading another book by Mr Rackham, 
>_The Illustrated History of the Countryside_ (2003, ISBN 0-297-84335-4) 
>which is a wider look at all the types of landscape in Britain, and how 
>they have been used and managed throughout the centuries. I bought both of 
>these through David Brown / Oxbow Books (dangerous place!). Rackham 
>describes how the forces of nature, the shape and composition of land 
>forms, the particular plants and animals and the actions of man, have 
>interacted since the end of the last Ice Age to shape the landscape 
>through the millennia. He brings together archaeological evidence, 
>historical documents, a knowledge of plants and animals, and a lifetime of 
>observing the land, walking the land and seeing what is actually there, to 
>give a history that is rich with detail and specifics, related directly to 
>what is still to be seen now. The majority of what he has to say is about 
>the SCA's time period.
>
>These books have given me a real jolt, showing me just how different 
>Britain is from America (especially here on the west coast), and how many 
>of my / our assumptions and things we think we know are wrong. Some things 
>that have made a particular impression on me:
>
>The end of the last Ice Age in Britain, when the ice finally retreated 
>from the land, was only 10,000 years ago. Man has been there, shaping the 
>landscape, for half of that time. There is no piece of this land that man 
>has not set foot on.
>
>Every piece of land in Britain has a name, and a physical boundary. Even 
>the woods and fields have edges defined by banks, ditches, and hedges. 
>Some of these boundaries date back to Roman times or earlier. Even a hedge 
>can be a thousand years old.
>
>Most of the ways the land was used, and the patterns of their 
>distribution, changed little between 500 BC and 1500 AD. Much has still 
>not changed. Most of the land which is field now was cleared by Roman 
>times, so the image of the medieval landscape as covered with trees, which 
>were gradually cleared as the centuries marched on, is simply not 
>substantiated.
>
>The word "Forest" does not necessarily imply wooded land - it originally 
>meant an area officially designated for deer, and might have little or no 
>wooded land. This confusion is partly responsible for the misconception 
>that Britain was much more heavily wooded in the middle ages than it is now.
>
>The supposed disappearance of the woodlands of Britain has been accounted 
>for by a number of scenarios which have been contradicted by the evidence. 
>The British navy is supposed to have taken most of the large oaks of 
>England to build ships to fight everyone from the Spanish to Napoleon, and 
>yet neither navy or merchant shipbuilders ever experienced any real 
>shortage in supply. The tanneries of the period were using even more bark 
>than the shipbuilders were using timber, and they weren't running out of 
>trees either. Another scenario has it that various fuel-intensive 
>industries such as ironworking used up all the trees in their areas and 
>finally had to turn to coke instead. Like the previous idea, this ignores 
>the regenerative nature of the British woodland, and in fact, the 
>industrial areas actually seem to have added some woodland, as industry 
>wisely provided for its own fuel needs in the traditional way. The switch 
>to coke came when it became cheaper than wood because of labor costs, not 
>because of lack of supply.
>
>Most of the land was not left to grow wild, but was intensively managed 
>throughout the SCA's time period. For instance, the nature of the 
>particular trees that grow in Britain (and many other parts of Europe) has 
>led to a particular sort of woodland management, which has been practiced 
>since the Bronze Age. Some types of trees die when they are cut down, but 
>others do not, and send up instead new shoots or suckers which can grow to 
>tree size themselves. The tree can actually be rejuvenated by this 
>cutting, and live longer than an uncut tree. Most of the trees which grow 
>in Britain are the sort that regrow after cutting, and the people there 
>have made the most of this property. The majority of woodlands in our 
>period were managed by coppicing. This meant that most of the trees were 
>cut to the ground, area by area on a scheduled rotation, allowed to grow 
>back for a certain number of years (usually 5-12) and then cut again. 
>Individual trees can be cut repeatedly, for hundreds of years, so that the 
>woodland provides a self-sustaining harvest of wood, pretty much 
>indefinitely, much as a grassy field can be cut for hay year after year 
>without replanting. The shoots that regrow are vigorous, tall, and 
>straight, since they are fed by an already established root system. Where 
>grazing was allowed , and on the edges of the woodland, the trees were cut 
>off higher up than the local wildlife could browse, and this is called 
>pollarding (which some do now on our street trees just for the 
>"decorative" effect). Coppicing and pollarding produced large quantities, 
>reliably, of wood of a size convenient for felling and hauling out of the 
>woods to where it was needed. Enormous amounts were needed for firewood, 
>for heat, cooking and industry. In addition, most of the wooden products, 
>from houses down to baskets and wattle fences, were designed to use the 
>small logs, poles and withies that came from different ages of regrowth. 
>We tend to think in terms of cutting big trees and then sawing them into 
>smaller pieces to suit our needs - they probably would have considered 
>this an enormous waste of time and effort. It made much more sense to just 
>let the trees grow to the size of the pieces you wanted and cut them then, 
>when minimal shaping would be needed. It is also true that some larger 
>trees were needed for really large projects. While the small growth was 
>spoken of as "wood", these single trees allowed to grow large were 
>referred to as "timber", and the two were always differentiated. Through 
>most of our time period, timber trees were grown scattered in amongst the 
>coppiced trees more often than they were grown in areas by themselves.
>
>So to sum up, what this means is that my whole mental image of the 
>medieval landscape as covered in deep dark forests full of huge gnarled 
>trees relieved only by scattered hard-won fields, has now been blown away. 
>I have had to replace it with a much more domesticated one of well-defined 
>(if irregular) fields and pastures bounded by banks, ditches and thick 
>hedges studded with large oaks and elms, wide areas of managed heath and 
>marsh, and woodlands with scattered tall trees among recently cut stumps, 
>brushy new undergrowth, and groves of slim-trunked regrown trees awaiting 
>their turn to be cut. Robin Hood, who used to stand triumphantly in the 
>thick branches of a mighty oak tree, seems now to be more likely skulking 
>through the brush, and I can't help but picture him vainly trying to hide 
>in the nest of branches at the top of a knobby old pollard!
>
>For another excellent look at the relationship between the people and the 
>land they live with, I also recommend _Rural England: An Illustrated 
>History of the Landscape_ edited by Joan Thirsk (Oxford University Press, 
>2000) ISBN 0-19-860619-2 (paperback) (also available from David Brown / 
>Oxford). The main idea I took away from this book was how deeply tied the 
>people were to the nature of the area in which they lived. It influenced 
>how you built your house, and what of, what you burned for fuel, which 
>determined how you cooked and how you kept warm, what animals and crops 
>you could raise, how (and whether) you travelled, what you could produce 
>that other areas couldn't, and what you had to trade to get. Humans are 
>highly adaptable, and it fascinates me to see how people have made the 
>most of the unique resources of each particular area.
>
>All of these books have given me a new feeling for how deeply important it 
>is to learn about the nature of the particular place you call home, if you 
>want to really understand and feel what your persona would have lived.
>
>Well, that's more than you really asked for, but as you can tell, the 
>subject has really grabbed me. I think the relation to the land is 
>something we tend to overlook in the SCA, since our modern society is 
>doing its best to make differences between areas, time of year, etc. 
>irrelevant, even though they have been the most important things in life 
>for most of human existance.
>
>Thanks for your interest, and I hope other folks find this useful too.
>
>Morwyn / Linda

___________________________________________________________________________
The penalty good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be 
governed by men worse than themselves. -- Plato