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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
The distribution of woodland and the stages of its gradual disappearance were of fundamental importance in the early historical geography of England. Wood was a valuable element in medieval economy and one of the chief factors affecting the nature of settlement, The evidence concerning the extent of the woodland in early England is of two kinds : (1) the surface geology, which provides a basis for the reconstruction of the original extent ; (2) the statistics of the Domesday Book: these refer to the eleventh century, but they may have some retrospective value. The present essay is an attempt to examine the Domesday evidence for the south and south-western counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.
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4 As in the Ordnance Survey Maps, Roman Britain (2nd edition, 1928), and Britain in the Dark Ages (South sheet, 1935). In the latter the forest distribution of the Roman map was employed, the reason given being that clearing between the Roman period and 871 must have been almost negligible.
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6 61t is often assumed that where such settlement has advanced into clay land (woodland) it has become scattered. This undoubtedly occurred frequently, and an examination of the earliest one-inch sheets of the Ordnance Survey (1809–0), which are invaluable for this purpose, will show that scattered settlement is generally true of areas of Eocene beds and Clay-with-Flints, e.g. mid and south Berkshire and north and northwest Hampshire. But on the heavy clays there is much less coincidence—for example, the sixteen villages on the Gault and Kimmeridge Clays of the Vale of White Horse are almost entirely compact, and in the extensive cleared areas of Lias Clay in Somerset around Ilchester and on the Polden Hills, there is little scattering, though in a small area on the Dorset Lias there is a good deal. (Sheets 12, 13, 18, 19, 21).
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8 D.B., I, 68. The reference is to the volume and folio in the Domesday Book, Record Commission edition, vols, 1, 11 (ed. Abraham Farley), 1783 ; vols, in, iv (ed. Henry Ellis), 1816. Vol. 1 contains the Exchequer Domesday, for the greater part of England, and vol. in includes the Exon Domesday.
9 D.B., r, 68. Five hundred years later, in the same village of South Newton, the tenants had to undertake the transport of timber to the lord's seat at Wilton : Roxburghe Club, ‘Survey of the Lands of William First Earl of Pembroke’, ed. C. R. Straton, (1909), 31
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14 D.B., I, 45b.
15 D.B., I, 64b.
16 D.B., I, 92.
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24 D.B., I, 91.
25 D.B., 1, 92.
26 e.g. D.B., 1, 64b.
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33 In the construction of these maps (i) the entries in acres have been plotted in the same way as rectangles of equal size; (2) in those few entries where a wood is described as ‘X leagues in length and breadth’ the leagues have been taken as areal leagues of 120 acres each, following Reichel, O.J. and Eyton, R.W. op. cit. (a decision has to be made arbitrarily, and in a paper, ‘Woodland in Wiltshire at the Time of the Domesday Book’, Wilts. Arch, and N. H. Mag. (1935), 47, 25, the formula was taken to mean the sum of the length and breadth); (3) the sign ‘F’ has been inserted on the sites of the later forests (see M. L. Bazeley, op. cit.); it must be remembered that the forest of Exmoor was less likely than the others to have contained trees.Google Scholar
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35 Barings, F.H. op. cit. 141, remarks on north Berkshire, without adducing any evidence, ‘There is at least strong ground for suspicion that the entire absence of any mention ofwoodland in these hundreds was due, not always to nature, but also to omission in the returns’, and suggests that near the Thames the area ‘must have been well furnished with woods’.Google Scholar
36 Morgan, F.W. ‘The Domesday Geography of Berkshire’, Scottish Geographical Magazine (1935), 51, 353.Google Scholar
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39 It is interesting to note that at the end of the eighteenth century a report of the Board of Agriculture stated that ‘ there is a good deal of coppice wood in the county of Cornwall, but little timber. Formerly the tin was smelted only with charcoal ; and this made them cut down their woods and keep them only in coppice … there is no doubt that timber will thrive as well in many parts of Cornwall as in other counties ’ Gover, J.E.B. Fraser, R. General View of the County of Cornwall (Board of Agriculture, 1794), 59.Google Scholar
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43 Ibid. 199b, 200.
44 Ibid. 93b.
45 Ibid. 94b.
46 e.g. Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, no. 513 (A.D. 866): ’LXX porcis saginam in commone illa salvatica (silvática ?) taxatione … ’
47 op. cit.. 71.
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49 These spaces would be larger if a league of less than 12 furlongs be assumed
