The objective of this guide is to support you and your teams to think differently about decision-making about your woodland site, or proposed woodland site, or the trees in your area. We do this by putting the history, heritage and culture of trees and woodlands at the centre of your thinking – which is important in itself, but also as a way to engage and develop together with your communities of place and interest.
There are many benefits to understanding the history of the landscape you are managing, including:
The various uses to which the landscape has been put might have a direct bearing on your options and goals for the site today;
History and heritage are really effective ways to engage the communities of place and interest you might be working with on your site;
Understanding past uses of your site (e.g. ancient woodland; industrial; pasture; agricultural) can help your understanding of its condition and capabilities today;
In particular, it can help you understand how and why people have used that site over time and allow you to plan for change and managing that change;
It is also fascinating in its own right, and can build a greater sense of landscape and community connectedness to your site.
However, history can also be a source of tension or disagreement amongst communities and it is important to recognise it is as much about interpretation as gathering the facts. This is covered in more depth in the Mourne Park case study.
There will also inevitably be questions you want to ask about your site’s history that there is just not the material or evidence available to answer. This is a consistent part of historical research and it is helpful when this happens to think about how you might re-frame your questions about the past – usually, for example, by broadening out the scope and casting the net as wide as possible.
Researching your woodland histories – how to get started
This part of the guide is designed to introduce the nuts and bolts of researching your local trees and woodland sites, including how-to guides and links to fully open access and trusted databases and sites to get you started.
Of course, the first place you might want to start is by asking your local residents and community – they are often highly knowledgeable and can give you some great themes and pointers to get started on. For more in-depth working with your local communities, we cover oral histories further on.
What kinds of historical material can you expect to find?
Historical material about trees and woodlands comes in many different formats, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Here we provide an overview of the main types, bearing in mind that each site will have generated a different balance of materials, and that there will always – unfortunately – be gaps in the record, particularly the further back in time you go.
Maps are on of the most effective ways to understand the history of your site, and should be your first port of call. They can provide us with amazing visual detail and insight into the evolution of a place, particularly for the modern period (roughly from c. 1750 to the present). The government-led mapping agency, the Ordnance Survey, was established in the early nineteenth century, and so their mapping (organised into ‘series’) begins in around the 1830s for Ireland and a little later for England, Scotland and Wales. Before that date we are reliant on maps made by commission, often for landowners, the armed forces, government or societies.
Start with the Ordnance Survey: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/
But a much more comprehensive digital (and free!) service is provided by the National Library of Scotland (and its collections also include England, Wales and Ireland): https://maps.nls.uk/
Local and national archives also hold extensive map collections – we will cover that in the next section on archival collections.
This term refers to any historical textual material held in an archive – the building blocks to understanding the history of your site and the communities that were or are still living on or around it. These can be handwritten (or manuscript, as archivists and historians call it) or printed (like old newspapers, pamphlets, reports etc). The older the historical period you are looking into, the less material you are likely to find, but there are other methods for exploring the period before c. 1000 AD, such as archaeological surveys and studies.
The modern period (roughly 1700 onwards) typically has much more material, including the results of cheaper printing and from c.1800 the beginnings of mass print media. There is a huge range of different types of material captured under this heading – everything from the personal records of individuals (letters, diaries etc), to the records of businesses, companies, landed estates, offices of the churches and of course government records. In both national and local archives you will be able to find legal records – of local and national courts – which have a wealth of material relating to trees and woodlands, including issues over access and use. All might be relevant to your site research.
These are a treasure trove for the local historian! They are essentially property and business records organised by place (usually parish or council area), listing individual businesses and properties (they used to form the basis of local taxation). They are highly detailed and very helpful but only exist for the modern period.
For a brief guide, see:
Although you are probably most interested in finding out about a particular place or site, family history can actually be a really good way into that topic. Family history has boomed since the 1990s, and ‘citizen historians’ have researched, collated and displayed reams of searchable material easily accessible online. Probably the most comprehensive site is Ancestry.com and it might be worth taking out a free trial to check the resources on that site for your place.
www.ancestry.co.uk
In addition, most local places have a family history group and it would be very worthwhile contacting them to see if they’d be willing to share their expertise and knowledge. Try here to find your nearest group:
https://www.familyhistoryfederation.com/find-a-society
Each of the jurisdictions across the UK and Ireland maintain dedicated environmental data recording teams, continuously collecting and adding to a huge database on species cover and density (plants, insects, animals), biodiversity and other environmental processes and changes. Typically they do not cover a long historical period, going back in the main to the late twentieth century, but what they lack in chronological range they more than make up for in wonderful and important detail. There are many local recording societies and charities too, but a good place to start exploring is at the national level:
Some of the most engaging and immediate kinds of historical material are visual, including paintings and etchings, as well as photographs and film. If you are looking for historical material to engage communities, visitors or stakeholders, as well as summarise key elements of the history of your site, having some visual material can be extremely powerful. Archives hold historical visual material, and have undertaken a range of important digitisation projects so do start online and with your local archive service website.
The best national database is the British Film Institute Archive:
https://www.bfi.org.uk/bfi-national-archive
One of the richest areas of historical materials are oral histories – simply put, structured or semi-structured recorded interviews with individuals or groups and the transcriptions resulting from those, which are stored both in the major national archives, but also many local and university archives. These are outstanding at capturing the voices and experiences of everyday people and places although of course typically go back only as far as the early twentieth century. You might also consider undertaking your own, new oral history projects as part of your historical research – more on that in Part Two.
For lots of resources, guidance and training opportunities, go to the Oral History Society website:
https://www.ohs.org.uk/archives-and-oral-history/
It is absolutely essential, when using or undertaking oral history interviews and transcripts, to understand the ethical and GDPR compliance issues. The Oral History Society’s training covers these points, and provides templates for consent and data management forms.
If you’d like to start looking for existing recordings/transcripts, it is always worth searching for your local area, but a really good starting point is the British Library, which also provides training and hosts a major oral history archive:
https://blogs.bl.uk/sound-and-vision/oral-history/
Although not an oral record, the material held by the Mass Observation archive offers an unrivalled look at how life was lived in Britain at an individual level and is worth checking for your area:
https://massobs.org.uk/
Using archives
Starting to use historical archival material can seem a bit daunting at first, but there are loads of handy tools, guides and databases out there to help. A lot of material is now digitised by our national and local archives services too (especially and very helpfully for woodland histories, historic maps). Some simple googling can get you started but it is worth taking some time to do some introductory reading once you are ready to start using historical archives.
The best, simplest and most professional guides are here:
The Archives Hub is the quickest and most comprehensive way to search online for archive collections that might be relevant to your site. It will come up with ‘hits’ for your place(s) and let you know which archive service holds those papers. Discovery, hosted by The National Archives provides similar search functions as well as lots of research guides (family history, local history etc) that can help you navigate what might be out there for your site.
In the UK there are two layers of public archives: local and national. There are also numerous privately held archives too. This section will introduce the three different types.
These are a compulsory service for local authorities to maintain by law, and house a huge range of historical material which will be relevant to your research. The archives and records of local businesses, families and individuals, property records, as well as institutions such as churches, hospitals, poor or work houses, charities and of course local government itself.
Find your local archive here:
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/find-an-archive
These are the main repositories for documentary material created and collected by UK central government departments and major courts of law. However, they contain much more than this and the place to start is with Archives Hub. Each of the devolved nations has a national archive, although material relating to them is also held in The National Archives in London. Here are the key sites to start on:
These are those archival collections that are still held and cared for by individuals/families or institutions themselves. These might include family papers or archives (including those of the Royal Family, for example) related to charities or businesses. The national archives each run a service to help researchers identify and access records in private hands – this is the best place to start.
Of course, once you have found your relevant archival materials, you need to be able to decipher them! Some historical handwriting can be challenging, but there are some great guides and resources you can draw on to help. Remember, your friendly local archivist will be an expert in this area too. To get you started, try the National Archives’ free web tutorial:
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/palaeography/
Understanding your site in the national context
Hopefully you are on your way to understanding the history of your particular site: but how does that sit in the bigger national (and international) picture)? It can be really useful to know how unusual, or not, the history of your site has been. Of course, every area is unique, and that is part of what makes local history so important – but it can still be instructive to consider how your site might align with national trends or bucked them.
To help with this, we have pulled together a short and accessible bibliography which covers the modern history of trees and woodlands in Britain and Ireland. Environmental history more broadly has seen a big increase in recent years, so we have included some general texts on landscape history also, which include chapters on trees and woodlands. The role trees and woodlands play in our wider cultures is also central to understanding how and why people engage with them in the ways they do, so we have also included cultural and folklore histories.
- N. D. G. James, A History of English Forestry (Wiley, 1981).
- D. Holmes, ‘History of Forestry and Forest Management’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 271, no. 911, (1975): 69-80
- Harry Godwin, ‘History of the Natural Forests of Britain: Establishment, Dominance, and Destruction’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 271, no. 911, (1975): 47-67
- Jan Oosthoek, Conquering the Highlands: A History of the Afforestation of the Scottish Uplands, (ANU Press, 2013)
- Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)
- Charles Watkins, Trees, Woods and Forests: A Social and Cultural History (London: Reaktion, 2014).
- Joachim Radkau, Wood: A History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012).
- Tom Williamson, Gerry Barnes and Toby Pillatt, Trees in England: Management and disease since 1600 (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2017).
- Oliver Rackham, Woodlands (London: Collins, 2006).
- Gregory Barton, Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- Laura Auricchio, Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, and Giulia Pacini (eds), Invaluable Trees: Cultures of Nature, 1660-1830 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2012).
- Paul Warde, ‘The fear of wood shortage and the reality of the woodlands in Europe c. 1450-1850’, History Workshop Journal 62, (2006): 29-57.
- Paul A. Elliot, Charles Watkins and Stephen Daniels, The British Arboretum: Trees, Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016).
- Thomas R. Cox, ‘Americans and Their Forests: Romanticism, Progress, and Science in the Late Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Forest History 29, no. 4 (1985): 156-168.
- Fergus Kelly, ‘Trees in early Ireland’, Irish Forestry, 56, no. 1, (1999): 39-57.
- Jorma Ahvenainen, ‘Man and the Forest in Northern Europe from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century’, VSWG 83 (1996):1-24.
- Della Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2010).
There are also some really great, and trusted, online resources you might like to consider accessing, collated and presented by our major woodland agencies and charities:
This list is really just a starting point: there is a lot out there which will be specific to your local landscape area. Your one-stop site for searching for specific historical writing and publications is the Bibliography of British and Irish History website. Its advanced search functions allow you to filter by place, period and subject.
Hopefully this guide has demonstrated the many different materials and methods you can use to investigate the history and heritage of your treescape, and how this approach can include local people too. If you would like to find out more about the practicalities of carrying out this work, please see the associated case study on Mourne Park, which is available on the resource hub.
