F is for Forest – that’s what F is for ...

The view north towards Ross-on-Wye from
Symonds Yat Rock, a popular tourist destination
in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire

Forests the lifeblood of the British nations – from where each successive Age utilised them and their wood to the full.  Early man used fire to cook and heat, then the Iron Age turned ore into metal and so man spread his wings.

The wealth of forest life was then exploited as each successive era passed ...  animals, game, crops, timber ... our land of forest became denuded to provide income from timber, then farmland was required for grazing and crops, the Industrial Revolution and subsequent industrialisation of the country required more and more timber.

The term ‘forest’ derives from “forestem silvam”, a Medieval Latin phrase introduced by the Normans meaning wood outside ... beyond the estates of the palaces, castles, manors and religious houses of the period.

The New Forest in Hampshire, decreed as a Royal Forest by William the Conqueror in 1079, survives to this day.  William a great lover of hunting, established the system of forest law; this operated outside of the common law, and served to protect game animals and their forest habitat from destruction ...

... hunting in the forests and timber activities arising from it were all the prerogative of the King.  Subsequently whenever the royal purse needed a budgetary top-up forests were sold off; the wealthy landowning buyers felled the wood and turned the land over to farming ... as food became necessary.

A 14th-century manuscript shows
King John in the New Forest.
Once a royal hunting ground.  It is
the largest surviving medieval forest.

Church and the nobility became richer as they were decreed lands, or purchased them as their wealth had increased.  In the Middle Ages, forest dominated the lives of the British common people.  It surrounded them, occupying more than one third of the land; it provided their livelihood; and its myths and legends haunted their imaginations.

By the 19^th Century these expanses of forest had been reduced to a mere 5% of Britain’s land area – the dangers were obvious and becoming appreciated through a greater understanding brought about by ‘new education’ – exploration, botany, science and enlightenment.

In the 21^st Century we are even more aware that diversity of all natural things is essential to our future – we need to continue to protect our wildlife and its environs for the next generations, realising the bounty it provides mother earth on which we too inhabit as part of that wildlife.

That is Forest – that’s what F is for ..

Part of the ABC - April 2011 - A - Z Challenge - Aspects of the British Countryside

Hilary Melton-Butcher

Positive Letters Inspirational Stories


PS - must have caught a bug from the forests .. hence my lateness!  Getting better now - thankfully.