FORESTRY 



Hills. The former were mostly planted for sport or ornament, and consist chiefly of ash, cut every 

 fifteen or twenty years for hurdle wood, with oaks amongst them. Part are about seventy years old, 

 while the rest are very much older (up to 200 years). The estate has elms thickly grown in the 

 hedgerows, and the value of the timber cut and sold comes to about 100 a year, besides a small 

 quantity used for estate purposes. 



The Uley woods are beech above a hundred years old. They were originally planted, but are 

 now naturally renewed in most parts by seed. Ash occurs self-sown amongst the beech, and runs up 

 into lanky trees which take up very little room, and sell for three to eight shillings each, when cut 

 to make way for the beech. Sycamore also sows itself and grows into a fine tree. The beech is 

 thinned heavily at about thirty years old, and then regularly thinned until a strong crop of seedlings 

 is seen to be coming on, when the remaining large trees are cut, except where required for ornament. 

 It is sold to neighbouring timber mills. The return is about 100 per annum for the 100 acres. 

 Some portions are planted with larch, which makes a good and profitable change of crop. 



On the Thornbury Castle estate (Thornbury : E. Stafford Howard, esq., C.B.) the woodlands 

 consist of a few small coverts, the largest in the vale being about 8 acres. They were planted about 

 seventy to eighty years ago and are mostly oak, which having been sufficiently thinned is now going 

 on to maturity. There is one wood of coppice (principally alder, birch, and ash) which is cut in 

 rotation every seven years ; the ash and birch are now being stored. There is also a wood of 16 

 acres on the hill (about 770 ft. above sea-level) at Milbury Heath, which was planted about sixty 

 years ago, when the common was enclosed. It is principally oak with a small admixture of larch, 

 all growing very well in a dry sandy soil. 



On the Boddington Manor estate (Cheltenham : J. S. Gibbons, esq.), where the celebrated 

 * Boddington Oak ' stood, there are two or three old spinneys of oak, ash, and blackthorn, while 

 within the last twenty years several small coverts, amounting to about 50 acres, have been planted, 

 mainly for purposes of game preservation, with Scots pine, larch, birch, and black poplar. 



The woods on the Over, Compton, and Elberton estates (Almondsbury : R. C. Cann-Lippincott, 

 esq.) aggregate 255 acres and are distributed in strips, patches, and coverts varying from less than an 

 acre up to compact blocks of over 40 acres. These woods have originally been copses, but many of 

 them are now imperfectly stocked highwoods that were worked on an irregular system of selection, 

 felling and replanting of blanks thus created. In some of the woods intended to be copses there are 

 as many as seventy to eighty large oaks per acre, under which it is impossible for underwood to 

 thrive. In other places the coppice of hazel, ash, &c., has been almost absolutely destroyed by 

 rabbits, while in other parts the soil is covered with privet and rhododendrons (planted for game 

 cover) or with weeds (blackberry, bracken, ivy, coarse grasses and moss). 



On the Knole estate (Almondsbury: Colonel Chester Masters) there are about 184 acres of 

 woods. Those on the plateau above the deer park range from 80 to over 150 years in age, and are 

 mostly ornamental, while the coverts are intended for coppice and hardwood timber, of about forty 

 years of age, with a few pine and larch of about twenty-five years. But in all the coverts in the 

 Severn Marsh, the underwood of ash, wych elm, hazel, and poplar, has either been entirely destroyed 

 by rabbits or to a great extent choked by blackthorn. The only recent planting at Knole consists 

 of about 3 acres of ash. 



On the Dodington estate (Sodbury, Dodington, and other parishes : Sir Gerald Codrington, bart.) 

 there are about 300 acres of woods. The coverts contain timber of about forty years old, but 

 except in the plantations running along the Bath and Gloucester road there is nothing but beech, 

 Scots pine, a few larch, and a few spruce. In the pleasure-grounds round the gardens, there is a 

 quantity of Turkey oak, which grows in the district very luxuriantly. On the Winterbourne or 

 Bristol side of the estate, in the lower ground there are two coverts ranging about 20 acres and 

 10 acres respectively, in which the underwood is very thick and of fairly good quality (hazel, ash, and 

 elm) ; box grows very plentifully in some of the coverts also. The recent plantations on the 

 Dodington estate comprise some 40 to 50 acres, about 30 of which are larch and spruce, now from 

 thirteen to fifteen years old, while 10 acres were formed about seven years ago, and the remainder 

 are ash poles about ten years of age. 



The method of treating the woods is to clear patches of the coverts where the ground is only 

 imperfectly covered, and to replant (wherever suitable) with ash at 3^ft. apart, the poles being 

 looked over at the end of eight years, and the crooked ones coppiced, leaving the others to grow into 

 timber trees. Places unsuited for ash are planted with larch and Scots pine. On the Knole estate 

 marsh, it is intended to clear a covert of the worthless blackthorn, burn the roots with quicklime 

 during the summer, and replant with oak, which does excellently in that district ; in the case of 

 the underwood, the practice is to cut it every ten to twelve years, and where possible then put in 

 young trees after the crop of underwood is cleared. 



Reference has already been made to the Tortworth chestnut and the Boddington oak ; 

 but the county abounds in large and celebrated trees of different kinds, and in particular it con- 

 tains some of the finest elms in the whole of England. Within the Dean Forest one of the 



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