53 



VI. ARTIFICIAL PLANT-FORMATIONS 

 Woodland and Copse. 



From a well-wooded district of original forest-formation 1 the land 

 has become progressively agricultural by reckless cutting down of the trees 

 to promote pasture rather than tillage, very much in the manner continued 

 by British colonists in the Eastern States of North America in the seven- 

 teenth century, and in New Zealand in the nineteenth. Huge trees were 

 commonly felled and buried in trenches where too big for conversion or 

 transport ; 2 but the necessity for fuel-supply always remained ; the latter 

 problem becoming the more intensified with the increase of urban popula- 

 tion. Portions of residual woodland were left near farmsteads, and more 

 so in the case of large estates, to be retained as coppice (copse) growth. 

 Far-seeing colleges acquired their own tracts of woodland (Brasenose Wood, 

 Magdalen Wood, Bagley Wood). Minor copses scattered very uniformly 

 over the country afford the best examples of the state of the original 

 woodland, with surviving types of undergrowth where the canopy was not 

 allowed to become too dense. In the county as a whole, 3 86 per cent, of 

 the area is now brought under cultivation for crops or pasture, leaving 

 about one-seventh as residual woodland. In the Oxford district of 30 

 square miles, little more than 3 square miles can be said to be forested to 

 any extent. 4 A rough distinction may be drawn between copse, as affording 

 fuel and billet-wood, and woodland, growing high-forest for full-grown 

 timber. No extensive tract of anything that can be called ' primary high- 

 forest ' remains ; the nearest approach to it being seen in planted woodland 

 allowed to become more or less derelict as preserves for game (cf. parts of 

 Wytham). Such districts, having been undisturbed for long periods of time, 

 give a very full mixed undergrowth and ground-flora. The Royal Forest of 

 Wychwood, 10 miles NW., was the last considerable tract of woodland in 

 the vicinity (3,735 acres); this being deforested, 1853, with somewhat 

 unsatisfactory results. The nearest extensive old woods are of poorest 

 quality on the Oxford Clay at Stanton St. John, 5 miles NE. : Stow Wood, 

 a fragment of a much wider area on Corallian, is now little more than a 

 copse (30 acres). Bagley Wood, Wytham Great Wood, and Hen Wood, 

 are left as isolated tracts of once continuous woodland, capping the hills ; 

 much of these districts being on land with little surface-water supply and 

 no springs, hence useless for farmsteads. Nor can such ground be taken as 

 really typical of what the best woodland would have been. The same 

 applies to wooded steep slopes of ravines and gullies (Wick Copse, 

 Hinksey Ravines). 



All wooded tracts, continued under some sort of forestry practice, may 

 be included as (i) Tall Coppice, (2) Underwood. 5 



1 In the sixteenth century Camden (1586) records forests as the feature of Oxford scenery. 

 Shotover was a forest in which Milton's grandfather was a ranger. Waste and moor stretched across 

 Bullingdon to Magdalen Bridge. Much of the forest was cut down during the Civil Wars of the 

 seventeenth century. In the eighteenth a mania for enclosure set in, and in the nineteenth everything 

 left was enclosed on some pretext or another. The twentieth century sees, with minor exceptions, 

 the general public denied access to the residual traces. 



2 Plot (1705), Natural History of Oxfordshire, p. 165. 



3 Orr (1916), Agriculture in Oxfordshire, p. 193, Statistics. 



4 Plot (1705)* P- 5 2 - 'The hills, 'tis true, before the late unhappy wars, were well enough 

 beset with woods, where now 'tis so scarce, that 'tis a common thing to sell it by weight, and not 

 only at Oxford, but at many other places in the northern parts of the shire ; where it is brought to 

 Market, it is ordinarily sold for about one shilling the Hundred, but if remote from a great town, it 

 may be had for sevenpence.' 



After another war (1921), rough wood sold at 25*. a load, with los. for cartage from Bagley or 

 Radley, retailed as wood blocks at is. per cwt., or is. a bushel of 50 Ib. 



8 Plot, I.e., p. 267 : sold ' to the meaner sort of people ' by the Braid of 4 poles. 



