Forgotten Forests: Twelve Thousand Years of British and Irish Woodlands

Ancient trees, some over a thousand years old, are dotted around the British Isles, the last survivors of a lost world. Now, new scientific studies of these trees and of fossilised forests and of our oldest wooden artifacts can help us to understand the many woodlands that have disappeared from our landscapes.

Locked in ice for more than twenty thousand years, the lands that now make up Britain and Ireland were some of the last settled by humans. The earliest people, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers like Cheddar Man, arrived around eleven thousand years ago to find dense forests. While they lived lightly, they did introduce fire, which they used to create clearings, and this was the beginning of the reshaping of Britain’s forests.

When Neolithic farmers migrated to Britain from Europe some six thousand years ago, it meant a violent end to the hunter-gatherers’ way of life. It also indicated a dramatic change for the ecosystems. Forests were cleared for fields, trees and plants fed to livestock and predators hunted. A wild, forested world became one of agriculture and villages.

As humans learned to work bronze, then iron, they also used wood in myriad ways, building homes, then cathedrals, hand tools then furniture and early machines, boats and eventually immense ships. The forests of Britain and Ireland fuelled the burgeoning human civilisation, from the Romans, Anglo Saxons, Vikings and Normans, to the British, Scottish, Welsh and Irish peoples through to the present day. In that time our woodlands have changed beyond recognition, but clues to their story remain. Biologist and Britain’s first senior officer for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty Jonathan Mullard retraces the history of the forgotten forests of Britain and Ireland, piecing together historical records going as far back as the written word and archaeological evidence going back far further. The result is a wealth of arcane anecdotes and the latest scientific understanding of our natural history, as well as a fascinating journey through the forests, landscapes and human history of Britain.