Читать книгу A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside - Johnny Scott - Страница 29

Timber was nature’s greatest gift to mankind, and coppicing is the oldest form of woodmanship, practised from the time early man discovered that the stump of a felled tree produced a self-renewing supply of timber, until well into the twentieth century. The earliest archaeological records of coppicing in Britain were discovered on the Somerset Levels in 1970, when peat diggers unearthed part of a wooden roadway, the timbers from which have been carbon dated to 3900 BC. The Sweet Track, named after its discoverer, Ray Sweet, extended across the waterlogged marshes between an island at Westhay and a ridge of high ground at Shapwick, a distance close to 2,000 metres. The track is one of a network that once crossed the Levels, connecting Neolithic island communities with each other. It is an elaborate structure, engineered from coppiced poles of ash, oak and lime driven into the swamp to support a walkway that mainly consisted of split oak planks laid end-to-end. The Sweet Track and archaeological remains of Neolithic hut construction clearly indicate that there was an existing culture of coppiced ash, oak, hornbeam and lime to provide straight poles of about 5 metres, for structural supports, with hazel rods and willow withies for wattle-and-daub walling.

There was, of course, no shortage of material; the British Isles were then almost completely covered in wildwood, except for the areas of salt marsh to the south-west and east, coastal sand dunes, wetlands and the high mountains of northern England, Wales and Scotland, where scrub gave way to heather. Gradually, during the 6,000 years since the Ice Age ended, Britain became colonised, first by the tundra tree species – birch, aspen, juniper, mountain ash and sallow – and then these were followed in more or less chronological order by pine, yew, hazel, alder, sessile and pedunculate oak, lime, wych elm, holly, ash, maple, wild cherry, crab apple, black poplar, beech and hornbeam. There was little or no hindrance to their growth; the nomadic hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic period made less impact than the herbivores they hunted. Aurochs, elk, red deer and wild boar would have inhibited regrowth in clearings created by fallen trees and on large areas of land where poor soil type led to sparse woodland growth.

By the time of the Neolithic migration, the composition and structure of the wild wood would have varied considerably between the different regions of Britain, with a complex pattern of local variation reflecting differences in soil type and depth. Southern Britain would have been covered with oak woodland on relatively infertile soil; lime woodland probably dominated fertile, non-calcareous soil; ash woodland on calcareous soils; and alder in river valleys and wetlands. Further north, the woodland cover would have comprised pine, birch and oak; only the highest mountain peaks and most exposed areas would have remained unforested.

THE EARLY AGRICULTURISTS WERE INDUSTRIOUS PEOPLE, FELLING AREAS OF WILDWOOD TO CREATE FIELDS FOR THEIR ARABLE CROPS, OR BURNING AND SLASHING SCRUB IN AREAS OF POOR SOIL TO PRODUCE WOODLAND PASTURE FOR GRAZING. IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WILDWOOD ADJACENT TO SETTLEMENTS, TREES WERE COPPICED FOR BUILDING MATERIALS, FENCING AND FIREWOOD.

The Neolithic agrarian colonists arrived in Britain around 4500 BC, bringing with them sheep, goats, cattle, pigs and primitive crops such as eikhorn wheat and Hordeum barley. They established little communities on the easily drained soils of the upland hills and on the coastal plains, avoiding the thickly wooded valley bottoms. These early agriculturists were industrious people, felling areas of wildwood to create fields for their arable crops, or burning and slashing scrub in areas of poor soil to produce woodland pasture for grazing. In other parts of the wildwood adjacent to settlements, trees were coppiced for building materials, fencing and firewood. The climate was consistently warm and dry, and over a period of 2,000 years Neolithic farmers spread throughout the British Isles, clearing woodland, reclaiming land and leaving monuments to their permanence in the form of monoliths, long barrows, causeway camps and henges. The areas of heaviest settlement were the chalk hills of the south and west, the Somerset Levels, coastal Cumbria and in East Anglia, particularly the Breckland where the shallow sandy soil was ideal for basic crop production and where most of the wildwood was cut down.

A new wave of settlers, known as the Beaker People from their common use of a distinctive, inverted, bell-shaped, pottery drinking cup, arrived from the Continent in about 2100 BC, bringing with them the knowledge of refining metal and how to make charcoal. Burning wood in the absence of oxygen to create carbon for fuel had been practised in Europe and the Middle East for many centuries, and initially the smiths used their skills to smelt copper that was surface mined in Devon, Cornwall, Cheshire and Wales – particularly the Great Orme mine at Llandudno in North Wales – and extensive copper mines in Ireland. Britain had large resources of tin in the West Country and lumps of cassiterite, tin oxide, were easily found in the mud of streams in places such as the Carnon Valley in Cornwall, washed downstream from outcropping lodes.

The Beaker smiths discovered that the heat generated from charcoal was capable of melting tin and that tin mixed with copper produced bronze, a much harder, more versatile material than the individual components. This was the beginning of the period of prosperity known as the Bronze Age, and by around 1600 BC the south-west of Britain was experiencing a trade boom as British tin and bronze was exported across Europe. At much the same time, the climate was deteriorating; where once the weather was warm and dry it became cooler and wetter as the Bronze Age continued, forcing the population away from easily defended sites in the hills and into the fertile wooded valleys. Bronze Age man now had the tools for large-scale forest clearance and farms of considerable size developed in the lowlands. Their wealth enabled the second and third stages of the building of Stonehenge and is reflected in the artefacts found in the richly furnished graves that have been excavated across Wiltshire.

When the Celts arrived in 800 BC, they found quite large farming communities in the fertile valleys on the edge of dense wildwood. These were predominantly cereal farms with some sheep, goats, pigs and cattle. The great lime woods of the southern half of England had been largely replaced by oak, ash, hornbeam or hazel, and areas adjacent to settlements were managed for coppicing, with newly cut coupes protected from livestock and deer by dead hedges – coppice trash woven between stakes driven into the ground. Pigs would be driven into the woods to rootle and graze by day, and cattle onto areas of wood that were common on poorer, higher ground. The Celts introduced their own improved agricultural techniques, particularly with arable farming, introducing oats, rye, millet and the more productive spelt and emmer wheat species. Fields and paddocks were laid out in regular, rectilinear patterns and fertilisation, in the form of chalk, mast, loam and marl, was used for the first time. The uplands that had been abandoned by their Bronze Age predecessors were re-occupied by pastoralists who created grazing by clearing the scrub and felling trees that had naturally reseeded.

THE CELTS INTRODUCED THEIR OWN IMPROVED AGRICULTURAL TECHNIQUES, PARTICULARLY WITH ARABLE FARMING, INTRODUCING OATS, RYE, MILLET AND THE MORE PRODUCTIVE SPELT AND EMMER WHEAT SPECIES. FIELDS AND PADDOCKS WERE LAID OUT IN REGULAR, RECTILINEAR PATTERNS AND FERTILISATION, IN THE FORM OF CHALK, MAST, LOAM AND MARL, WAS USED FOR THE FIRST TIME.

The Celts were also skilled metallurgists, bringing with them the knowledge of making iron and mining lead, gold and silver. Lead and silver were found at Chewton Mendip in Somerset, Machen in South Wales, Pentre in the north, Shelve Hill in Shropshire and Crich in Derbyshire. Gold was panned in the stream beds around Dolaucothi, Gwynfydd and Clogan, in Wales, and dug for among the gravel washed into the valley bottoms. Copper and tin continued to be mined in Wales and the West Country, but it was iron that kept the new migrants busiest and gave its name to the era. Iron ore was surface-mined all over Britain where clay or greensand was the predominant soil type, but two of the most important areas were the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire and part of Monmouthshire, and the Weald of Sussex and Kent, the heavily wooded area which lies between the North and South Downs. Iron nodules, easily extracted from the local greensand and sticky Wealden clay, were smelted in charcoal-fired bloomery furnaces to produce wrought iron. There was a considerable industry on the northern edge of the Ashdown Forest in iron ore smelting, coppicing and charcoal manufacture. At the time of the Roman invasion, seven hill forts and over half the thirty-three Iron Age workings in Britain were recorded in this corner of the Weald.