FORESTRY
IN remote times the fen districts of Lincolnshire, which lie chiefly in the Holland, or south-eastern, division of the county, were the site of great woods. Vast stores of bog timber have been found a few feet below the surface of the peaty soil, and are occasionally still discovered where new drainage works are undertaken. This buried forest has been known to the fen-men from time immemorial; but the stories, both ancient and modern, as to old bog-wood being found which showed traces of having been hewn by man, even in the rudest fashion, are fabulous. Mr. Skertchly, the geological expert, who began a thorough investigation of the peat-buried woods in 1874, failed to find a single instance that showed the hand of man. By an ingenious calculation he came to the conclusion that about B.C. 5000 is the latest possible date for the formation of the newest part of the peat. Among this buried timber he found many oaks that were 80 ft. long, whilst some were 90 ft., and attained to 70 ft. before throwing out a branch. Some of the firs were 3 ft. in diameter and 70 ft. in height.[1]
The gradual change from the splendid woods of prehistoric days to the treeless swamps of the dreary undrained fens was a wonderful transformation. The scenery in the first half of the seventeenth century is well set out in the rhymes of John Taylor (1580–1654), 'the Water Poet':—
Near the Garrick[2] milestone
Nothing there grew beneath the sky
But willows scarcely six feet high,
Or osiers barely three feet dry,
And those of only one year's crop
The flood did fairly overtop.
No less wonderful has been the subsequent change, wrought by successive drainage schemes, from water-logged morasses to fertile cornfields.
The record of Domesday Survey is of peculiar value in Lincolnshire as showing the amount of woodland in the county towards the close of the eleventh century. The Great Survey must have been carried out by different sets of commissioners, and it is therefore only reasonable to expect considerable variety in the manner of making these fiscal returns. In the majority of counties, as was the case with Norfolk and Suffolk, the amount of woodland on the different manors is roughly estimated by the numbers of swine that could obtain pannage under its shelter. In Lincolnshire, on the contrary, as is also the case with Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, the actual size of the woods is set forth. These two midland counties, however, have the measure of most of their round numbers by the length and breadth in miles (leuca) or furlongs; whereas by far the greater part of the wood measurements of Lincolnshire are set forth according to their precise acreage, varying from two or three acres to several hundred. The reason for this exceptional treatment of Lincolnshire woods and underwoods probably arose from the greater value of every form of timber in a county which was on the whole but sparsely wooded. In many counties a few acres of wood, or a patch of brushwood were not worth entering.
It may fairly be assumed that the trees of that period in this county were almost entirely oak. In a single case, namely at Spalding, is the nature of the wood mentioned; on that manor there was a wood of alders worth 8s. a year.
From the different methods adopted in computation, it is difficult to draw any accurate comparison between the woodland of one county and another but on broad lines it seems safe to assume that there was less timber in the eleventh century in Lincolnshire than in almost any other English shire. It is also exceedingly probable that Lincolnshire stands alone as a county that has at the present day a considerably larger wooded area than was the case in the days of the Conqueror.
Notwithstanding, however, the comparative paucity of timber under the Domesday Survey, it will be found that there were numerous woods of fair dimensions the immediate neighbourhood of Grantham, Sleaford, and Horncastle, and that a large number of parishes in other parts of the shire, saving in the actual fens, had their tracts of wood or underwood of varying size.
