Forest droughts past and present...cutting down Denny Inclosure
“THE poor New Forest ponies have nothing to eat and are on the point of dying of thirst because there is no water in the Forest.”
This story, and variants of it, was widely put about in the extreme weather of the 1976 summer. During recent months these old complaints have started to re-emerge.
They are based on the evidence that if I can’t see grass as I speed across the Forest on the road, there is clearly no food to be had, while there is obviously no water because every roadside ditch and pothole is dry.
However well-meaning these concerns may be, the Forest community knows that they are completely unfounded and devoid of all truth, except perhaps where a pony becomes trapped accidentally within a fenced area with no water.
The fine condition of the ponies – I have seldom seen better – immediately dismisses the shortage of food argument.
The question of water supplies on the Forest generally is not quite so straightforward.
Certainly, some of the tourist honeypot pools are completely dry and so are many of the stream courses. That means that the public is unlikely to be satisfied with bland reassurances that everything is alright.
People want evidence and so it was back in 1976.
In that year I and the late June Irvine, from Lyndhurst, undertook a rapid assessment of the main stock watering places across the Forest, with the results being published the following year by the Hampshire Field Club.
June dealt with the south of the Forest, while I covered much of the area north of the A31 road. Our findings confirmed what local people knew perfectly well, that water supplies were adequate, if not abundant, in all parts.
Occasionally a walk of a few hundred yards extra would have been necessary to obtain a drink and many a pony, dreaming away a hot August day on a village green, gratefully accepted buckets of water offered by householders.
That did not mean that they were deprived of water; merely that the bucket happened to be convenient. New Forest animals are not stupid.
Within their territories (or “runs”), they know exactly where the good feed is, the location of places providing shelter in winter and protection from flies in summer, sources of illicit food from ill-informed visitors, where to escape from those trying to round them up and, most importantly now, where to find water.
It was the pattern of water sources, rather than their adequacy, which was the interesting result of the 1976 researches.
Many of the Forest’s valleys contain boggy areas ranging in size from the vast swamps around Cranesmoor near Burley to the narrow bands of wetter ground which occur much more widely along the valley bottoms.
How many (if any) of the larger bogs are fed by underground water sources, I don’t know, but the narrower valleys, particularly in the north, are mostly watered by hillside springs.
Sometimes these occur as linear oozes at the junction of the gravel caps of the hills with the underlying clay or silt.
They may be hundreds of yards long, often demarcated by small terraces called seepage steps.
The more spectacular and perhaps more important sources are reliable springs rising from a single point, again just below the gravel. Such springs are often hidden from the casual observation of concerned visitors.
Where they adjoin villages they were, in pre-mains days, managed and equipped with shallow wells so that they served farmers and residents in addition to providing drinking places and wallows for Forest stock.
The photograph shows a particularly important spring at Fritham between Queen North Wood and Gorley Bushes, taken in early August this year.
Here there is still a locked well, an upended concrete pipe into which clear water is exuded, and a large cooling pool for the animals to relax in. The valley below it (normally wet) was completely dried out.
Only 400 yards to the north west lies Green Pond, photographed on the same day, which looks like something out of a distressing African drought documentary.
It is the pond only that visitors see and not the spring behind the screen of Gorley Bushes.
Further north in the unfairly-named and largely unfrequented Black Gutter Bottom is an equally important spring, seldom seen apart from by the occasional ornithologist.
In drought conditions it is a key source of water for hundreds of acres of heath. It too feeds the valley below in normal weather, but that bottom is completely dry at present.
In the summer of this year, it was decided that the observations made in 1976 should be repeated and, at the time of writing (22nd August), the work continues.
Initial findings suggest that the water supplies in 2022 remain rather stronger than in 1976, despite the record temperatures this year.
My memory of 1976 is that the long drought started earlier and followed some shortages the previous summer.
The “Great” drought was finally broken by torrential rain on the afternoon of 29th August (I was working in Eyeworth Wood at the time).
Perhaps by the time these Notes appear, we will all have had similar relief, but things could become more serious if the shortage drags on into the autumn.
It remains to be seen how damaging the recent heat waves have been to the beech trees in our already weather and disease-ravaged ancient woodlands.
There were some serious consequences for trees in 1976, but at least the livestock seems well provided-for at the moment.
Cutting down Denny Inclosure
I am always delighted to receive Forest Matters, the occasional wide-ranging publication by the New Forest Association.
Several years ago, the association decided on a trendy rebranding as “Friends of the New Forest”, but with the subtitle remaining as “New Forest Association”.
After confusing nearly everyone and particularly those of my generation, the correct title seems as little understood or welcome as ever. References to the association in conversation and even official minutes remain as “NFA” and not “FOTNF”.
The cover of the latest issue displays a technically stunning photograph of a loose dog attacking deer in the Forest, but it was a more prosaic article on the felling of a large part of Denny Inclosure which particularly caught my eye.
This felling, which has spread over many months, has stripped almost the entire western end of Matley Ridge of its former conifer (Corsican pine) cover.
The author of the article, former “amenity verderer” and well-known local artist Peter Frost, welcomes the cutting for ecological and landscape reasons.
As to the ecological benefits of clear-felling close to 60 acres of trees, I cannot comment, but it is perhaps difficult to explain to a public daily fed with arguments about the importance of tree planting and maintenance why, in the New Forest of all places, large-scale tree destruction within a historic plantation is so widely adopted.
I understand the importance of expanding heathland but, as with all things in Forest management, there needs to be a little moderation and acceptance that there are other points of view to be considered.
From the historical, legal and landscape points of view, perhaps Peter’s article is on even less firm ground.
First of all, he says that the planting took place 50 years ago “with the consent of the verderers”.
The court has been blamed for many wrong decisions and even more failures to act on important issues, but in this case it was quite definitely not guilty.
This part of Matley Ridge is a subdivision of Denny Inclosure and that plantation was made in 1870.
You can still see the old earth bank which carried the original fence.
By 1898 it was evidently a well-established plantation to judge from the Ordnance Survey map of that year.
Only a narrow strip along the bottom of the valley remained to be planted.
The trees were clearly still thriving in 1910, but had largely been felled before the end of 1945, perhaps to facilitate the use of the nearby World War 1 military training area at Matley Wood.
Anyhow, the verderers had absolutely no say in the matter of replanting in 1970. It was then, and remains today, necessary only for the Forestry Commission to give one month’s notice of its intention to reinclose the land for forestry. No consent from the verderers need be sought.
Next, there are legal restrictions (New Forest Act 1877) on New Forest fellings, which apply to all the statutory inclosures like Denny.
These provide that in cutting timber the Forestry Commission (and its successor Forestry England) shall not “wholly level or clear the woods, but shall leave from time to time a sufficient number of the most ornamental trees”.
There has been much discussion over this provision, but in 1927 the chair of the Forestry Commission, Lord Clinton, gave very clear instructions to the Deputy Surveyor as to how it should be interpreted.
Those instructions and the law have been blatantly ignored in the present case. The prohibition on clear-felling was used to great advantage to prevent the wholesale destruction of broadleaved trees, but it applies equally to conifers, no doubt much
to Forestry England’s annoyance.
I am not for one moment saying that expansion of heathland is unimportant, but cutting the trees “smack smooth”, to use the old Forest expression, is completely wrong.
Thought should have been given to the requirements of the act and careful plans made for the retention of trees as specified by Lord Clinton.
You cannot simply retain individual plantation conifers sticking up like telegraph poles. They look ugly and usually get blown over.
Careful choice of clumps, having regard to landform and wind, perhaps with marginal regeneration and mixtures with broadleaves, is required. Such consideration here was notably absent.
