The History of Wolford Wood
Now that we are coming into the darkest and the gloomiest part of the year there seems, looking around the countryside, little at all to give us any cheer. So let’s see if we can help a little morale by telling you of an increasingly successful conservation project not a million miles from here.
Wolford Wood is a 150 acre ancient woodland lying a few miles roughly east of Moreton-In-Marsh. It was bough from the Batsford Estate in the 1940’s by Tom Cowley, a Birmingham coal merchant, primarily to augment supplies of fuel to his customers, coal of course then being on ration. In 1949 he retired here, light and water being provided by oil lamps and a well. These facilities were added, though well into his old age. Here he remained, supplying logs, bean poles and pea sticks all round the local community and his son Tom carried on the business until his own retirement in 2010. The present owners, Petra and Marcus Postlethwaite, bought it from the family and have dedicated themselves to continuing the business. Harvesting the woodland products lets light into the woodland canopy, improving the habitat and boosting biodiversity.
This transformation is being undertaken under the wing of the Forestry Commission with whom they have a five year procedural agreement, to be extended if all goes well, to one of twenty years. Natural England is also involved, under whose careful auspices assessment surveys are undertaken. The robust group of Warwickshire recorders, all voluntary, continue to take a great intertest in this place. Over one hundred flowering plants have been identified, including Wild Garlic and a thriving colony of Common Spotted Orchids. Noctural moth surveys have revealed over 500 species and still counting, some found only here in the county. Butterflies and bats, too, are recorded; and so too are fungi. Some years ago I took part in a Dormouse survey here, but so gar this tiny elusive creature has chosen not to reveal itself. So our vision of tit must still be to the pages of Lewis Carol!
During both World Wars wood was extensively taken from these woods towards the war effort, resulting in many of the older mature trees disappearing. The policy now is essentially and importantly to preserve many of the remaining mature trees and encourage natural regeneration. So although logs, bean poles and pea sticks are still taken from this woodland, this is achieved by careful contemplation of where and which trees are cut, and ensuring that small felling sites are chosen in pockets about the wood, not in one great swathe. Branches and twigs from felled trees are laid around and about the stumps of cut trees. Natural regeneration, from seeds and coppice stumps, not replanting, is the basis of this conservation work, a process I remember being advocated many years ago by the naturalist Oliver Rackham, who has probably forgotten more about trees and woodland than most of us will ever know.
Inevitably all things natural have their enemies, and deer are a woodland’s main one. So here a local farmer is invited to cull from time to time. I’m told that the venison sausages are particularly tasty!
I recently read an article by one of those journalists who delight in predicting that the end of the natural world is night. I would not dream of offering him anything but my best wishes for the coming season. But afterwards, he might consider taking himself into such a nature reserve, and pondering on how these places are started from nothing, and transformed into what they are by hard work and dedication.