Ever since first reading JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as a child, I’ve been fascinated with British trees and woodlands – though I was never as literarily industrious as Henry, who has made note of all the tree species mentioned in the books. Living in England for several years, as a postdoctoral fellow, enhanced this obsession, and I developed a special fondness for Epping Forest, through my weekly horseback riding lessons there. Apart from the occasional mad runaway or unintentional sudden dismount, riding horseback through a forest or wood-pasture is an enchanting and intriguing experience. I hope I will always retain my olfactory memories of Epping Forest after a spring rain shower or on crisp autumn days, the visual impressions of light and shadow flickering as we cantered under the trees, and the sounds of songbirds and hoofbeats, but just in case I forget, I thought I’d better write something down.

For me, the appeal of Epping Forest is intensified by its long and colorful history. There are two Iron Age hillfort sites, at Loughton Camp and Ambresbury Banks; local legends have it that Boudicca, and much later, Dick Turpin, used the Loughton site, but there is no evidence to support these claims definitively. It’s more likely that the Trinovantes used the camp as a lookout, or as a fortification to protect their cattle from marauders. As a Scheduled Ancient Earthwork, Loughton Camp proper can be explored only on foot, but one can still pretend to be Boudicca and have a lovely canter on horseback around the perimeter of the low bank, just outside the boundary indicated by the sign in the photo below. At the beginning of the twelfth century, the first King Henry also thought that this woodland was a pretty swell place for a canter, and designated it as a royal Forest where he could hunt fallow and red deer, and pretend to be Boudicca a Wood Elf a rugged outdoorsman. In the sixteenth century, King Henry VIII appropriated land from Waltham Abbey, and erected an Eglu Cube observation tower for ceremonial hunts (this is nowadays incorrectly referred to as Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge).

Loughton Camp, Epping Forest, Essex. Photo by Matthew Geyman, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License

Several hundred commoners retained grazing rights for their cattle, sheep, pigs, and goats, and were also allowed to collect wood from Epping Forest. Because livestock and deer were not excluded from any area of the woodland, trees were pollarded, i.e. cut at a height of 6 to 10 feet above the ground, and allowed to produce a crop of new shoots that would be out of reach of nibbling herbivore lips. This practice of pollarding can actually prolong the lifespan for many tree species, as will become apparent later in the story. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Epping Forest was threatened by fragmentation through individual ownership and conversion to poor quality farmland, but the Epping Forest Act of 1878 transferred the freehold to the City of London. This inspired biologist and conservationist Alfred Russel Wallace to write:

“We have now a far pleasanter task, that of calling attention to one of our ancient woodland wastes, Epping Forest, which, in the words of an Act of Parliament passed at the end of last session, is to be for ever preserved as “an open space for the recreation and enjoyment of the public.” Here at length every one will have a right to roam unmolested, and to enjoy the beauties which nature so lavishly spreads around when left to her own wild luxuriance. We shall possess, close to our capital, one real forest, whose wildness and sylvan character is to be studiously maintained, and which will possess an ever-increasing interest as furnishing a sample of those broad tracts of woodland which once covered so much of our country, and which play so conspicuous a part in our early history and national folk-lore."

But Wallace despised the “hideous assemblage of stunted mop-like pollards”, the thickets, and the open areas, or plains, which remained in the wood-pasture that most of Epping Forest had become. And he did not want the Forest restored simply with native oaks, beeches, birches, and elms – no, Wallace had grander, more diverse plans for the area between the rivers Lea and Roding:

“The plan I have now to propose is very different from all these. It is one which would be perfectly novel, perfectly practicable, intensely interesting as a great arboricultural experiment, attractive alike to the uneducated and to the scientific, not more expensive than any other plan, and perfectly in harmony with the character of the domain as essentially “a forest.” It is, briefly, to form several distinct portions of forest, each composed solely of trees and shrubs which are natives of one of the great forest regions of the temperate zone."

Wallace wanted to turn Epping Forest into a giant arboretum, with trees from the North American forests characteristic of both the East and West Coasts. This plan never came to fruition, but nevertheless, Wallace and other Conservators were influential enough to stop the practice of pollarding, and to reduce grazing of livestock within Epping Forest. The result was that beeches grew crowded and dense, shading out much of the undergrowth. The plains within Epping Forest also changed as the grazing was reduced, with beech and oak crowding out the heather. By the 1970s and 1980s, it was clear that all was not well among the beech-stands of Epping Forest: in fact, there was evidence of group damage or killing amongst the beeches, which did not seem to affect hornbeams or oaks.

The titular hacking is, of course, not the computer variety, but rather refers to the equestrian types and their equid mounts who frequent the bridle paths of Epping Forest. They, or shall I say “we” (see below), according to Oliver Rackham, are at least in part responsible for the decline of patches of beech trees in the northern section of the woodland. The vicissitudes of anxious waiting, repeated disappointment, and frustrated re-ordering, which I endured to obtain a copy of Rackham’s book Woodlands, are not worth recounting here, or anywhere else, really. Nevertheless, I was especially delighted to read a section about Epping Forest, and amused to discover that Rackham was likely walking around the Essex woodland, trying to solve an ecological mystery, during the same period I was idly hacking the bridle paths of the same area on a nutty Welsh cob or Thoroughbred.

Yours truly, mounted on a palomino Welsh cob, prepares to storm the beeches along the horsepaths of Epping Forest

Rackham explains that Epping Forest, like most woodlands of southern England, was dominated in ancient times by lime trees (linden, or Tilia cordata). At the time the future Epping Forest (first known as Waltham Forest) was surveyed in the Domesday Book, most of the limes had disappeared, albeit for unknown reasons, and hornbeam, oak, and beech had become the dominant tree species. In the lowlands, hornbeam prevailed, while beech reigned supreme on the central plateau. By examining the patterns of lichen decline and recovery, noting areas susceptible to vehicular exhaust and acid rain, and comparing the prevalence of beech decline “symptoms” in areas of high (Hyde Park), intermediate (Epping Forest), and very low (Pindus Mountains, Greece) levels of atmospheric pollution, Rackham determined that something(s) other than anthropogenic environmental contaminants had to be responsible for the group decline. Rackham proposes that the discontinuation of pollarding, in the late nineteenth century, allowed the beeches of Epping Forest to develop expansive crowns that could not be supported by the roots. Beeches do not like to be waterlogged, and when delicate, shallow roots are overwhelmed by streams, altered climate, or disturbed soil, the vitality of the tree declines, and it may eventually die. In fact, several of the beech group killings in Epping Forest are immediately adjacent to constructed horsepaths, notably at Loughton Camp and at High Beach, both of which were included in favorite long rides that I remember. Rackham, however, does not condemn the equestrian activities; he writes, rather, that:

“Had gaps not been started by horse and horsepath damage, something else would have initiated them. In the long term beech will probably retreat on to well-drained sites, renewing itself there by gap-phase regeneration.”

Those interested in environmental studies of Epping Forest might enjoy visiting or taking a course at the Field Centre at High Beach.