'The grove is the centre of their whole religion.
It is regarded as the cradle of the race and the dwelling-place
of the supreme god to whom all things are subject and obedient'.

Tacitus, (1st Century Roman Historian) Germania

 

Alice Holt, like all Forests posesses its own uniqueness which is the product of centuries of change and development

 

Alice Holt Forest is 'Ancient Woodland'. That may seem strange as so much of it consists of plantations of non-native conifers and other exotic trees, but the definition of Ancient Woodland is land that’s been under trees since before AD 1600. Alice Holt has been more-or-less wooded a lot longer than that! That's ecologically important as, even where trees have been felled and replanted, the soil in an Ancient Wood retains a huge variety of fungi and micro-bugs. So conifers on an Ancient Woodland site may be richer in total bio-diversity than an oak wood planted on ex-arable land.

Alice Holt has been largely wooded since the 'Atlantic Phase' , the warm period that followed the last Ice Age. The glaciers that repeatedly covered much of Britain last retreated about 10,000 years ago. The ice sheets never reached this far south, but the great deposits of sand and gravel that underlie local rivers such as the Wey are the 'outwash' deposited by huge torrents of summer meltwater gushing forth from the front of the ice sheets, away to the North. As the climate warmed, dry, windswept tundra gave way to trees, as 'pioneer' species such as birch, willow , hazel and Scots pine began to thrive. About 7,000 years ago a more 'modern' type of broadleaved woodland had taken over as trees like oak, elm and lime crowded out the earlier pioneer species.

Early Man certainly lived in these parts, as evidenced by a few finds of flint tools. Some of these date back to the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) and would therefore predate the Forest itself, coming from before the end of the last Ice Age. The majority are from the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age): the period from the de-glaciation up to about 5,500 years ago. At that time humans adapted to the denser forest cover and consequent loss of the great tundra-roaming herds of big game and became more settled. They hunted deer, trapped birds and other small game , fished and gathered fruits and molluscs to eat. There are also finds from the Neolithic (New Stone Age) and Bronze Age when men had adopted settled villages, farming , pottery, weaving and eventually metal tools. Alice Holt being inhospitable for farming, it would never have attracted settlement to the level that the nearby chalk downs did, with their light, well drained and easily cleared soils.

A 19th Century depiction of Celtic Britons from the time of the Roman Invasions

It's likely that the Iron Age (or Celtic period) which began around 500 BC would have seen considerably more activity. By that time parts of Southern Britain (The name comes from the 'Britons', the collective name for the many Celtic tribes who inhabited these islands) were quite densely populated. Much of the land was well-organised into villages and estates, often with extensive systems of fields laid out on carefully surveyed ,roughly grid-iron patterns and interspersed with huge hill forts and other defensive enclosures. Already Britain had lost much of its primeval forest cover and Alice Holt by that time may have become valuable as a source of wood, hunted game and grazing for pigs and cattle. Willey Mill , on the River Wey has a name which signifies a 'temple' or sacred grove existed thereabouts in a forest clearing.

But our history really begins with the Romans who began settling Britain in earnest after the invasion of Claudius Caesar in AD 43. The Romans settled all the land around this district, with many fine villas (country estates) and a small town Vindomis (meaning 'in the wine country') at modern Holybourne on the main Silchester-Chichester road. The sticky blue Gault Clay of Alice Holt proved perfect for pottery. Soon there were many kilns making a type of medium-quality grey-coloured, utilitarian ceramic now known as 'Alice Holt Ware' There was huge demand for this , both for the booming market in the new capital of Londinium and for transporting the locally produced wine. Abundant wood fuel could be produced by "coppicing" the trees (periodically cutting them to the base to produce a fast-growing crop of poles), turf was available for building the kilns and quartz sand from around Frensham was mixed with the clay to harden the pots. All this made made the location perfect for large scale production and parts of the forest are thickly scattered with the broken shards of rejected pots and the blackened earth where the kilns once stood. There are also traces of the old clay pits at the Straits Inclosure and possibly the line of a minor Roman road in the Lodge Inclosure

Alice Holt Ware and Roman coins from the vicinity

FOR A LONGER ARTICLE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN POTTERIES OF ALICE HOLT FOREST >>Click here

After the departure of the Roman Legions in AD 410 , in the face of a general military and economic collapse of the Western Empire, the Alice Holt Potteries rapidly declined and were gone before AD 450. By this time the Romano-Celtic population of Southern Britain was under continuous pressure from Germanic tribes of Angles (from whom we get the name 'England'), Saxons, Jutes and Frisians who turned rapidly from piracy and raiding to full-scale settlement, sometimes taking over among the existing Celtic population, but often founding new settlements away from the declining or abandoned Roman towns and villas.

Most of the placenames hereabouts are of Saxon origin and several refer to the wooded nature of the country. Thus Bentley means 'Grassy clearing' , 'Frith End' comes from firhpe, Saxon for 'wood' , Kingsley means 'The King's Clearing' and as noted above Willey Mill is a Saxon name referring to a pre-existing Celtic sacred clearing in the Forest. Others such as Binsted ('Bean Farm') or Dockenfield ('Field of Docks') are also of Saxon origin.

Being unsuited to agriculture, with steep slopes, wet clays and stony gravels hunting was a natural use for the land. The first recorded owners of the Forest were the Bishops of Winchester, that being the capital of the old West Saxon kingdom (Wessex) and one of the pre-eminent cities of England. In AD 951 in the reign of King Edmund the Elder, Aelfsige became Bishop of Winchester and held large estates in the area. It's almost certain that the name Alice Holt comes from Aelfsige's Holt , a 'Holt' being a thicket or wood where animals lie up. Whether he was the first Bishop of Winchester to specifically preserve Alice Holt for hunting purposes is unknown, and Aelfsige (who's name means 'noble and victorious') didn't enjoy it for that long. King Edmund's successor, King Eadwig the All Fair made Aelfsige Archbishop of Canterbury in 958, but the following year, en route to Rome to receive the Pallium from Pope John XII , Aelfsige became trapped by a snowstorn in an Alpine pass and perished from cold. Aelfsige was married (celibacy only became habitual for Catholic Priests much later) but the Forest would have passed not to his son Godwine of Worthy (who died in 1001, defending against invading Vikings) as it would have already passed to Beorhthelm, Aelfsige's successor as Bishop of Winchester.

.

Felling oaks from the 11th Century Bayeux Tapestry

The name of the Forest is recorded before the Conquest and again in 1169 as Alfsiholt and as Alfieseholt or Alfriesieholt in 1242. By 1301 it had been corrupted to Halfyesholt, but in 1373 it first appears as Alice Holt with such deviations as Alisholt (Saxton's Map of 1575) Alishoult in 1635 and Ayles Holt in Gilbert White's writings of 1767.The first Ordnance Survey map of 1817 recorded the name as Alder Holt Wood which may have been an assumption about the origin of the name or possibly a misunderstanding of the local dialect by the Army Officer sent to survey the country.

After the Norman Conquest in 1066, Forests took on a whole new significance. Today we think of a 'Forest' as a large tract of woodland, but in the Medieval period, the term had nothing particularly to do with trees but rather meant an area preserved for hunting and subject to Forest Law. The defeated Anglo-Saxons saw huge swathes of land placed under Forest Law by William the Conqueror, most famously his 'New' Forest. Alice Holt, after passing through the hands of a series of Norman magnates, became part of the Royal Forest of Alice Holt and Wolmer (a name which derives from the Saxon for 'Wolf Marsh'). Certain peasants or 'Commoners' had specific rights to graze animals, collect fuel etc but were subject to the harshest penalties for killing or even disturbing the game: both the prized deer, the other animals of the chase such as wild boar and the 'small deer' (which basically was pretty much anything that moved). A peasant caught poaching in a Royal Forest was lucky if he escaped hanging and merely had his ears cut off and his eyes blinded!

Peasant taking pigs into a Forest to root for beechmast and acorns, a Medieval Commoner's privilege called the 'Right of Pannage'

Because England had lost a great deal of its tree cover (more than any other European country) and the population was rising, the Forests were a valuable resource of small wood for fuel, large timber for building and game for hunting and they were protected jealously. Henry II in the early 12th Century introduced fallow deer (only the roe, and the red, which favoured Woolmer Forest were native) Henry also suspended the commoners rights to enter the Forest during the deer's breeding season, while in the following century, Henry III forbade the disturbing of falcons' nests in order to maintain a supply of birds for hawking. King Richard II in the late 14th Century made good use of Alice Holt's oak, ordering up great timbers from Alice Holt for the building of the roof of Westminster Hall.

King John hunting in the New Forest

Alice Holt’s appearance then would have been quite different from today, with more grassy, open areas. There would have been more ancient, spreading, twisted oaks which had been 'pollarded' for fuel, i.e. lopped back to the trunk which then re-sprouted above the level at which deer could nibble the new growth. Sadly most of these venerable trees are gone including the 'Buck’s Horn' Oak and the 'Grindstone' Oak. One ancient dead oak remains at the Lodge and some of the yews also date back several hundred years. At the centre of the Forest was an open area or “Plain” within which sat the main or Great Lodge, affording prime views of the hunt riding out. The area near The Research Station is still called 'Plain Piece'. There were subsidiary lodges near Goose Green (on the site of the house still called 'Forest Lodge'), in the Straits Inclosure (lost) and at Kennels Pond where the hounds were kept and where a house remained until the 20th century.

A woodland hunting scene of the 15th Century. Actually Alice Holt had relatively little of this type of 'coppice' , where tress are cut to the ground on a regular cycle to produce poles for firewood etc. The presence of deer and grazing cattle would have been too damaging, so trees were 'Pollarded' (cut at around head height).

On the right is the sole oak remaing from those times. It's around 600 or 700 years old and its stumpy form shows it was pollarded once upon a time.. It's now sadly dead but the sapling behind it was grown from one of its acorns.

There were no roads in the old Forest, only tracks fanning out from the gate at the 'Holt Pound' (a 'pound' was an enclosure where cattle could be rounded up). Also the borders of the Forest were more ragged than today. For example the old cottages set back from the road at Blacknest mark the former edge of the Forest, where Commoners might get away with 'squatters' rights' , especially if they ingratiated themselves the King's officials. One such corrupt official was Alan Plugenot a Wardener who allowed poachers to take no less than 150 deer in return for bribes.

'Alisholt' and 'Wulmere' Forests on Christopher Saxton's 1575 map showing, albeit in a stylised way the 'hollow' structure of the Forest with its central grassy 'plain'

FOR A LONGER ARTICLE ABOUT ALICE HOLT IN OLD MAPS OF HAMPSHIRE>>Click Here

Increasingly it was timber for shipbuilding which the Crown was concerned about rather than just the hunting. In 1635 the Forest was managed by a Lieutenant, a Ranger, two Verderers, a Steward, a Woodward and five Foresters, collectively charged to 'preserve vert and venison', i.e. the trees and the deer. In 1607 King James I's officials had 500 oak trees felled for the building of the ‘Prince Royal’ at Woolwich which cost a colossal £20,000. Because the Forest still retained an essentially Medieval character, with deer grazing and lopping for fuel affecting many trees, some of the timber was of an inferior quality and it cost a further £6000 to rebuild the ship.

Timber shipbuilding in the 16th Century, when warships were first used on the High Seas in large numbers

In 1633 Charles I had the ‘Sovereign of the Seas' built using 1500 oaks from Alice Holt. The cost of the ship was £40,000 and it took nearly four years to build. The King introduced a ‘Ship Levy’ tax to pay for it, which was one of the disputes between King and Parliament that eventually led to Civil War breaking out. The disruption of the Civil War of the 1640's and subsequent Interregnum changed much in England. Alice Holt, in common with many Royal Forests was in serious decline: poached for deer and depleted of good timber by both King and those with less right such as Squire Edward Heighes, J.P. of Hay Place, Binsted who plundered timber without permission.

By the Restoration in the 1660's Forests such as Alice Holt were bringing little profit to the Crown. Charles II did instigate some replanting, but appointments such as Lieutenant and Ranger of Alice Holt were primarily used as 'grace-and-favour' or sinecure appontments for Royal cronies in return for cash or loyalty.

A tree near the Lodge replaces one planted by Ruperta, wife of Emanuel Scrope-Howe to the memory of her natural father, Charles I's dashing cavalier commander Prince Rupert of the Rhine. She and her husband were granted The Holt by William and Mary and were Rangers of the Forest from 1699 to 1740 (in Ruperta's case as Emanuel died in 1709) .This favour was in recognition of the family’s service during the Civil War, Emanuel's support for William's 'Glorious Revolution' and his successful service as envoy-extraordinary to the Elector of Hanover during a period of strained relations within the Grand Alliance. This is a neat illustration of how the younger son from a socially ambitious family might get ahead: marrying the illegitimate daughter of the restored Stuart King's cousin and then switching sides against Charles II's brother, James II and backing the winning side in the, largely political struggle between the forces of Protestant, constitutional monarchy and the Catholic, absolutist Stuart monarch. He further ingratiated himself by becoming MP for Morpeth (and later Wigan) for the Earl of Carlisle's Court Whig party which was another job for a loyal placeman, as he apparently spoke only once in the House of Commons during his career!

But such loyalty came with its costs: the King asked him to make repairs to the Great Lodge and he duly spent £1200 on the job. Scrope-Howe sent the bill to the King who, typically refused to pay up!

Lieutenant-General Emanuel Scrope-Howe, MP 1663-1709

As the 17th and 18th Centuries progressed, the Forest began to take on the character a typical Country Gentleman’s residence. Scrope-Howe re-introduced wild boar and even brought in a herd of buffalo but they did not survive poaching (which was endemic in The Holt and Woolmer Forests according to Gilbert White of Selbourne).

Lord Stawell was the Lieutenant from 1766 until 1811 and it was about this time that the current Lodge building was erected, surrounded by fine specimen Holm Oaks, with a great avenue leading the length of the Forest and a picturesque lake (created some time between 1760 and 1790 ) in the Glenbervie Inclosure. These features can be seen on the Milne Map of 1791 (To see the in-depth feature on old maps click here)

Left: The Lodge, built some time in the 1810's to replace the Medieval 'Great Lodge' . Right: Charles Furlong-Wise, Deputy Surveyor of Alice Holt & Woolmer Forest from 1816-1836 who was the first resident of the new building (From a portrait in The Lodge, courtesy Forest Research)

Britain was now the World's great Naval Power and the consumption of prime oak by the Naval dockyards was tremendous. Impending war with France resulted in some 1800 cartloads of timber being extracted from The Holt between 1771 and 1788. The Napoleonic Wars were traumatic for Britain which had, after all suffered a blockade and a threatened invasion. The Royal Commissioner for Woods found the remaining trees mainly 'very ancient and much decayed' and commenced the replanting which seemed urgently needed in 1811. This was given impetus in 1812 when Parliament passed an 'Act for The Better Cultivation of Navy Timber in The Forest of Alice Holt'. 1600 of the Forest's 2400 acres total area were fenced off, the deer removed and the ancient oaks felled and replanted with good stock . Many magnificent, tall, straight oaks survive from these plantings, especially in the Lodge, Goose Green and Abbott's Wood Inclosures. Although the Navy no longer needs oak warships, they’ve gone to many notable uses including the reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.

Battleships from Napoleonic times. And (right) one of the oaks planted in the 1810's and 1820's . They were too late to provide naval timber, but are magnificent, straight , mature specimens today

The remaining Commoners lost their rights but in return the Crown gave up the archaic Forest Laws and the boundaries were 'tidied up', creating the areas of neat, hedged fields we see around Goose Green and Blacknest for example. Many a family thus made it from landless peasants, 'squatting' on the edges of the Forest, to small, gentleman farmers with rights over their house and land. In 1822 a new turnpike road (now the A325) was cut through the Forest passing through the old Holt Pound Gate and onwards to Portsmouth (which incidentally revealed the existence of the old Roman kilns to a local antiquary). Old forest rides such as the current Blacknest Road were metalled and new, straight lanes such as those either side of the Halfway House were created. The one now called Binsted Road leading down to the Jolly Farmer cut through a spring which still floods to this day. By mid-century, some rather fine villas has sprung up along the new road, catering to the burgeoning middle classes seeking a tasteful rural dwelling.

Oak for shipbuilding was becoming increasingly obsolete long before the 1820's plantings were ready for cropping, and the lack of good mature trees meant that the total income from Alice Holt in the years between 1847 and 1904 was a paltry £70446-13s-11d ....and a halfpenny!

But forestry for the production of timber, rather than the preservation of hunted game was becoming highly scientific in the later 19th Century. In place of Bishops, magnates and Royal cronies, the Forest was now cared for by career Foresters, answerable to civil servants and ultimately politicians. Still, the period was not without its colourful episodes, as witnessed by the Report, commissioned in 1854 by the Treasury, under William Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer . They appointed referees who were charged with looking into allegations that the Deputy-Surveyor, a Mr Higinbothom has been deliberately underestimating the number of the young 1820's oak trees per acre, covering up that he'd been helping himself to a proportion of the growing oaks in order to sell the bark which was at that time in great demand for the leather-tanning trade, and worth more than the timber itself.

READ MORE DETAILS OF THIS CURIOUS HISTORICAL INCIDENT IN THE ARTICLE "SHENANIGANS AT THE HOLT: THE 1854 CORRUPTION SCANDAL" Click Here

From 1881 to 1903 the Crown Estate began to experiment with conifers, especially where some of the oak plantings of the early 1800's had been less successful. Mr Schlich, one of the foremost foresters of the day carefully surveyed the quality of the standing crop and produced a long-term management plan. This involved thinning the best oak and underplating it with beech and felling much of the rest at a rate of 15-20 acres per year and re-planting with conifers (mainly Scots pine and larch) over the next 40 years.

After World War I ,(Just as they had done after the Napoleonic Wars), the Government of the day reacted “after the horse had bolted” to the threat to timber supplies. Most worrying had been the risk to the vital coal mines through being deprived of pit prop timber by German blockade. So in 1919 the Forestry Commission was established to promote the strategic development of Britain's timber-producing capacity. It took over Alice Holt Forest from the Crown Estate in 1924 and was indeed able to clear fell 140 acres of young conifers and thin another 108 acres during World War II , but another 135 acres of Alice Holt's oak was also lost in that period. The Lodge became an internationally renowned Forestry Research Station in 1946, having been briefly a Country Club and also a Military Hospital.

Land Girls doing forest work during WWii . And one of the many fine old chestnut trees, dating back to the days of the Old Forest, wantonly felled in the interests of 'management' by the Forestry Commission in its less enlightened days

The Forestry Commission created some wonderful plantings, including the soon-to-be-restored Arboretum. But the Commission (later divided into its two arms, Forest Research which runs the Lodge and Forest Enterprise which manages the timber and leisure facilities) was not always kind to Alice Holt. Directed by Whitehall and funded by the taxpayer, they continued to replace great swathes of oak by plantations of dreary Corsican Pine. They also instituted the Visitor Centre, which for all its worthwhile activities encouraging education and public access, does provide a rather bland environment.

The FC is now a vastly more enlightened body, balancing timber with conservation, education and even making movies. It’s part of an international network of environmental plots, designed to be monitored intensively for over 100 years, to chart Global Warming and its complicated, unpredictable outcomes for wildlife. As conifers are felled, much land is being turned back into broadleaved woodland through natural regeneration and planting of native species. This will benefit the many rare species such as nightjars, dormice and purple emperor butterflies which inhabit the Forest.
.
Now with the additional protection afforded by National Park Status starting in 2012 the long history of our unique Forest is entering a new and exciting phase.

 

<< Back to Home Page