Updating the Ancient Woodland Inventory: Maps, tithes, and archives
A (Re)Introduction to ancient woodland
Ancient woodlands are amongst our most diverse and ecologically complex habitats and are home to many specialist species that cannot live elsewhere. Their ecosystems have developed over centuries, creating locally distinct and irreplaceable wildlife communities. Ancient woodland sites can also contain archaeological features – such as the remains of industrial activity, boundary features, and signs of tree management – that help tell their fascinating human stories, too.
As we described in our first project blog, the ancient woodland inventory (AWI) is an invaluable resource mapping woodlands considered ancient across the UK (each country has its own inventory). At present, about 2.5% of the UK’s woodlands are ancient. Though the original inventories were a huge achievement, improvement in technology since the 1980s has provided a golden opportunity to improve and refine the AWIs. The update has three main aims: to add smaller parcels of woodland than was possible previously (reducing the minimum size from 2 to 0.25 hectares); to use the increased access to evidence to add woodlands missed in the original inventory, or remove those where new evidence suggests they are not sufficiently old; and to improve the mapping accuracy of the woods themselves. We have now finished our provisional mapping – including finding thousands of potentially ancient woodlands to add to the inventory – and are moving on the evidence gathering stage.
To be classed as “ancient”, a site must have been continuously wooded since 1600 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, or 1750 in Scotland. These are the dates from which maps began to be accurate enough to identify historically continuous woodland areas. Some areas have considerably less historical map coverage, however, and extending a woodland’s chronology all the way back to 1600 can be a challenge. Happily, there are other sources of data can help to support a site’s inclusion in the AWI.
The forms of evidence that support a woodland’s “ancient” status are varied, but generally fall into two categories: field data – including both plant species and archaeological features – and historical archive material, principally maps. In this blog we’ll discuss the archival side of our evidence base, with our field work to feature next time.
To the archives!
After developing our long-established woodland dataset, which includes all current woodlands and wood-pasture or parkland also present on the first Ordnance Survey Maps (from the nineteenth century; see our earlier blog for more on this), the first step is to find out what historical evidence there is for a woodland’s presence in the more distant past.
Our most important sources are historical maps, including estate, tithe, enclosure, and county maps (among others), as they provide the clearest evidence of a wood’s presence over time (see below for more information on these types of map). If we’re lucky, they even show a fairly accurate shape and extent of the wood, such as in the 1785 York and Ainsty map pictured, which includes recognisably-shaped woodlands that we can align with our long-established woodland layer.
Some key types of historical map sources:
· Tithe maps show what parcels land in a parish was eligible to pay Tithes after these payments became monetary, rather than paid in kind, in the nineteenth century. These maps only date to slightly earlier than the first Ordnance Survey maps but are still very useful in tracing the chronology of land parcels.
· Enclosure and pre-enclosure maps cover areas (at the parish or sub-parish level) where open land was being enclosed under the various acts of enclosure. They generally do not show the whole landscape, but focus on the farmed land and anything that abuts it. A high proportion date to the end of the eighteenth century, but can be as early as the 1595 or as late as 1918.
· County maps, dating from the latter half of the eighteenth century, were made by professional cartographers and cover almost all of England. They were sponsored by major landowners (to whom the maps are dedicated) and mapmakers were incentivised to be as accurate as possible.
· Estate maps were usually produced when land was changing hands or management, though some were simply made as status symbols. They can show anything from an entire estate to a single woodland, and can take the age of a woodland all the way back to before the 1600 cutoff.
A particularly gorgeous and well characterised example of a historical map is the Plan of the City of York and Ainsty from 1785 (image courtesy of The British Library King's Collection Maps K.Top 44.19.)
The 1771 County of York map engraved by Thomas Jefferys, the King’s geographer, is another extremely rich source of evidence for woodlands. It can reveal a lot more than the presence or absence of a wood – as shown by the especially interesting area pictured below, which includes Arncliffe Wood and Mount Grace Wood near Ingleby Arncliffe and Mount Grace Priory. As well as the wood symbols and general appearance of the map differing from modern maps, it shows the names of principal landowners – here Sir Alexander Ramsay, Baronet, and Mrs Mauleverer – and gives an example of how place names can change over time: Ingleby under Arncliffe rather than the modern Ingleby Arncliffe. Place names are another source of evidence for the age of a woodland in their own right, though changes over time - such as spelling, renaming, or even movement around the landscape – can make them difficult to interpret.
The area near modern day Ingleby Arncliffe on the County of York map from 1771. This beautifully engraved map shows the entire county area and is far too large and detailed for us to show in its entirety here. You can see all ten sheets in the McMaster University Library Digital Archive here.
Even the 1771 map does not take us all the way back to the 1600 threshold required for ancient status and, unfortunately, there is very little map evidence that goes back that far. All is not lost, however, as many other forms of historical archive material can be used to fill these gaps, including ecclesiastical court records (known as Cause Papers), and tithe and other parish or county records. With the help of the fantastic team at the Borthwick Institute at the University of York, we have begun finding very early records for some of our woodlands. One great example is Leppington Wood near the hamlet of Leppington, northeast of York. Here we have a Cause Paper from 1590, in which the local rector takes one of his parishioners to court for failing to pay his tithe of wood from Leppington Wood (pictured), and as the site name is unchanged this is especially neat evidence of this woodland pre-dating 1600.
What comes next?
We are still in the early stages of our archival research and are really excited to continue poring over these fascinating old maps and records. There are also a variety of other sources of information – such as Historic Environment Records pertaining to heritage buildings, historical landscapes as well as archaeological sites – that we will explore in future steps. Our work with this archive and historical material will make up one of the two strands of evidence supporting our proposed changes to the AWI and will feed in to how we prioritise which woodlands to visit for survey in 2025 – another fascinating topic, which we will explore in a future blog post.
Leppington Wood outlined on aerial photography (top left) and overlaying the Epoch 1 Ordnance Survey Map from the mid nineteenth century (top right; Extract from Ordnance Survey's Epoch 1 first county series map, 1850). The woodland is clearly visible on the OS Map, meaning it is at least old enough to warrant further investigation. The name “Leppington Wood” can be read in the Cause Paper from 1590 (check the sixth row down) – great evidence of the antiquity of the woodland. The Cause Paper (CP.G.2560) image was kindly provided by the Borthwick Institute, and you can see the full Paper in zoomable high resolution at https://discover.york.ac.uk/causepapers/yorkcp-10270.