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The One Ring Forums:
Tolkien Topics: Reading Room:
Someone must have cut down all those trees. :
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noWizardme
Half-elven
May 3, 11:06am
Views: 190028
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Someone must have cut down all those trees.
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Many thanks for starting this thread, Curious. The chapters you are quoting from have become some of my favourite since I settled in an Oxfordshire village about 30 years ago. Of course I like these chapters! That is because they contain a loving, carefully-observed descriptinon of something very like my beloved local scenery, in beautifully sonorous prose. As your grand collection of quotes shows.
But, as you ask, who cut down all the trees (near me, with some extrapolations for the Shire)?
In Tolkien's day people used to imagine the primaeval Wildwood as being all dense, closed canopy a squirrel could go from tree to tree... . Since then further studies means we think that Neolithic peoepl arriving in what's now Oxfordshire would be finding more of a mosaic of mature woods and natural clearings. So some clear felling was done, presumably.
But thse neolithic folks also introducd coppicing: a cut-and-come-again system that means you can repeatedly harvest wood on a 5-30 year cycle. Genius because not only does it yeild far more wood than growing a full size standard tree and felling it; it also yields wood of much more useful size and shape for everyday needs. It's easily managed with hand tools. I do it with a pruning saw, a bush saw and a hatchet -- I'm not a lumberjack and I'm OK (with that. Also the wood is easy to carry off, although there is a long tradition of itenerant woodworkers setting up camp near the wood and working it there with simple machine tools - bodging. I imagine the quality of the work was varied, because to bodge something can mean to make a mess of it. But on the other hand, a body to promote green woodworking has adopted the name - organising The Bodgers Gazette, and the (wonderfully titled) Bodgers' Ball.
Because of this, a lot of copses, coppices and small woods in England are still where they have been for hundreds of years. And many are probably remains of the old Wildwood. If you can prove your wood has been a wood since 1600, it can be registered as Ancient Woodland, and recieve some legal protection. Try and fell it and we ...er... call the copse!
Ancient Woodland is a farly rare classification - there would have been more land eligible had the system existed at the time of Tolkien's birth. 
Ancient Woodland won't necsarrily contain trees that look like they are from from 1600 or earlier. If the wood has been continually coppiced you might see big ''stools' with a lot of young trunks, but no huge trees (whcih a visitor might be expecting, having been told the wood's age). A conseuence of this was that Europeans arriving in North America's woods were flabgergasted at the collossal old-growth trees they could see; unlike anything at home. (IIRC disputes over felling rights for the choice ones was one source of friction between American colonists and the British Crown. The Crown wanted the big trees for the demand of ever more, ever bigger ship masts for the Royal Navy. Enacting that monopoly was one thing; enforcing it an ocean away among an un-coperative poulace quite another).
Massive trees, including Ancient Trees are more likely to be on parkland, farmland, country estates, or what is confusingly called 'forest' but isn't the dense wildwood you might imagine. A history of the New Forest (in Hampshire) explains how we got this kind of Forest:
In 1079 William the Conqueror took ownership of the area as his own hunting forest. He enforced a forest law, preventing local communities from using the forest to graze their livestock, hunt and forage for food or even build fences, as these activities would interfere with William’s hunting pursuits. After the death of William, and his successor Rufus, the rights of the common people were eventually restored in the 1217 Charter of the Forest. A special Verderers' Court was set up to enforce the laws of this Charter and protect these rights. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/...ry-of-the-new-forest
(Since then the New Forest has developed a complex system of shared ownership and use, and a community that has and will see off most kinds of messing with it.)
A lot of English Woodland is a living palimpsest of many things. For example Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire (next to Oxford City and a very likely place for Tolkien to have walked):
The wooded parts of the Wytham Estate comprise ancient semi-natural woodland (dating to the last Ice Age), secondary woodland (dating to the seventeenth century), and modern plantations (1950s and 60s). The fourth key habitat is the limestone grassland found at the top of the hill. Other smaller habitats include a valley-side mire and a series of ponds. The site is exceptionally rich in flora and fauna, with over 500 species of plants, a wealth of woodland habitats, and 800 species of butterflies and moths. Wytham Woods are often quoted as being one of the most researched pieces of woodland in the world. Covering 1000 acres, they are designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. https://www.wythamwoods.ox.ac.uk/about
Tolkien's lifetime was during a period that was not good for English trees. Changing land use resulted in a lot of ancient woodland (and hedgerow) being dug up. There was a time of planting dense tree farms of conifers all in neat rows for mechanical harvesting. There was (and still is) Dutch Elm disease. Woods did not have the legal protections, supportive conservation organisations and community support they often do enjoy now. Just maybe, Tolkien was one of the inspirations for that change.
So we start from a low baseline and have as dieback and climate change to worry about. But there are good grounds for booth hope and work.
Extrapolating this pattern of tree-humman interactions to the Shire...
IIRC Marcho Blanco et al. didn't arrive in an area of wildwood: they were taking over soem abandoned farmland (with licence from the Crown - important for those law-abiding hbbits).
So, depending on how long abandoned? and what was growing? maybe The Knepp Estate is a starting point for visuals.
If coppices hadn't existed before the hobbits arrived, we know the hobbits put them in:
“For a short way they followed the lane westwards. Then leaving it they turned left and took quietly to the fields again. They went in single file along hedgerows and the borders of coppices, and night fell dark about them.”
(the evening in which Frodo sets off from Bag End)
My guess would be that hobbit various needs for wood were being met from these coppices. Note Tolkien puts the one above handily (and so very plausibly) near Hobbiton - shorter trip with your hand-cart or the sort of wicker backpack you can see a chap carrying on the Led Zeppelin album cover here) You'd also get a fair bit of wood from orchard management. And I think from hedgerow management too. I would know more about the latter if the hedge-laying workshops I keep trying to go on don't keep being cancelled for various reasons. Maybe there is an unfortunate Defence Against The Deer Arts side to that.
Hedgerows and coppices also seem the likely source of various foraged items - for example berries, and the hobbits' beloved mushrooms.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on May 3, 11:07am)
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Edit Log:
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Post edited by noWizardme
(Half-elven) on May 3, 11:07am
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