Meetings with remarkable trees

I visited Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire for the first time last weekend, and was delighted to find both a beautiful area of woodland and a connection with the early commons preservation movement.

Burnham Beeches comprises 220 hectares of woods in South Buckinghamshire, 25 miles or so from London.  Its many miles of walks take visitors through areas of ancient woodlands, wood pasture, open spaces and heaths. The woods get their name from the many veteran beech pollards that provide such an amazing backdrop to an afternoon’s stroll, as well as habitats for wildlife (such as the red ants we saw in nests all over the place).

Curiously, perhaps, the place is owned and managed by the Corporation of the City of London. Why should the City of London concern itself with some woods so far from the City? One of the drives – Sir Henry Peek’s Drive – gives a clue as to what happened.

In 1879 the woods were put up for purchase, as ‘land suitable for the erection of superior residences’. The Commons Preservation Society and the Kyrle Society, which at the time were vocal defenders of open spaces, decided something needed to be done.

Since part of the wood was common land, the Corporation was invited to make use of the Open Spaces Act of 1878, which gave them the power to purchase such lands for the benefit of the public within a radius of 25 miles of London. The Corporation had no powers to purchase the remaining, enclosed areas, and were saved when the local MP Sir Henry Peek stepped in. He offered to buy the residual, non-commonable areas of Burnham Beeches, in order to donate them to the Corporation and re-unite the whole.

Sir Henry Peek was a well-known figure in the open spaces movement, and had been a big influence in the battle for Wimbledon Common in 1864, which had been the starting point for the Commons Preservation movement. One of the contributors to an essay competition sponsored by Sir Henry, on the theme of the protection of commons in metropolitan areas, was a young London lawyer called Robert Hunter. His essay was awarded a highly commended prize, and Hunter went on to be one of the country’s leading experts on the law of common land as well as one of the founders of the National Trust.

Sir Henry Peek, MP

Hunter was closely involved in the struggle to save Epping Forest from enclosure, another woodland saved by the Corporation at around the same time as it acquired Burnham Beeches.  Meanwhile, Octavia Hill, Treasurer of the Kyrle Society, viewed the Corporation’s acquisition of Burnham Beeches as a great success for the early open spaces movement.

 No mention is made of the Kyrle Society, or the Commons Preservation Society, in the visitor centre at Burnham Beeches. Nonetheless, the woods clearly have an important place in the story of the commons preservation movement, and indeed a strong connection to the founders of the National Trust.

Incidentally, the connection with Sir Henry Peek, son of one of the founders of Peek Freans, also provides the missing link between the commons preservation movement and the garibaldi biscuit....

 

The other remarkable tree I made a fond return visit to last weekend was the Ankerwycke Yew. A very special tree indeed, and one with an even older significance, as potentially the site where Magna Carta was sealed. Read more at the Ankerwycke NT blogsite here.

Sandling Holiday

I've just been taking some holiday in Suffolk, and have enjoyed getting to know more about the county's distinctive coastline. The whole area that stretches along the coast from the river Orwell in the south to the river Blyth in the north is known as the Sandlings, because of its distinctive light sandy soils.  One of my holiday reads was 'Sandlands' by Tom Williamson, which explains how the landscape came to look like it does today. Very little, it turns out, is at all 'natural' - most is the result of many centuries of human activity.

The most distinctive feature of the countryside nearest to where we were staying, in Blythburgh, were the saltmarshes and estuarine mudflats alongside the river Blyth. Between Blythburgh and Walberswick stretches land that is now mostly nature reserve, combining woodland, heathy commons, marshes and reed beds. As Tom explains, the saltmarshes that characterise the area are probably its most 'natural' feature, comprising areas of salt-tolerant grasses on silt deposits built up in estuaries or behind sandbanks. 

Much else that we see in the Sandlings today is entirely human in construction, from the grazing marshes created by artificially enclosing salt marshes and excluding the sea, to the vast expanses of heather-covered heaths that resulted from earlier periods of tree clearance and agriculture.

Blythburgh is characterised by its huge parish church, the ceiling of which is lined with twelve wooden angels, wings unfurled. Such a large church was indicative less of the wealth of the area, than of its piety. 

In a region so close to the sea, perhaps the people of the Sandlings had more reason than most to seek divine protection from forces beyond their control.  Certainly the sea has had an overwhelming influence on the landscape. Southward and Aldeburgh are now best known as tourist retreats, but were originally important ports, receiving coals from Newcastle and other goods from the continent and exporting down the coast to London. Smaller places, including Blythburgh, Walberswick and Dunwich were also trading ports. Such was the influence of the estuarine economy that Defoe described the area like this:

   "S'woul and Dunwich and Walberswick

    All go in at one lousy creek"

The creek behind our cottage at Blythburgh, once lively with trading vessels, is now a charming place to while away time, observing the changing water levels, the wildlife, and catching crabs in the shallow waters. We got there by walking down a very pleasant green lane, which turned out to be a disused railway line closed in the 1920s. 

So this delightfully green and tranquil corner of the Sandlands turns out to be a former transport interchange and port - evidence again of the impact of humans on the landscape.

We very much enjoyed spending time at Dunwich Heath. A novel way to explore the Heath is by having a go at Geocaching - a new hobby for us, but one that turns out to be great fun. We managed about seven geocache spots in the end, as well as catching sight of some red deer and the caterpillar of an elephant hawk moth. We also enjoyed a very refreshing cup of tea afterwards, and some delicious National Trust biscuits. 

Consulting the road atlas, it turned out that we had largely managed to confine ourselves to the same square on the map for the whole week - taking in Southwold, Walberswick, Dunwich and Blythburgh (with an excursion to Aldeburgh for the excellent carnival there). Amazing how much there is to see and do, just by exploring the landscape. 

Hunting Mr Hunter

Every second Sunday in August, the Octavia Hill Society pays homage to the memory of the subject of their organisation by taking a coach trip. Often the destination is Crockham in Kent, where Octavia Hill lived and indeed is buried. This year, however, the Society chose to devote their trip to Octavia Hill's colleague and fellow campaigner for open spaces (and co-founder of the National Trust), Sir Robert Hunter. 

The timing was far from accidental. While last year marked the centenary of the death of Octavia Hill in August 1912, this year marks a hundred years since Sir Robert Hunter died in November 1913. Hunter is a less well-known figure than Hill, perhaps in part because of the order in which they died. Had Hunter been the first to pass, one wonders if his role as the first Chairman of the National Trust, and indeed as the person who devised the legal concept of a trust to whole land and buildings for the benefit of the nation, might be better remembered. 

Our coach trip traced a journey from south London out to Haslemere in Surrey, where Hunter spent the last thirty years of his life and where he is buried. As it turns out, though, our journey was more or less entirely confined to the historical boundaries of Surrey. Before London had its modern-day boroughs, the county of Surrey stretched all the way to the Thames. It encompassed all that land south of the river, which is today in the boroughs of Lambeth, Wandsworth and Southwark. It's the reason why The Oval Cricket Ground is still today the home of Surrey Cricket Club. 

Our road trip on the hunt for Hunter began in Addington Square, Camberwell, where we were welcomed by a local historian and a party from the residents association, all keen to share their own knowledge of the Hunter family's time in the Square. Hunter was born here, in a relatively modest house in the corner of the Square. The family moved to a larger home a few doors down after Hunter's father returned from sea (he was a successful mariner).

From Camberwell we struck out to Wimbledon, via the south London commons of Clapham and Wandsworth. Clapham Common remains a popular open space, although its future seems never to have been under threat. The Common has always had its wealthy supporters, living in the large mansions that abut it on each of its sides.  Wandsworth Common, however, faced significant threats in the mid 19th century from those who would rather see it developed into housing and transport routes. The common is now bisected by train lines running in and out of Clapham Junction. 

This was the context in which Hunter himself first came to prominence. As a young lawyer he entered a prize competition for essays on the best protection for metropolitan commons. His essay was highly commended, and brought him to the attention the Commons Preservation Society, founded in 1865 to fight against the enclosure of London's commons. Hunter's intelligence and legal expertise led to him being appointed Solicitor to the CPS. There followed some 15 years of legal battles over some of the most famous open spaces around London: Wimbledon Common, Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest. 

We stopped at Wimbledon to admire the windmill in the middle of the common, and also to view items from the collection of the Wimbledon Society (including an edition of the essay that Hunter wrote in 1866). Already here a link to Octavia Hill emerged. Octavia's mother met her father, James Hill, while she was teaching in Wimbledon. The museum's collection includes reference to Hill being asked to campaign for the preservation of the remains of Wimbledon Park (in fact a private estate, where the lawn tennis club is now located).

Keeping once again to the A3 (which formed the backbone of our route for much of the day), we headed out of London to Hindhead in Surrey. Our journey took us through the Hindhead Tunnel, opened in 2011. A happy consequence of the tunnel's opening has been that the commons above it have been reunited. Trees are being felled in order to return the landscape to the open heath that it formerly resembled. 

Our final stop was at St Bartholomew's church in Haslemere. Hunter moved to the town in 1883 with his young family not long after he had been appointed as Solicitor to the General Post Office, a role he held until just before  his death in 1913. At the church we planted an Octavia Rose in the churchyard, a fitting tribute to Octavia's great colleague and fellow campaigner for open spaces Sir Robert Hunter.