Ouse and Nene Branch

Tom Thomas using a sweep net to find spiders, harvestmen & insects. (Photo, Roger Tabor)

West Wood - Knotting

This note is a summary of where the study of the Natural History of a site can lead.

The Ouse & Nene Branch considered that regularly visiting a chosen area would be more informative about its Natural History than the usual hit and miss of guided walks. After some discussion a woodland in the north of Bedfordshire was chosen, this being West Wood, Knotting.

The members of the Branch, at the meetings that take place every first Sunday in the calendar month, explore the wood and its rides according to their particular interests and inclinations. Birds, fungi, flowers and other plants, insects, arachnids, snails and slugs, and mammals were some of these.

When the study started some years ago the weather had been very dry such that there were poor pickings, for example fungi, snails and slugs were very difficult to find. At one time the wood was notorious for its wetness and wellingtons were a necessity. Gradually the wood is regaining surface water in the rides, some of which are now becoming difficult to walk in, because of the wetter conditions of the past year or so.

As we explored the wood which is, strictly speaking, two separate woods, West Wood and Sheeprack Wood, some oddities began to reveal themselves. The woods have the indications of being old. The ground flora has many plants that point this out: bluebells, primroses, false oxlip, spurge laurel, greater butterfly orchid, broad-leaved helleborine, pendulous sedge are some examples. Such plants take a long time to colonise so the area of the two woodlands must have been undisturbed for a very long time. There are physical indications as well, such as the sinuous boundaries, the lane between the woods (known as Dean Lane Meadow), the A6 which was a toll road here, Buckster Lane along the northern edge to Knotting. All of these show that the woods, or these areas have been wooded for a very long time.

However, there was a snag. Measurement from various trees in the compartments gave an age for the trees of around seventy years. This raised two questions: how old are the woods, and what has been their management over the years? Various sources were investigated and questioned, and began to reveal an interesting amount of information.

For example: on 20th October 1247 the lane (Dean Lane Meadow) between the woods was the subject of a dispute over grazing rights. Parts of the woods are mentioned in this. Also, studies of the Domesday Book by a local historian, though woods are not specifically mentioned in this, showed this part of Bedfordshire to be heavily wooded. Further literature surveys, such as maps, estates' documents, and other sources confirm that these woods are old. The maps, for example that of 1646, show that the woods have hardly changed shape over the centuries, another sign of stability. Probably one factor in the woods not being cleared would be their wetness. Other woods in parishes nearby were removed entirely and no longer exist. All the evidence so far amassed demonstrates the these two woods, West Wood and Sheeprack Wood, are very old. Even their names have not changed over the years.

The question of management is quite different. We know that some clear-felling was done around the end, or near the end, of the first World War. This is from a conversation with a lady who remembers helping her father replant some of the wood around the early 1920s. Further to this, felling and replanting took place in the 1930s. These dates match quite with the determined ages given above.

The ownership of the woods is becoming a fascinating study and is becoming quite complicated. They were owned at one time by a Poet Laureate, Pye, and there are other various owners such as the Russells and the Whitbreads.

Early purple orchid, West Wood. Photo © Tom Thomas 1995

Programme

Programme Secretary: T J Thomas

The contact address for this branch is: BNA, PO Box 5682, Corby, Northamptonshire NN17 2ZW, UK; Tel: 01536 262977

Or alternatively E-mail: ousenene@bna-naturalists.org

Woodland Survey - 1st Sunday of every month 10am. Venue - West Wood near Souldrop on A6 between Rushden and Bedford. Meet at entrance gate by cottages, not the farm side.