Map of sheepwalks and winter pastures (green) of the Mesta in Spain during the 13th century
With the retreat of the ice from northern Europe some 8,000 years ago, an ameliorating
climate was accompanied by the spread of woodland. Contemporary man, represented
by the Mesolithic cultures, lived in what was essentially an afforested environment. The
evidence for his impact on the woodland is at best fragmentary and inferential. Mesolithic
man was a hunter and food-gatherer, and the only way in which the small human
population would have been likely to cause widespread modification of the environment
would have been through the use of fire, perhaps to drive game. If some deforestation
took place during Mesolithic times—and there is some suggestion of this, for example on
Dartmoor—it commenced in earnest during the succeeding Neolithic period
(c 3200-
1800 bc in Britain), which saw the advent of more or less settled forms of agriculture. By
the time of the last Neolithic cultures, agricultural systems based on cereal cultivation,
domesticated livestock, or both, were widespread throughout Europe.
During the succeeding Bronze Age (c 1800-500 bc in Britain) and Iron Age (500 bc-ad
43) and during the Roman occupation (ad 43-c 410), farming methods in this country
became progressively more sophisticated and the human population increased in size.
Agriculture, albeit often a shifting form of agriculture, required the clearance of the
woodland, whether for growing crops or rearing livestock. In many cases pastoral land
uses would follow naturally on arable production. Land cleared and cropped persistently
by the primitive techniques available would lose nutrient status to the point where
cultivation was no longer worthwhile. It would then be used as grazing grounds. On
much of the more base-deficient soils of northern Europe woodland clearance, and the
subsequent failure to compensate adequately the soil for the decline in base status due
to leaching and agricultural exploitation, led to the development of heathland and
moorland conditions. This is thought to be the origin of wood pasture, where forestry
and livestock grazing exist as an integrated economy.
In Upland Britain the clearance of the woodland appears to have been widespread in
Neolithic times. In the New Forest, in common with most other areas in Lowland Britain
where heathland developed, the first significant woodland clearances seem to have
occurred somewhat later, during the Bronze Age. There is, indeed, little evidence to
show that Neolithic man settled in the area.
Efforts to relate the reduction in the woodland and the onset of soil deterioration with
changes in climate—and particularly with the climate deterioration which occurred about
500 bc, when conditions became markedly cooler and wetter—are generally
unsatisfactory. It is, however, conceivable that increased rainfall accelerated leaching in
soils already cleared of their tree cover and thus contributed to their impoverishment.
New Forest which occupies a relatively large area of poor soils is a good model to
illustrate the outcome of wood pasture on local biodiversity. Here the progressive
reduction of the woodland area and the extension of heathland has continued into
modern times, although the process was retarded after the eleventh century, when the
area became subject to the restrictions and controls over land use which designation as
a Royal Forest implied. The later vegetation history is intimately associated with its legal
status and management as Royal Forest. This at the same time severely limited
reclamation: much more of the unenclosed commons would undoubtedly otherwise
have been enclosed for agriculture as the techniques for reclaiming the poor soils
improved in recent centuries. Today (and indeed since the early nineteenth century), it is
technically feasible to reclaim even the most impoverished of the heathland soils.
