Coppicing & Pollarding: Managing the Trees of Epping Forest

If you want to understand the present landscape of Epping Forest, it’s helpful to know about some of the ancient practices and laws that shaped the vegetation and woodlands, and influenced how the Forest is managed today.

At least since early Anglo-Saxon times (450–1066 AD), the woodland and heath areas of Epping Forest have been used ‘in common’ by local people. This common land was frequently referred to as ‘the waste’, and was used for harvesting wood and for grazing. Eventually these activities were exercised as ‘rights’, and the land over which the rights were exercised was called the ‘common waste’.

Later (after 1066 AD), the Normans established Forest Law, which at one time applied to much of Essex. This particularly strengthened the King’s ‘rights of Vert and Venison’ in the Forest, much to the irritation of local people. This referred to the protection of game animals for hunting (mainly deer and wild boar) and the vegetation they depended on for food and shelter, for example, crab apple, hawthorn, blackthorn and holly, which became known as ‘special vert’. But this protection was only for the benefit of royalty, and restricted the common rights of local people.

Under the restrictive Forest Law, common rights only included grazing certain animals – known as the ‘right of Pasture’ – and the ‘turning out’ of pigs in autumn to feed on acorns and beech mast (the nuts of the beech tree), known as the ‘right of pannage’. Another highly valued and vigorously defended right was regularly cutting wood for fuel and ‘husbandry’ (for uses such as fencing and hurdles), known as the ‘right of estovers’.

In 1217 the Charter of the Forest re-established some of the rights of common people to the Royal Forests, including people’s rights to cut and collect wood.

Loughton Loppers on Staples Hill, exercising their right to lop at midnight on 11 November.
Image: London Illustrated News, 1860s

Lopping Wood

The practice of harvesting wood, usually for fuel, from the ‘common waste’ every 12 to 18 years, was known as ‘lopping’. It was customary for a different area to be cut each year and then allowed to re-grow before that area was lopped again.

Lopping ceased during the 19th century. The exact date varied in each area of the Forest – for instance, it is believed the large beech pollards in Great Monk Wood were last lopped by the Lord of the Manor around 1840 (this was not ‘common waste’ land at that point). Likewise the oaks of Dannet Hill, Chingford, were last lopped around 1805 by the Lord of the Manor of Chingford, St Pauls.

Lopping in Epping Forest was last undertaken as a ‘right’ by the Commoners of the Manor of Loughton on Staples Hill in 1877. After that, the 1878 Act protected the Forest from enclosure while at the same time making all forms of lopping illegal

Old coppice beech which hasn’t been re-coppiced for at least decades. Image taken summer 2022.

Coppicing

An ancient method of harvesting or lopping wood was by ‘coppicing’. In this case, the growth was cut down close to the ground and regularly recut after a number of years. As the new shoots would then become vulnerable to browsing by animals, the practice of coppicing usually only occurred in enclosed woodland, often privately owned with no common rights of grazing; such woods would be fenced against deer and cattle.

The coppiced stumps or ‘stools’, like the pollards, when regularly recut, survived almost indefinitely and eventually could reach a great size and age. Thousands of these coppiced trees are still growing in the Forest today. They are a wonderful example of a harmonious relationship between nature and people, and the importance of protecting these trees for use by generations to come.

The practice of harvesting wood, usually for fuel, from the ‘common waste’ every 12 to 18 years, was known as ‘lopping’. It was customary for a different area to be cut each year and then allowed to re-grow before that area was lopped again.

Pollarding

When trees are not cut down in their entirety, but cut, or lopped, six to eight feet from the ground, then the beheaded tree is called a ‘pollard’. This was done so that new shoots would grow out of reach of the browsing cattle and deer and form new branches. Trees beheaded for the first time were called ‘maiden pollards’.

Much of Epping Forest was pollarded as it was common grazing land, but very ancient coppice ‘stools’ can also be seen in parts of the Forest.

A typical ancient coppard in Epping Forest, may be very well over a thousand years old.

Coppards

Later the custom of cutting the coppice growth to the ground seems to have ceased and, when large enough, the well-grown ‘shoots’ from these coppiced clumps began to be treated as pollards, meaning the use for firewood had to be archieved higher up, and cut or lopped at regular intervals. This practice then continued until pollarding ceased. The term ‘coppard’ has been coined to describe these pollards that are growing in circular groups with a coppiced origin. Many of the large coppiced ‘stools’, now with their group of coppards – each group being really one tree – are the oldest living things in the Forest today. Some may be well over a thousand years old.

1. Coppice ‘stool’, or stump, showing one year of regrowth.
   2. Coppice stool after six years of regrowth. The length of the re-lopping cycle would depend on the intended use of the wood.
   3. ‘Coppard’ cluster: originally of coppice origin, but well-grown poles were treated as maiden pollards at least 200 years ago and then regularly re-lopped at intervals as pollards.

Tree management today

The Epping Forest Act 1878 requires the Forest to be kept open and unenclosed for public recreation and enjoyment and to preserve its ‘natural aspect’, but most of the Forest is further protected as it was designated as one of the first Sites of Special Scientific Importance (SSSI) in 1953. More recently the biological status of the Forest has been further recognised as one of European importance. A combination of several almost unique features contributes to this importance:

• Much of it is ‘continuous woodland’ where the vegetation has developed over several thousands of years.
• As a relic of an ancient medieval management system known as ‘wood-pasture’, there are few other comparable surviving examples of this extend. 
• The hornbeam/oak woods, the high beech woodland and the wet heathland, are rare and extensive examples of areas of old trees and unimproved grassland found in few other places.

The value of these unique and historic habitats is such that the Forest was made a Special Area of Conservation under the European Habitats Directive in 2005.

A general management plan was put into operation a decade or so ago with the following objectives:

• To maintain a wide diversity of natural habitats and native species
• To conserve some areas of old pollard woodland, by re-pollarding, as examples of the ancient regime of wood-pasture, and its associated communities of flora and fauna
• To restore some of the open plains and grassland, and to re-establish the areas of old heathland

More recently the City of London Corporation reintroduced cattle grazing as part of the management process in order to recreate some aspects of the old medieval wood-pasture system of management. The cattle help to increase biodiversity within the Forest through their grazing.

The Longhorn cattle, now an attraction in their own right, have sophisticated electronic collars, which guide them to where they should be, and mean that the Forest can continue to exist without the need for fences.

Notes:

* This article is based on material from Ken Hoy’s book Getting to Know Epping Forest, first published in 2002 with a new edition forthcoming edited by Judith Adams.

** The most recent Epping Forest Management Strategy is available to read in full at https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/assets/Green-Spaces/epping-forest-management-plan.pdf, published January 2021.

You may also like: