Gold Medal Wood, Great Glernham

GOLD MEDAL WOOD, GREAT GLEMHAM T H E E A R L OF CRANBROOK

I RECENTLY had drawn to my attention a copy of the Ipswich Journal dated lOth October, 1795, containing the following: Method of Raising Oaks from Acorns, by S A M U E L K I L D E R B E E , of Ipswich, Esq. and to w h o m the Premium of the Society's Gold Medal was adjudged for t h e same.

In the m o n t h of Nov. 1793, I planted 10 acres of land with acorns, of which the enclosed is a certificate. T h e plantation was made upon a farm in the parish of Great G l e m h a m , in Suffolk. T h e land planted, measures 10 acres and 10 perches; the quality of it is a dark grey loose mould, about 4 or 5 inches deep, which in this country is called a woodcock soil, and lies upon a strong wet clay. A similar soil prevails in the adjoining fields, where oaks are free growers. In the year 1791, the field planted was in grass, and rented, upon an average, with others of the same sort, at 8s. or 9s. an acre. In 1792 it was broken up and sown with oats; in 1793 it was ploughed, harrowed, and rolled at various times, and m a d e a perfect clean summer fallow; in the a u t u m n of the same year, it was sown with wheat upon a broad stetch; but before the wheat was sown, ashen keys and white-thorn berries, of a year old, with a small quantity of whin seeds, was thrown u p o n the ground, and afterwards harrowed in; and in the November following 3 rows of acorn were dibbled in u p o n each stetch, and the holes filled up by a person who followed the dibbler with a hoe for that purpose.

At the time of dibbling in the acorns, the grass of the wheat had in part covered the ground. T h e acorns were set at about 8 to 9 inches distance in length, and about 12 in breadth of the stetch, f r o m each other. T h e ashen keys, white-thorn berries and whin seeds, were sown with a design to protect and nurse u p the produce of the acorns, and prevent their being destroyed by hares or rabbits. T h e acorns have produced a sufficient number of plants, of which I had despaired, as they were not of the best quality (though the best that could be procured); and as the drought of the spring proved very severe, the plants are small, b u t look healthy and well.—• and when the wheat was ripe, the reapers were ordered to leave the stubble high for their protection and defense.

Much of the 'wheat and bean' land in Great Glemham, which is what 'woodcock soil' would now be called, was ploughed on eight furrow stetches until fairly recently so the outermost of each three rows of acorns would have been about six feet from the next, with a drainage Channel between. All the other woods in Great Glemham planted by Kilderbee or his successors at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th Century were managed on a 'standards with coppice' system, mostly oak standards with ash or hazel coppice. Kilderbee's mixture could easily have been turned into an oak wood with ash coppice, the thorn, which is not a shade bearer, disappearing fairly soon. It is possible that hazel was added later: there are now (1969) quite a few hazel stools.

O.S. number Great Glemham 360, 10-219 acres is still called Gold Medal Wood though anybody who saw it today would wonder how it got that name. Following the death of the planter

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Suffolk Natural History, Vol. 15, Part 2

his estate passed through several hands, the wood becoming part of the Cransford Hall Estate in 1913. It was sold freehold with the Standing timber during the recent war and all the saleable trees felled. The whole area was left encumbered with lop and top, to become an almost impenetrable thicket of blackthorn, briars and brambles through which grew a few seedling oaks and ash and the unsaleable dead or dying trees of the original planting, a disgraceful Situation which fortunately would not be allowed to occur today when licences to feil are required and only given in the case of a clear feil, such as this was, on the condition that the area is replanted or cleared for agriculture. The wood passed from the original desecrator to two successive owners who have tried gradually to clear and replant at considerable personal expense and with no hope of an actuarially satisfactory financial return on their outlay.

They have had a Herculean task. The wood was felled before myxomatosis and was overrun with rabbits, so none of the natural regeneration of oak and in particular of ash which occurs so frequently today took place and by the time that the rabbits had been killed off the scrub was too high to allpw it: there is no sycamore.

The wood was probably managed on the coppice with Standard system as suggested above: had the stools survived it would have been possible to leave a single pole on each to grow into a marketable tree but most seem to have disappeared. It has been possible to find a few potential trees of that sort, some on old stools, most on stools which certainly date from very much later than 1793, and which probably arose from self-sown ash in this Century. With the exception of these and some self-sown oak and ash, all the timber trees now growing have been planted.

As is usual when trees are felled on heavy land and the up-take of water to replace that lost by transpiration ceases, most of the area was very wet and the first of the two owners referred to above planted poplars over about two acres after cutting out the scrub by hand. Most of these failed and the present owner, Mr. W. J. Berry, is in the process of dealing with that area and with the rest of the wood. He has cleared, fenced and planted with a mixture of various conifers a succession of small blocks and though the wood does not at present merit a gold medal it will in the future remain as much a tribute to the good work of the present owner as it was a shame and a disgrace to the one who felled and neglected it.

The original planting of this wood being so well documented it seems worth recording its second. It is to be hoped that the owner may find it possible to leave a small plot of say one or two acres unreclaimed: it would be exceedingly interesting to see what happens over the next hundred, or hundred-and-fifty years or so.

GOLD MEDAL WOOD

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In the wood itself there are the following native trees and shrubs (September, 1969): (.a) Grown from stools: Pedunculate oak Ash Hazel

Quercus pedunculata Fraxinus excelsior Corylus avellana

(b) Seif sown: Pedunculate oak Ash Blackthorn Willow Sallow

Q. pedunculata F. excelsior Prunus spinosa Salix alba (a few) S. caprea (a few)

with Bramble (Rubus sp.) and Wild Rose (Rosa sp.) Coming in if not controlled as the over storey is felled.

The following trees have been planted: Poplar Populus var.

Douglas fir Pseudotsuga taxifolia Norway Spruce Picea abies Sitka Spruce P. sitchensis Western Hemlock Tsuga heterophylla European larch Larix decidua Japanese larch L. leptolepsis Scots pine Pinus sylvestris Corsican pine P. laricio Lodge-pole pine P. contorta Western red cedar Thuja plicata Lawson's cypress Chamaecyparis lawsoniana The surrounding hedges contain the following: Quercus pedunculata Oak Fraxinus excelsior Ash Ulmus campestre Elm Acer campestre Field Maple Rosa sp.

Wild rose Rubus sp.

Bramble Cornus sanguinea Dogwood Eider Sambucus nigra Prunus spinosa Blackthorn Hawthorn Crataegus oxycanthus