Stansted Forest’s sweet chestnuts

By local historian Andrew Berriman

Last month I wrote about Stansted House. This month I am going to write about the Forest in which that House stands, and in particular about one of its trees, the sweet chestnut. It was often used, along with oak and lime, by 18th century landscape planters such as Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton to provide great height in woods and parkland. It is quite common in the South, preferring both a warmer climate than up north, and deep, well drained fertile soils. It was the Romans who first introduced sweet chestnuts into Britain. They ground down the shiny red-brown nuts to make flour, or added milk to make polenta, a form of porridge. I have come across sweet chestnuts that date back many hundreds of years, as at Mottisfont Abbey, Petworth House and Halnaker House. Locally, some of the finest sweet chestnuts border the mile-long avenue known as The Race which runs north-eastwards from Easebourne Priory on the outskirts of Midhurst. Their trunks are gnarled, twisted, contorted with extreme age, and are a magnificent sight.

Stansted Forest’s sweet chestnuts are much younger. We can be precise as to when they were planted, as a plaque on Middle Lodge, facing the Broad Walk, states that ‘The new plantation was commenced on the last day of the reign of King George III of blessed memory, 29th January 1820’, so that makes them just over 200 years old. The trees were planted to create long avenues and vistas. Many of these standard, mature trees are cut down, however, before they develop ‘ring shake’, with cracks opening up through the grain, causing the timber to fall to pieces when sawn. But if felled in their prime, the timber is strong and durable, its lengths of sawn planks having many uses.

Smaller trees are regularly coppiced. Chestnut coppicing as a method of woodland management has been practised since Neolithic times, 6000 years ago. It occurs early in the year, before birds start nesting. The Forest is divided into square sections or compartments, and coppiced regularly on a cyclical basis. The length of the cycle is determined by the uses intended for the wood; the bigger the pieces of wood required, the longer the cycle. The cycle range is usually between ten and sixteen years. The tree is cut right down almost to ground level. All that is left is the cut stump or ‘stool’. Within a short time new shoots begin to appear from buds lying under the inner rim of the bark, and grow quickly upwards and straight. They are perfect for making into long poles, previously used in the hop-growing industry, or to make cleft fences and stakes. Other uses were for furniture, trug baskets, walking sticks, charcoal, firewood. Nowadays the uses are far fewer, in fact mainly for biomass fuel. Chestnut wood chips, stored in the Bio-fuel Barn, are used to fuel Stansted House’s heating system (2008), meeting all its needs. Goodbye to those eleven expensive oil-fired boilers.