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In consequence the centre of trade and power in the
Mediterranean shifted to Crete and the Greek world,
areas that still had sufficient reserves of timber.
The Minoan civilisations developed on Crete with an
economy based on the abundant availability of wood
to fuel the copper furnaces for the major Cretan
export of that time - bronze. The Minoan civilisations
eventual collapse was almost entirely due to the
massive deforestation of the island. Now the centre
of the power gravity moved to Greece and Asia
Minor, both enjoying an abundance of timber for
ships as well as a whacking long coastline.
The Romans knew the power of wood. When they
conquered Macedonia in 167 BC they prohibited the
natives from cutting timber both because the Empire
needed it but also to prevent any danger of
Macedonia surreptitiously developing into a rival
maritime power. But by the time of the eruption of
Vesuvius in 79 AD, Italy was almost completely
stripped of its forest cover and the Romans began to
look for new forests to fuel their furnaces. Roman
eyes turned to our shores. So, you see, it really is a
bit rich for Julius Caesar to have whinged on about
the horrible forest!
Wember-Ley
During the Roman occupation of Britain farming was
so intensive that, in some chalkland areas at least,
there is actually more woodland today than there was
back then. The Romans left behind an island made up
of 30% woodland. Over the following 600 years the
Saxons would clear about half of what remained.
Today more Saxon place names meaning woodland
survive than do the woods themselves. Trace your
finger over the ordnance survey map of your local
area and find all of the hursts (wooded hills), holts
and londs (woods) and leys (forest clearing).
Who knew that the traditional football chant of
“Wember-ley, Wember-ley, Wember-ley” is actually
pretty close to the area’s original Ango-Saxon name
of Wemba Lea - Wemba’s forest clearing?
Good Fences Make Good Neighbours
Historical orthodoxy has long maintained that old
ways of life were brought to an abrupt end by the
Roman invasion and certainly didn’t survive on any
scale after the Romans left. Trapped in this slightly
foxed textbook mindset,
common rights of access to
open and woodland pasture were thought to have first
appeared during the fifth and sixth centuries among
the earliest Anglo-Saxon settlers, known by historians
as
folk groups
. The folk groups controlled substantial
territories including large areas for grazing, especially
along their boundaries which often followed the
margins of woodland, in which all members of the
group had rights. Claims that the old boundaries and
therefore the common grazing rights are far more
ancient used to be the preserve of the esoteric “ley
lines” camp but a growing resource of archaeological
finds, especially from aerial archaeology, suggest that
much of England had already been physically divided
and claimed by the Neolithic. Historians now think
The White Horse at Uffington on the Icknield Way