2. Edward Thomas, The South Country (1909).
3. The Chalk is often capitalised because the name refers to a specific rock formation of Cretaceous age deposited 100–65 million years ago. Informally, “chalk” can be applied to describe an unusually pure, white and usually soft limestone.
4. The highest point on the Chiltern Hills is at Haddington Hill, Wendover, twenty-five miles away in Buckinghamshire, at 876 feet (267 metres). Most of the wood is at about 360 feet.
5. A. G. Street, Hedge Trimmings (Faber & Faber, 1933).
6. Henry David Thoreau, Walking (1862).
7. Robert Gibbings, Sweet Thames Run Softly (Dent, 1940).
8. The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of the County of Oxford, vol. XVI, 2011.
9. ORO Map 2101M, apportionment 2101A, 1842.
10. Barlow archive, courtesy Monica Barlow.
11. John Morris, The Cultural Heritage of the Chiltern Woods (Chilterns Woodland Project, 2009).
2 · MAY
1. It has another common name, “chicken-of-the-woods,” and many people enjoy eating it in the young state. However, some people react badly to this species, so no recipe for it will be given here.
2. We have also found a related species, Lycogala terrestris, in the wood.
3. The habits of the celandine were described in a rather pedestrian, if botanically appropriate, verse by Wordsworth:
There is a Flower, the Lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself, ’tis out again!
4. Robert Calder, Beware the British Serpent: The Role of Writers in British Propaganda in the United States, 1939–1945 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005).
5. H. J. Massingham, Chiltern Country, The Face of Britain (Batsford, 1940).
6. J. S. Mill. “Walking Tour of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey, 3–15 July,” Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988).
7. George Grote, A History of Greece: From the Earliest Period to the Close of the Generation Contemporary with Alexander the Great (1846–56).
8. Harriet Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote, Compiled from Family Documents, Private Memoranda, and Original Letters to and from Various Friends (John Murray, 1873).
9. Richard Mabey, Home Country (Random Century, 1990).
10. Geological Survey of England and Wales, 1:50,000 Geological Map series, Map 254, Henley-on-Thames.
11. There is nothing new about my discovery. Mr. Llewellyn Treacher refers to these pebbles in a geological supplement appended to Emily Climenson’s guide to Henley-on-Thames of 1896. He says that “there are several sections which well show the character of this gravel in Lambridge Wood.” They are not there now.
12. The modern name for these rocks is the Kidderminster Formation.
13. P. L. Gibbard, “The history of the great north-west European rivers during the past three million years,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B318 (1988): 559–602.
14. Oliver Rackham, Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape, rev. ed. (Dent, 1990).
15. Alexander Allardyce, ed., Letters from and to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq. (William Blackwood & Sons, 1888).
16. The same newspaper report features winners that were familiar in “posh” Henley rural society, the Oveys, the Freemans and the Camoys among them. It seems that “fiddle faddling” was considered rather a fashionable occupation despite Mr. Sharpe’s patronising diagnosis.
17. It was formally named in Geraniaceae, vol. 3 (Robert Sweet, 1826).
3 · JUNE
1. Kalm’s account of his visit to England on his way to America in 1748, trans. J. Lucas (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1893).
2. Gabriel Hemery and Sarah Simblet, The New Sylva: A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century (Bloomsbury, 2014).
3. I should mention that the same informal name is used for some very different exotic orchids.
4. M. Forty and T.C.G. Rich, eds., The Botanist: The Botanical Diary of Eleanor Vachell (1879–1948) (Cardiff: National Museum of Wales, 2006).
5. V. S. Summerhayes, Wild Orchids of Britain, New Naturalist (Collins, 1951).
6. M. Jannink and T. Rich, “Ghost Orchid rediscovered in Britain after 23 years,” Journal of the Hardy Orchid Society 7 (2010): 14–15.
7. C. M. Cheffings and L. Farrell, eds., The Vascular Plant Red Data List for Great Britain (Joint Nature Conservation Committee, 2005).
8. M. I. Bidartondo and T. D. Bruns, “Extreme specificity in epiparasitic Monotropoidiae (Ericaceae): widespread phylogenetic and geographical structure,” Molecular Ecology (2001).
9. I must give the technical term for this esoteric botanical ploy: mycoheterotrophy. Extraordinary as it is, it has evolved in several more plant families, although most commonly in the Orchidacea.
10. Much later, in some cases. I was still awaiting identifications as this book went to press.
4 · JULY
1. L. W. Hepple and A. M. Doggett in The Chilterns (1994) refer to an Anglo-Saxon boundary charter where a section of the ditch is called “Ealden Wege” (Old Way).
2. R. Bradley, “The south Oxfordshire Grim’s Ditch and its significance,” Oxoniensis 33 (1968): 1–12.
3. Angela Perkins, The Phyllis Court Story: From Fourteenth-Century Manor to Twentieth-Century Club (Phyllis Court Members Club, 1983).
4. This result from Oxford Ancestors was not a surprise. My father was from Worcestershire near the Welsh border and always claimed he was the only Fortey ever to have left the village. Some of these were ditch-diggers.
5. I should note that far older, Palaeolithic flint workings are well-known nearby, as at Highlands Farm just outside Henley. These originated from an ancient human occupation of Britain long before the last Ice Age with which my story begins.
6. J. G. Evans, Land Snails in Archaeology (Academic Press, 1972); The Environment of Early Man in the British Isles (Paul Elek, 1973).
7. Fred Hageneder, Yew (Reaktion Books, 2013).
8. Ian D. Rotherham, “The ecology and economics of Medieval deer parks,” Landscape Archaeology and Ecology 6 (2007): 86–102.
9. Elizabeth Craig, Court Favourites: Recipes from Royal Kitchens (André Deutsch, 1953).
5 · AUGUST
1. The poetic reader may prefer Sir Sacheverell Sitwell’s 1972 description from Fungi: A Look at Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms by James Sowerby F.L.S. (London, 1797):
A fungus that is egg-shaped in its beginnings,
but like a goose’s egg most typically
Foetid from the thick layer of green jelly
Which attracts the flies to feed upon the slime
and spread about the spores;
When ripe, the white skin or “veil” torn
in monstrous mock-circumcision
And erect to full height in a matter of a few hours,
horned god of the coven.
2. The term “foray” has been used for more than a century, and I prefer it to “forage,” which implies that the only interest is in finding mushrooms that are edible.
3. Roger Kendal, “A Romano-British building at Bix, Oxon: Notes on an excavation carried out 1955–1956,” Henley-on-Thames Historical and Archaeological Society 21 (2006).
4. J. E. Eyers, ed., Romans in the Hambleden Valley: Yewden Roman Villa, Chiltern Archaeology Monograph 1 (2011).
5. S. S. Frere, “The End of Towns in Roman Britain,” in J. S. Wacher, ed., The Civitas Capitals of Roman Britain (Leicester University Press, 1966).
6. H. Cam, Liberties and Communities in Medieval England (Cambridge University Press, 1944).
7. L. W. Hepple and A. M. Doggett in The Chilterns (1994) convincingly suggest that Hundreds preceded parishes, rather than the former being grouped from previous ecclesiastical units.
9. Some scholarly opinion disputes that Yggdrasil was an ash tree, although it is apparently so described in the Poetic Edda.
10. By another delightful coincidence, the account of clay industries in Oxfordshire: James Bond et al., Oxfordshire Brickmakers, Oxfordshire Museums Service Publication No. 14 (1980).
6 · SEPTEMBER
1. Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica (Sinclair Stevenson, 1996).
2. Michael Macleod, Land of the Rother Beast: An Oxfordshire Chronicle (Skye Publications, 2000).
3. A full discussion of this issue is in Simon Townley, Henley-on-Thames: Town, Trade and River (Phillimore & Co., 2009).
4. London had an estimated population of up to 100,000 people by 1300. In Europe only Paris was more populous.
5. This magnificent structure is well described by W. B. Logan in Oak: The Frame of Civilization (Norton, 2005).
6. The original version was penned by the famous actor David Garrick in 1759.
7. John Steane, “Stonor: A lost park and a garden found,” Oxoniensis 59 (1994).
8. At the same time as Henley-on Thames was beginning to prosper, the Charter of the Forest (1217) guaranteed rights such as pannage and estovers for freemen in the royal forests. In private estates such rights were often tradable commodities.
9. This was resolved by simple microscopy. The ascomycetes have their spores carried in sac-like asci, while basidiomycetes bear their spores on the tips of cylindrical basidia.
10. This does not include the flowering plants, which are generally better-known. Fungi, however, are less comprehensively known even than insects.
7 · OCTOBER
1. Notified under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981. Originally notified in 1952. So the wood has been protected from development for more than sixty years.
2. Miles Stapleton, History of Greys Court, unpublished MS in the ownership of Susan Fulford-Dobson.
3. Sally Varlow, “Sir Francis Knollys’s Latin Dictionary: New evidence for Katherine Carey,” Institute of Historical Research, 1–9 (Oxford: Blackwells, 2006).
4. Simon Townley, Henley-on-Thames: Town, Trade and River (Phillimore & Co., 2009), chapter 5.
5. This candle-snuff fungus, Xylaria hypoxylon, is an ascomycete with a complex life history. The stage I observe is the asexual phase, producing white spores. The sexual stage is all black and less conspicuous.
6. These common names for fungi are something quite new. There are relatively few traditional English names for mushrooms, and the ones employed are from L. Holden, Recommended English Names for Fungi in the UK (English Nature, 2006).
7. The cep, porcini, Steinpilz, Karl-johan sopp, penny bun, Boletus edulis in French, Italian, German, Norwegian, English, and the Latin name Boletus.
8. Recent work has shown that the honey fungus is a complex of species. The one in the wood seems to be the true Armillaria mellea.
9. The name “wych” is derived from an Old English word referring to the flexibility of the twigs.
10. This disease is often reported as being caused by Chalara fraxinea, which is the asexual state of Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus—the name makes no difference to the lethalness.
11. There are at least four species of orb-weaving spiders, including ones like Metellina with more slender bodies than Aranaeus.
8 · NOVEMBER
1. Oxford Gazette, 7 January 1854.
2. Parish register, 23 January 1643. “This day were buried six soldiers whereof four were slaine with the discharge of a cannon as they marched up Duck [Duke] Street to assault ye town.”
3. Ruth Spalding, ed., Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke 1605–1675 (Oxford University Press, 1990).
4. This stylish item of Roundhead gear can be purchased from specialists in period costumes for re-enacting historic battles.
5. Pepys papers, “Notes about firewood taken at Henley,” Bodleian Library, Ms Rawlinson A 171 f222v.
6. Another portion of the same legacy went to the parish of Bladon, north of Oxford.
7. The enzyme laccase “snips” the complicated three-dimensional lignin structure, allowing further enzymes and oxygenation to do the rest.
8. P. D. Gabbut, “Quantitative sampling of the pseudoscorpion Chthonius ischnocheles from beech litter,” Journal of Zoology 151 (1967): 469–78. Like mites, pseudoscorpions are arachnids.
9. Nonetheless, it is known that at least forty species of nematodes are confined to living on rotten wood.
10. I am conscious that I have not listed the different species of worms, slugs and beetles (and more) under the same log. That deficiency will be repaired online.
11. Bodleian Library, Oxford, AASHM 1677 (14). A more measured report in the Philosophical Transactions for 1683 says that it lasted for six seconds.
12. P. D. Elliman, Glassmaking in Henley-on-Thames in the Seventeenth Century (Henley Historical and Archaeological Society, 1979), 2–15.
13. I should note that Ravenhead Glass is a much later manufacturer.
9 · DECEMBER
1. This was already big business in 1667, when a Henley merchant, George Cranfield, had “800 longe velleyes” ready to ship to London. Pat Preece, “Wheelwrights,” S. Oxfordshire Archaeology Bulletin 59 (2004).
2. Daniel Defoe, A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, Letter 4, Part 3 (Berkshire & Buckinghamshire, 1726).
3. To be accurate, I should mention that Henley has its fair share of false (or blocked) windows to maintain symmetry, but avoid having to pay the Window Tax that was current in the eighteenth century.
4. Richard B. Sheridan, Sugar and Slaves: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775 (Canoe Press, 1974).
5. Keith Mason, “The world an absentee planter and his slaves made: Sir William Stapleton and his Nevis Sugar Estate, 1722–40,” Bull. J. Rylands Library Liverpool 75 (1993).
6. There were older-established Hellfire Clubs, but the fame of Dashwood’s club seems to have eclipsed the others.
7. It was. Archaeologists uncovered the contents of the “time capsule” early in the twentieth century, and they are now on display in the River and Rowing Museum.
8. J. Thirsk, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5 (Oxford University Press, 1984).
9. L. W. Hepple and A. M. Doggett in The Chilterns emphasise that enclosure happened over three centuries, and continued well into the nineteenth century. In this case, agricultural “revolution” seems more like enforced evolution.
10. Robert Phillips, Dissertation concerning the Present State of the High Roads of England, especially of those near London (1736).
11. Another large estate adjacent to the River Thames at Whitchurch. Mrs. Powys was the wife of Philip Powys.
12. Cecil Roberts, Gone Afield (Hodder & Stoughton, 1936).
13. Lord Wyfold, The Upper Thames Valley: Some Antiquarian Notes (George Allen & Unwin, 1923).
14. These spores are borne in sac-like asci, which identifies the fungal partner as an ascomycete, and a distant relative of morels.
10 · JANUARY
1. William Black, The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton (Street & Smith, 1872).
2. Improvements in road-building techniques were developed by the Macadam family: John L. Macadam and his son James, “the colossus of roads.”
3. L. J. Mayes. The History of Chairmaking in High Wycombe (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960).
4. These were trimmings of side shoots from trees to help straight growth. “Shrouding faggots” were derived from the crowns of trees after felling.
5. Jackson’s Oxford Journal, No. 4946, 12 February 1848.
6. J. Morris, The Cultural Heritage of Chiltern Woods (Chiltern Woodlands Project, 2009).
7. Cecil Roberts, Gone Rustic (Hodder & Stoughton, 1934).
8. Not enough to feed a family. Angela Spencer-Harper, Dipping into the Wells (Robert Boyd Publication
s, 1999).
9. Turned wares were already in use in medieval times, although the Worshipful Company of Turners did not get their charter until 1604.
10. He served as an officer of the Royal Microscopical Society, which is still going strong today, to which he made generous donations.
11. Sally Strutt, History of the Culden Faw Estate (Privately published, 2013).
12. I have an old book written by a friend of my father, Eric Ennion, to help me identify prints. N. Tinbergen and E.A.R. Ennion, Tracks (Oxford University Press, 1967).
11 · FEBRUARY
1. Peter Creed and Tom Haynes, A Guide to Finding Mosses in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire (Pisces Publications, 2013).
2. Steam traction engines were heavy. A notice survives on Henley Bridge permitting only one vehicle at a time.
3. I am indebted to Angela Spencer-Harper’s book Dipping into the Wells for this information.
4. The official history of the company by Christine Clark is called, inevitably, A Brush with Heritage (Centre of East Anglian Studies, University of East Anglia, 1997).
5. Francis Sheppard, Brakspear’s Brewery, Henley-on-Thames, 1779–1979 (Published by the brewers, 1979).
12 · MARCH
1. J. H. Van Stone, The Raw Materials of Commerce, vol. 1 (Pitman & Sons, 1929).
2. Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT); and a delightful place to see many species typical of chalk countryside.
3. Paul Bright and Pat Morris, Dormice (The Mammal Society, 1992).
4. It is quite difficult to find a working barn in the Chiltern Hills. There is one in the Hambleden Valley, and another near Harpsden, and (of course) at Stonor. I await their conversion.
5. Olivia Harrison was justifiably nervous after a violent attack on George by an intruder in 1999, and I am sure that razor wire would not have surrounded Friar Park in other circumstances.
6. As this book went to press the total had surpassed 150.
7. C. E. Hart, Timber Prices and Costing 1966–67 (Published by the author).
8. An exhibition at the River and Rowing Museum in Henley suggests that Fawley Court may have been the inspiration for Toad Hall.
The Wood for the Trees Page 32
