Woolmer Forest

Woolmer Forest

Woolmer Forest is a long, largely wooded area and former Royal Forest in easternmost Hampshire and extending south into Sussex, to the south of Bordon and west of Liphook.

The forest is part of the former royal hunting forest of Woolmer, in the Western Weald. Historically a largely treeless heathland on sterile sandy soils, the forest was traditionally managed, like other royal forests, as "wood pasture" in which deer would be kept for hunting for sport and for venison, and where commoners were permitted to graze their livestock.

The forest today consists of both dry and humid lowland heath. It contains the largest and most diverse area of lowland heathland habitats outside the New Forest and is considered to be the most important area of heathland in the Weald in the southern counties; it is the only site known to support all twelve known native species of reptiles and amphibians, and it supports a nationally important heathland flora with associated birds and invertebrate fauna.

Woolmer village lies within the confines of the forest, in Hampshire. The Hampshire-Sussex border passes silently through in the southern part of the forest south-west to north-east, and extending a finger up beside Liphhook.

Conservation

The forest wis within the South Downs National Park.

Of this forest, 3,209 acres are designated a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is also a Special Area of Conservation and part of a 'Special Protection Area'. Two areas are Nature Conservation Review sites, Grade I.

Geology and ecology

Woolmer Forest straddles two upland watersheds: those of the River Wey and of the River Rother. In its sandy soil, streams have cut wide valleys into the gently undulating terrain. On upland sites, dry heath predominates, characterised by heather Calluna vulgaris and bell heather Erica cinerea. The driest sandy patches support some well-adapted (xeric) uncommon plants. Humid heath, which requires less free-draining subsoils, is characterized by cross-leaved heath Erica tetralix and purple moor-grass Molinia caerulea, which are joined in the wettest valley bottoms by sphagnum moss and carnivorous sundews. These moisture-retaining habitats grade into complex acidic boggy wetlands of hummocks and pools, locally called "mires". Here are the largest populations in the southern counties of the trailing bog cranberry Vaccinium oxycoccos.

Centuries of forest management have shaped the surrounding belts of woodland, composed notably of beech Fagus sylvatica and pedunculate oak Quercus robur. Repeated pollarding has shaped the growth patterns of centuries-old trees. The discontinuous canopy favours a diverse understory, dominated by holly Ilex aquifolium, whitebeam Sorbus aria and rowan Sorbus aucuparia with birches.

The absence of chemicals in the environment is one aspect that has encouraged an unusual diversity of insects and other invertebrates.

The landscape of Woolmer Forest has been classified by the South Downs National Park Authority, in its integrated landscape character assessment of the park, as falling within the Wealden farmland and heath mosaic, namely a landscape that has developed on the sandstones of the Folkestone Beds (part of the Lower Greensand formation of the Lower Cretaceous). This geology has given rise to a well-drained, sandy lowland landscape supporting a mosaic of oak-birch woodland, conifer plantations, open sandy heaths, and rough grazed pastures. The park authority claims that Woolmer Forest is the best area of lowland heath outside the New Forest, and that it is the largest area of heathland existing on the Folkestone Beds in the southern counties.

History

Deforestation during the local Bronze Age stripped the natural woodland that had replaced tundra following the retreat of glaciation, and on this light soil the forest cover was replaced with heath. With the settled Roman occupation, the Roman road that was constructed between Chichester and Silchester passed through Woolmer. Traces of Roman villas have been discovered at Blackmoor, Kingsley and Liss, though ordinary people continued to live in roundhouses. Kilns for a pottery industry that apparently supplied Londinium with its cookware must have continued the deforestation to fire the kilns. An extraordinary find, the Blackmoor hoard, consisted of 29,773 coins whose minting dated the hoard to ca AD 296; in a battle in that year the troops under Emperor Constantius Chlorus defeated the army of the usurper Allectus to retake control of Britain. The hoard may have been the paychest for Allectus's troops secreted and inadvertently abandoned after their defeat.

Following the Roman withdrawal and the collapse of Romano-British culture, the first mention of the present toponym, as Wulfamere, the "wolves' pool", is a token either of reforestation of the landscape or a translation of a previous pre-Roman name.

In the eighteenth century "Wolmer" often appears in Gilbert White's The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), as it was included with Selborne parish. White noted that its soil consisted of sand covered with heath and fern, "without having one standing tree in the whole extent." Its bogs had formerly abounded with "subterranean trees", both blackened bog wood, used locally in house construction. In White's day the formerly plentiful Black Grouse were locally extinct, and the red deer, of which the poaching had occasioned the severities of the 'Black Act', had been rounded up and carted to Windsor.

Only a "narrow range of enclosures" in Gilbert White's day separated the Royal Forest of "Wolmer" from Alice Holt Forest, situated on a loamy soil that – in stark contrast to Woolmer – produced dense stands of oak, and indeed during the late medieval period the two forests were jointly administered.

Location

• Location map: 51°4’44"N, -0°51’25"W
• Streetmap: SU802317

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Woolmer Forest)

• Woolmer Forest Heritage Society