Shaping the Northern Forest

The project’s aim is to establish 50 million new trees over 25 years, inspiring those who live and work in the area, and recreating the cultural meaning and value of woodlands.

Bluebells in ancient woodland at Hackfall Wood, Masham (Photo: WTML/Michelle Davis).

The Northern Forest is a truly landscape-scale programme in northern England. Launched in 2018 to increase tree and woodland cover and for the management of existing woods, the area stretches from Liverpool to Hull, covering 10,000 square miles. The overall ambition is to establish at least 50 million new trees over 25 years across a landscape that currently has just 7.6 per cent woodland cover, notably lower than the England average of 10.1 per cent.

The Northern Forest Partnership consists of the Woodland Trust and four community forests: the Mersey Forest, Greater Manchester’s City of Trees, the White Rose Forest and Humber Forest and the Community Forest Trust. We collaborate with a range of public, private and charitable partners to deliver this shared ambition.

All UK landscapes are cultural, shaped through drivers ranging from the economics of agriculture and industry to the aesthetics of landscape design. The Northern Forest’s varied landscapes include the Mersey and Humber ports, rich in trading and manufacturing history, the mill town valleys of Lancashire and West Yorkshire, threaded with canals and waterways, the steel heartland of South Yorkshire and agricultural hinterlands from large-scale arable to upland hill farms. Our projects complement these local characteristics delivered by Northern Forest partners rooted in their communities, so that each project best suits local need.

Trees and woodland are key structural components in past and present landscapes. The longevity of historic woods may simply reflect their value: ‘a wood that pays is a wood that stays’, as the saying goes. They may have survived or been planted for wood products: timber, firewood and charcoal. They were also retained or added for landscaping and to mark wealth and status around large houses and estates, or to improve urban parks and streets. Some, like ancient churchyard yews, have cultural or spiritual significance. Some ancient woods (present since at least 1600 CE) have survived because nothing of greater value could be done with the land – like the fragments clinging to the sides of steep gullies and cloughs, unsuitable even for grazing.

Woods were modified through management. Coppicing is an ancient system where trees are cut close to the ground on a regular cycle, creating dense stands of multi-stemmed new growth, producing a sustainable ‘underwood’ supply. Smaller rods were used to create wattle laths or hurdles; other wood was cut for charcoal or white coal to fuel the iron or lead industries. In the North York Moors, the monks at historic abbeys such as Rievaulx were early innovators in ironworking, drawing on timber supply from woods that are still found in the surrounding steep river valleys. Even the species composition of woods reflects their history, altered through favouring useful trees. Oak was encouraged or planted for tan bark to feed the tanning industry. In Calderdale, ancient woods were supplemented with beech (not technically a native tree in the north of England), its wood favoured for bobbins and shuttles in nearby mills.

Archaeological remnants beneath the woodland canopy tell a story. Charcoal hearths, bell pits or Q-pits are clues to past working, along with remains of colliers’ or bark-peelers’ huts. Holloways hint at centuries of use along key routes. Earlier medieval woodbanks marked internal or external boundaries. Woods may contain Iron Age hillforts, Romano-British field systems and strip lynchets dating from when at least some of the land was unwooded.

Elsewhere, ancient woods were absorbed into large estates. First mentioned in the Domesday Book, Hackfall Wood, near Masham, North Yorkshire, was purchased in 1731 by John Aislabie and transformed into an ornamental wood land garden, complete with several follies and a fountain in a landscaped lake. It retained its ‘natural’ feel and today still overflows in spring with wildflowers indicative of its ancient woodland ecology. At nearby Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, also landscaped by the Aislabies, the deer park holds scores of ancient trees. Trees in their third or final stage of life can continue for centuries. The stages of retrenchment and decay they pass through provide ecological niches for a wide range of species, some of which are rare or threatened.

Looking forward, our perception of value regarding trees and woods has shifted towards concepts of ‘natural capital’ and ‘ecosystem services’, recognising our dependence on the integrity, health and flourishing of the natural world. Habitats such as ancient woodland and ancient trees are cornerstones of nature recovery, their longevity and continuity fostering evolution of rich and complex associated communities of plants, animals and fungi, further shaped by management. Historic coppicing lapsed with loss of markets for the products, and while there is a small resurgence in this technique, probably around half of ancient woods are not managed at all. This needs to be addressed if our most precious wood lands are to be resilient to current and future threats.

Creating new woodland next to ancient woods can buffer them from surrounding impacts, increasing the resilience of populations of their specialist species. Better connections between woods allows species to move or adapt in response to climate change. Planting future generations of ancient trees will provide continuity for species that depend on the niches these venerable elder statesmen provide. All this requires mindfulness of the past; for example, characteristic irregular ancient woodland boundaries from ‘ancient’ rather than more uniform ‘planned’ countryside need careful consideration to maintain their legibility and avoid their erasure.

Through expanding tree cover we are tackling pressing issues. At Gorpley Reservoir, near Todmorden, more than 60 hectares of new native woodland have been planted on Yorkshire Water land, through partnership with the National Trust, Woodland Trust and White Rose Forest. Coupled with natural flood management (NFM) measures (stabilising stream banks, incorporating leaky dams and pond creation), this project aims to slow water flow, protecting downstream communities in the flood-prone Upper Calder. At the Woodland Trust’s Smithills Estate, on the urban fringe of Bolton, the Mersey Forest and University of Liverpool researchers have introduced NFM measures, already showing reductions of more than 27 per cent in both peak and low water flows.

Smaller areas of planting, such as hedges and shelter belts, or even individual trees in wood pasture, have benefits for livestock health and survival in farmed landscapes and provide cover and food sources for pollinators. Historic Ordnance Survey maps show the number of now missing field trees that would have framed the landscape; returning these brings multiple benefits.

Urban trees have a cooling effect in city centres that goes beyond the direct shading effects. The Mersey Forest, with Liverpool City Council and other partners, has implemented more than 40 innovative, nature-based solutions (NBS) across Liverpool as part of the EU-funded Urban GreenUp project. This will help the city adapt to future climate-related threats such as high temperatures, air pollution and biodiversity loss. These include pollinator verges, floating gardens in the city docks and a 65-metre-long elevated green wall at St Johns Shopping Centre. Sustainable urban drainage systems and urban catchment forestry are helping to lower flood risk. In the heatwave of 2022, a thermal monitoring camera showed how trees and green spaces reduced temperatures, with 38 degrees recorded in the city, down to 25 degrees in the shade of a tree.

Getting close to nature can reduce stress and trees provide green surroundings for physical activity with multiple health benefits. Creating new woodland close to people’s homes is key to the mission of the Northern Forest partnership. On the Smithills estate, a self-guided wellbeing trail complements a partnership with Bolton GP Federation and Green Social Prescribing sessions. These walks include nature identification sessions, which inspire passion for fungi and trees, and create a sense of community for those who attend. Further sense of connection to place has come through the creation of an award-winning local history book compiled by Smithills volunteers.

While past treescapes developed through the material or aesthetic value of trees and woods to the landowner, the wider range of values we now ascribe to them are societal, reflecting an evolving cultural landscape. Creating new treescapes in the right places requires willing landowners who need positive economic returns as a result of direct benefit to their farm productivity, through grants and/ or payment for public goods delivered (carbon credits, for example). Private finance mechanisms are still developing, but we welcome the government’s support of an initial burst of £90 million funding through Defra’s Nature for Climate programme and inclusion of the project in the 25-year Environment Plan.

Finally, at Frodsham Woods, near Warrington, the Wood land Trust is creating new wood land on a former golf course, with nearly 3,500 volunteers, including local school children, planting more than 30,000 trees this winter. This illustrates perfectly how we want to inspire those who live and work in the Northern Forest to share our vision, re-engage them with woodlands and recreate the cultural meaning and value of our woodlands for today.

Landowners interested in creating or managing woodland in the Northern Forest are invited to get in touch through www.thenorthernforest.org.uk.

This article originally appeared in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 180, published in June 2024. It was written by Sian Atkinson, Liam Plummer and Emily Sloan, who work for the Woodland Trust, supporting and advising landowners to create and manage native woodland.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation