On 17 July, members of the High Country History Group visited Ongar Park Wood. The weather was dull, hard to remember now in a late summer of so many warm, sunny evenings. Our guide was Peter Moring, Peter and Clare Moring having bought the neighbouring wood, High Wood, in 1999. High Wood and Ongar Park Wood show many ancient and interesting features relating to the history of the local landscape.
In High Wood there are three dominant species of trees - hornbeam, oak and silver birch, with the occasional holly, horse chestnut and wild cherry interspersed. Until the Second World War the wood appears to have been managed as hornbeam coppice¹, but then coppicing stopped. Oaks were felled during the same period but were not replaced. A result of this felling was that two clearings were established within the wood.
Hornbeam, a very hard wood with a tendency to split but with a high calorific value, would have been used both for fuel and for the production of charcoal. The hamlet adjacent to the wood to the south is called Colliers Hatch, after charcoal burners who were also called wood colliers. The charcoal was used in local brickyards, of which there were a number in the vicinity. A brick and tile works is recorded on the Ordnance Survey map of 1881 on the site of the present Carisbrooke Farm.
The by-way to the west of High Wood is believed to have been part of an old droving road along which cattle and sheep would have been driven to market. The track is about 30m wide, but at one point it broadens, possibly so that animals could be penned to allow them feed and rest overnight. The by-way supports many gnarled trees with roots marooned, suspended above the eroded banks. Evidence of at least one sawpit, a further lasting witness of man’s earlier endeavours, can be seen.
¹ Coppicing is the management practice of felling trees near to the ground and allowing the new shoots to grow. In most cases the shoots need to be protected from the deer. Mature poles are cut in a coppice rotation to produce poles of just the required size.
The Deer Park
The substantial bank separating High Wood, to the west, and Ongar Park Wood, to the east, is a visible survival of a medieval deer park. The deer park has the distinction of being the earliest recorded within England, the reference dating from 1045 when a will² mentioned “a wood . . . outside the deerhay”. The Anglo-Saxon word deerhage can be interpreted either as a hedge to keep deer in or as a hedge used to catch them! The reference in the will offers unique, but still tenuous, evidence of a continuity between Anglo-Saxon and Norman deer parks. Some controversy still follows the precise meaning of hay.
The bank is still massive, and although substantially eroded we can still speculate on its original size and shape. To retain the deer, the bank would have been topped with brushwood or palings. The deer park extended from this visible bank, past the water tower in Toot Hill, along the side of the small wood known as Miller’s Grove, near to the former Blake Hall Station, to the A414 at Tylers Green, then along the southern boundary of North Weald to Carisbrooke Farm, again to join the visible bank approaching Colliers Hatch. This is a distance of approximately 5 miles and encloses an area of around 1,200 acres. Bank construction would have been a formidable undertaking with only personal tools and scarce labour. This labour may have been exchanged for common rights to some of the benefits of the park. In addition, maintenance of a paling fence would have absorbed considerable funds. Apart from its functional use, there is little doubt that such a park would have provided a recognisable landmark to display the power and wealth of the owner³.
Little Domesday, the later addition to Domesday covering East Anglia, refers to both park (parc) and hay. Both words may both refer to deer park, in which case the number of deer parks in Domesday will have been underestimated. It is often commented that Domesday mentions 35 deer parks but Ongar Park is not one of these, the only park in Essex mentioned being at Rayleigh⁴. This probably means that the deer park was not always recorded anyway in Domesday, rather than suggesting any demise associated with the sturdy structure of Ongar Park.
The park may have been enclosed wood-pasture, grassland surrounding pollarded⁵, wooded areas, providing cover for the deer. Alternatively, it may have been compartmental, with wooded areas being separated from the grassland by banks internal to the boundary and there is some evidence to suggest this in Ongar Park. Trees within these compartments could then be coppiced with the banks helping to exclude the deer from the new shoots of the coppice. Rackham states that some internal coppice banks may still be visible within Ongar Park⁶.
² Kerr, Sandra, Ongar Great Park, in ‘Aspects of the History of Ongar’, (Ongar Millennium Group 1990), p6-7.
³ However your own gallows would have proved that you also had influence!
⁴ Darby, H.C., The Domesday Geography of Eastern England, (Cambridge, 1952), p 234.
⁵ Pollarding is the technique of cutting branches at a height of ten feet from the ground. New branches would be allowed to grow out of harm from the deer.
⁶ Rackham, Oliver, The History of the Countryside, (London, 1986), p 126.
The Deer
At the time of the Norman Conquest, deer would have been restricted to red deer and roe deer. It was only in the twelfth century that fallow deer were introduced into England by the Normans. More manageable than the roe deer, the behaviour of the fallow deer encouraged the construction of new parks. These new parks confirmed the increasing wealth of landowners. The deer park provided the landowner with a convenient supply of meat, the venison being much prized. Sometimes said to be beyond price, the meat appears to have been reserved only for the feast. Ongar Park was probably large enough to support hunting the deer, the hunting probably carried out using specially bred dogs. The park appears to have been one of the largest, certainly large enough to support a herd of hundreds of deer.
Deer were encouraged to enter but deterred from leaving the park by a deer leap, an external ramp and an internal pit at a break in the boundary bank. William I and his Norman followers put great store on their right to unrestricted hunting. With the introduction of the Norman Forest Laws, laws that provided almost total protection for the deer within designated areas called Royal Forests⁷, the establishment of the deer park in or close to the Royal Forest was subject to licence. The deer leap was also strictly controlled within and near to the Royal Forest, but Ongar Park was permitted to install two such leaps⁸.
Over one quarter of the country, all deer effectively belonged to the king. The deer were often the gift of the king who would sometimes generously donate them towards the stocking of a new park.
⁷ The use of the term Royal Forest does not imply forest or woodland, but simply refers to those areas within the jurisdiction of the Forest Laws. It is believed that Essex was wholly a Royal Forest at one time.
Essex Deer Parks
The number of deer parks grew in the twelfth century, aided by the arrival of the fallow deer. It has been estimated that in 1300 there were between 1,800 and 3,000 deer parks in the country. Some of these are well documented because of the need for a licence. Cantor⁸ has provided a methodical list of about 1,900 parks, listed by county and noting early references to the existence of a park. According to Cantor, Essex contained 102 parks at this time, with possible sites for a further six parks also being listed. How many of these were distinct parks is a subject for conjecture since there is usually no reference to the actual location of the park, but only to the landowners. More recently, Hunter⁹ has stated that 160 existed at this time in Essex, more than in any other county except Hertfordshire.
Cantor provides early references to these parks and to find them we must search in the documents recording the proceedings of state - the Calendar of Patent Rolls and the Calendar of Close Rolls, for example. Local medieval parks listed include those at Aythorpe Roding, Berners Roding, Doddinghurst, High Ongar, Matching, Stondon Massey, and Theydon Garnon and two in Writtle. Within the High Country, parks are listed under Chipping Ongar, Stanford Rivers and Stapleford Tawney. However, it seems likely that the first two of these refer to the same park.
⁸ Cantor, Leonard, The Medieval Deer Parks of England, (Loughborough University of Technology, 1983).
⁹ Hunter, John, The Essex Landscape: A Study of its Form and History, (Essex Record Office, 1999), p119.
Regeneration of High Wood
High Wood has not been managed for more than 50 years. The results of this can be seen; un-coppiced hornbeams have created a dense canopy under which few woodland plants grow; bracken has invaded clearings; the pond has become stagnant; silver birch has become established in some areas, competing with hornbeam and oak; the bridleway has become deeply rutted, partly as a consequence of shading which prevents the path from drying out. Peter Moring intends to introduce a management plan to restore the wood to its earlier state; some hornbeam will be felled; the elimination of the bracken from the clearing has been started; the pond will be cleaned; oak will be reintroduced to the new clearings; the local council has introduced restrictions to bridleway entry and shading trees are being cut down.
A plan has been drawn up for the management of High Wood. With the re-introduction of felling, the plan is intended to restore some of the features of a managed wood. These will increase the environmental richness and the attraction of this small wood. The future of High Wood looks brighter!
² Kerr, Sandra, Ongar Great Park, in ‘Aspects of the History of Ongar’, (Ongar Millennium Group 1990), p6-7. ³ However your own gallows would have proved that you also had influence! ⁴ Darby, H.C., The Domesday Geography of Eastern England, (Cambridge, 1952), p 234. ⁵ Pollarding is the technique of cutting branches at a height of ten feet from the ground. New branches would be allowed to grow out of harm from the deer. ⁶ Rackham, Oliver, The History of the Countryside, (London, 1986), p 126.