The UK's Largest LOST Forest

Transcript
· Under Wychwood
0:00 · okay I've just walked up out of a pretty little village in Oxfordshire,
0:04 · West Oxfordshire I want you to have a look at the name of the village have a look at this sign
0:08 · just here Ascot under Wychwood that tells me we should be under or beneath something to do with
0:15 · Wychwood but there's nothing local here whatsoever there's a Wychwood Forest which is about 3 and
0:20 · 1/2 miles in that direction but nothing else this gets worse come and take a look at this
0:32 · so this is uh as a sign reads Shipton under Wychwood we have the same problem we maybe
0:38 · a mile and a half further on from uh Ascot under Wychwood and yet again we're about 4 and
0:43 · 1/2 miles now away from the forest of Wychwood what exactly is going on here one more to show
0:49 · you and finally Milton under Wychwood half a mile in that direction as the sign up
1:00 · there suggest now as you probably predicted around about 5 5 and 1/2 miles away now from
1:05 · Wychwood Forest way over in that direction so what exactly is going on here why are
1:11 · all the settlements along here named under Wychwood when in fact we're absolutely miles
1:17 · away from Wychwood itself welcome to the story of the UK's largest lost forest all
1:24 · we need to do now is go and find Sam who's going to help us unravel today's mystery
· An Abandoned Village.
1:30 · our first clue in fact one that I discovered on another product a year ago is maybe 6 miles south
1:36 · of these Villages happened across an old chapel in an abandoned medieval village near burford in
1:43 · fact the chapel St Oswald's built in the 1200s an early gothic church and it's full of hugely
1:49 · important aspects of History a painting of some Kings from 1340 a Roman Mosaic in the corner was
1:55 · found and now is in cirencester museum this told us the chapel was likely built on top of a Roman
2:01 · villa but back outside of the clue you see in that direction around 6 or 7 miles we now have Wychwood
2:07 · forest and the village here now long since abandoned is often mentioned in conjunction with
2:13 · Woodford and its past the board of Agriculture here describe this part of the forest as a place
2:18 · of pilferers poachers and deer Steelers alike so we have a forest that stretches at least all the
· The Domesday Book
2:26 · way down to here at Woodford that's huge so how how do we find out exactly how big this place
2:32 · was it turns out if we scratch the surface this isn't unique we can almost map the forest from
2:37 · the history of the villages in the area Haley is another great example described as the ancient
2:44 · Wychwood Forest surrounded the village of Haley okay I think I found Sam so uh and a tumulus Sam
2:52 · said meet by the tumulus here we are this is Sam from Sam walks lot hello Sam how are you H I'm
2:58 · good thank you excellent we made it we made it and that looks like a tumuli right it does we're going
3:03 · to come back to that later um in this video if you want to go and see some uh more specifics about
3:09 · this Forest some of the uh not so gruesome but ghostly Tales oh ghost for sure you need to go and
3:14 · subscribe to Sam's Channel I'll put the link in the description below in the meantime on with the
3:19 · history so let's head back to one of the earliest sources we have for Wychwood and
3:27 · its existence which is the Doomsday Book now the Doom day book mentions Wychwood in its own right
3:32 · and the information we can gather from that and gleam from that is absolutely staggering a Royal
3:39 · Forest consisting of 182 square miles 182 square miles something like 13 by 13 miles here in the
3:49 · UK that is huge okay so let's give all of this Landscapes and context you see because before the
· Context
3:57 · Doomsday Book were the Normans before the Saxons before the Romans before the Iron Age tribes this
4:04 · land was populated we have countless long barrows within the forest now and we also have a number of
4:12 · Bronze Age barrows too so on those Bronze Age barrows we've been looking now for maybe half
4:17 · an hour we assume bronze brows T mil States so we assume we're looking for sort of a round um
4:22 · mound of some description now on the map it says it's just there had we not seen it on the map we
4:28 · wouldn't have seen that in a million years um we were looking at some lumps and bumps Sam you
4:32 · saw one where is it through there there yeah um that looks crystal clear so maybe there's
4:37 · more than one here maybe there's quite a few cuz there's Earthworks everywhere but if we spin the
4:41 · camera around that there is the tumuli that the map mentions it's only about 2 or 3 ft high above
4:47 · from where we're standing now doesn't stand out much the landscape here is littered with Bronze
4:52 · Age and neolithic long barrows of various shapes and sizes inside and outside of the now Forest as
4:58 · it stands today and then we have the Romans Villas are scattered here especially on the south side
5:04 · and why well because we have Aman Street sliding horizontally across the county here but let's move
5:09 · forward just a couple of hundred years because we may get a clue of the meaning of the name at this
5:15 · point so we're inside a very early Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Hwicce according to an Anglo-Saxon
· Whats in a Name
5:25 · Charter was found or formed um around about 577 ad within about 50 years of that date became
5:32 · a client Kingdom of Mercia so we're in that territory right now we disappointingly we're
5:37 · walking through the middle of this for we're on a pathway obviously and we've got like a six or
5:42 · 7ft high fence surrounding us on both sides it's it's quite an extreme way to keep people
5:48 · out of a forest a little bit disappointing but um we'll see what else we can find as time goes
5:53 · on well ever the etymology for which well the word Still Remains with us today in many places around
6:07 · here in Witchwood in warwickshire winchfield witchy Hill wycch drioitwych in Wychwood and
6:13 · of course we have here in Wychwood in Oxfordshire fantastic now despite the fact that we seem to be
6:20 · in an incredibly private area today in terms of access to the land but we are still treated with
6:27 · a few gorgeous sites the little all the way there down and perhaps the other side of that
6:32 · Valley too despite the fences we have been uh treated to a few nice views [Music] today so we
· What went wrong
6:45 · have this Forest dating back probably to Saxon times if not certainly Norman so what exactly
6:50 · went wrong how did we go from 182 square miles to perhaps just about five or six square miles
7:00 · so we now know that in 1086 we have a Royal Forest now that didn't always mean forest in
7:05 · the sense of the word of trees it was seen instead is an area outside of the lore so it would have
7:11 · been segregated for hunting Forest so the 1200 saw Wychwood Forest probably its largest sauve
7:19 · of land it ever had and ever will be it was reputed to stretch from Taynton to Woodstock
7:25 · chipping Norton in the north to northmore in the south that is absolutely Monumental and perhaps
7:33 · that even is larger than the 182 square miles that we uh talked about earlier but that was
7:41 · all about to change and by 1300 we start to see its demise seemingly no longer a king's hunting
7:47 · ground it split into three Woodstock cornbury and Whitney you see between then and 1700 the history
7:54 · is not well documented we know that at some point cornbury District of the forest is now in private
8:00 · hand and the Woodstock part was given to the crown by the Duke of Marlborough since that
8:05 · point it has remained in that family that family is known as the bleinham family but what about the
8:12 · rest it's not the first time we've looked into a the history of a place and seen a change in the
· Ships
8:19 · landscape and a change in the law purely owing to ship building that's what happened in 1778
8:26 · the Navy procured 500 trees from this very Forest we have an anglo French war between 1778 and 1783
8:36 · all while Britain was fighting the American war of independence so resources were crucial
8:41 · they need decent quality wood and that was high on the agenda and here at Wychwood we have that
8:47 · wood that was our intention today to show you all sorts of quirky bits and pieces an old well some
8:55 · long barrows you name it throughout the forest but so much of this is fenced off and marked as
9:01 · private which is a real shame cuz there's a lot of history here to show you but such is the way
9:06 · unfortunately sometimes trees were being chopped here back in the 1780s for the Navy But as time
9:13 · went on when cartload and cartload were being produced but it wasn't enough to meet that demand
9:19 · of and from the Navy there's a number of different reasons for this they said that um the quality of
9:27 · the Oaks here wasn't good enough and and of course they blamed a lot of the locals for uh stealing a
9:32 · lot of the wood and trees here for firewood all in all Witchwood supplied just 173 good quality
9:39 · Oaks by 1859 it seemed the failing forest was in for more bad news a further 2,000 acres
9:47 · across was cleared for Farmland housing and new infrastructure by 1867 we have pretty much exactly
9:53 · where we are now around 1,700 Acres remained via enclosures the 82 square mile Forest we saw in the
10:02 · 1200 has now gone to around 5 square miles today so this has been the story of Wychwood one of the
· Weird and Wonderful
10:11 · UK's or if not the UK's largest lost forest and as I said if you want to go for a bit of a deeper
10:17 · dive and some of the weird and wonderful bits and pieces around here check out Sam's Channel we'll
10:22 · put that in the link below in the meantime thanks for watching we'll see you next week [Music]

When I lose things I always check behind the sofa or under the bed.

Have they checked there yet?

They can’t see the forest for the trees.

NOT a lost forest. It was cut down to build ships.

I give everyone the gist of the “mystery” - shipbuilding.

Robin Hood hid the forest after the King refused to let the common folk hunt there.

So much of the UK is deforested. Scotland for sure. There's some attempt to turn that around.

I’ve heard that much of Haiti is deforested as well so they don’t have near the trees and vegetation one might envision there, given the tropical climate. I wonder if the D.R. next door is similarly deforested?

Haiti (on the left) - Dominican Republic (on the right) border

Haiti has 4% forest cover

The Dominica Republic has 40% forest cover

The USA by comparison has 30%

DR is lush and green. Haiti is a dystopian wasteland devoid of vegetation. Check out an image of the island of Hispaniola taken from outer space. The border between DR and Haiti reaches out and pokes you in the eye. There is nothing subtle about it.

It cold there once?

The reason Haiti is so devoid of vegetation is that the winds which bring rain, etc., to DR are blocked by the hills in the middle of the island... right along the border.

“We’ve hired a lumberjack, he just got here from the Sahara Forest”.

“You mean the Sahara desert?”

“Sure, now...”

Lol, good one!

The oldies are still goodies.

Port-au-Prince receives around 55 inches of precipitation annually. Plenty enough to make it green!

All I know is what I have read. Certainly infrastructure plays a part.

That is a striking aerial photo. I’m hoping, .....hoping that the barren Haitian side is because all that deforested area is being vigorously farmed with a lot of manual labor to make it productive. And, it looks dry and barren because the lush crops are between seasons.... no?

Is Haiti small enough that one large modern nuclear plant built there and run by foreigners (to start) could power the country PLUS a large desalination plant for plenty of fresh water for people, industry, and crops? Seems more forward sighted than just giving them food which only creates a need for more food...

Transcript
	·	Under Wychwood
0:00	·	okay I've just walked up out of a pretty little village in Oxfordshire,
0:04	·	West Oxfordshire I want you to have a look at the name of the village have a look at this sign
0:08	·	just here Ascot under Wychwood that tells me we should be under or beneath something to do with
0:15	·	Wychwood but there's nothing local here whatsoever there's a Wychwood Forest which is about 3 and
0:20	·	1/2 miles in that direction but nothing else this gets worse come and take a look at this
0:32	·	so this is uh as a sign reads Shipton under Wychwood we have the same problem we maybe
0:38	·	a mile and a half further on from uh Ascot under Wychwood and yet again we're about 4 and
0:43	·	1/2 miles now away from the forest of Wychwood what exactly is going on here one more to show
0:49	·	you and finally Milton under Wychwood half a mile in that direction as the sign up
1:00	·	there suggest now as you probably predicted around about 5 5 and 1/2 miles away now from
1:05	·	Wychwood Forest way over in that direction so what exactly is going on here why are
1:11	·	all the settlements along here named under Wychwood when in fact we're absolutely miles
1:17	·	away from Wychwood itself welcome to the story of the UK's largest lost forest all
1:24	·	we need to do now is go and find Sam who's going to help us unravel today's mystery
	·	An Abandoned Village.
1:30	·	our first clue in fact one that I discovered on another product a year ago is maybe 6 miles south
1:36	·	of these Villages happened across an old chapel in an abandoned medieval village near burford in
1:43	·	fact the chapel St Oswald's built in the 1200s an early gothic church and it's full of hugely
1:49	·	important aspects of History a painting of some Kings from 1340 a Roman Mosaic in the corner was
1:55	·	found and now is in cirencester museum this told us the chapel was likely built on top of a Roman
2:01	·	villa but back outside of the clue you see in that direction around 6 or 7 miles we now have Wychwood
2:07	·	forest and the village here now long since abandoned is often mentioned in conjunction with
2:13	·	Woodford and its past the board of Agriculture here describe this part of the forest as a place
2:18	·	of pilferers poachers and deer Steelers alike so we have a forest that stretches at least all the
	·	The Domesday Book
2:26	·	way down to here at Woodford that's huge so how how do we find out exactly how big this place
2:32	·	was it turns out if we scratch the surface this isn't unique we can almost map the forest from
2:37	·	the history of the villages in the area Haley is another great example described as the ancient
2:44	·	Wychwood Forest surrounded the village of Haley okay I think I found Sam so uh and a tumulus Sam
2:52	·	said meet by the tumulus here we are this is Sam from Sam walks lot hello Sam how are you H I'm
2:58	·	good thank you excellent we made it we made it and that looks like a tumuli right it does we're going
3:03	·	to come back to that later um in this video if you want to go and see some uh more specifics about
3:09	·	this Forest some of the uh not so gruesome but ghostly Tales oh ghost for sure you need to go and
3:14	·	subscribe to Sam's Channel I'll put the link in the description below in the meantime on with the
3:19	·	history so let's head back to one of the earliest sources we have for Wychwood and
3:27	·	its existence which is the Doomsday Book now the Doom day book mentions Wychwood in its own right
3:32	·	and the information we can gather from that and gleam from that is absolutely staggering a Royal
3:39	·	Forest consisting of 182 square miles 182 square miles something like 13 by 13 miles here in the
3:49	·	UK that is huge okay so let's give all of this Landscapes and context you see because before the
	·	Context
3:57	·	Doomsday Book were the Normans before the Saxons before the Romans before the Iron Age tribes this
4:04	·	land was populated we have countless long barrows within the forest now and we also have a number of
4:12	·	Bronze Age barrows too so on those Bronze Age barrows we've been looking now for maybe half
4:17	·	an hour we assume bronze brows T mil States so we assume we're looking for sort of a round um
4:22	·	mound of some description now on the map it says it's just there had we not seen it on the map we
4:28	·	wouldn't have seen that in a million years um we were looking at some lumps and bumps Sam you
4:32	·	saw one where is it through there there yeah um that looks crystal clear so maybe there's
4:37	·	more than one here maybe there's quite a few cuz there's Earthworks everywhere but if we spin the
4:41	·	camera around that there is the tumuli that the map mentions it's only about 2 or 3 ft high above
4:47	·	from where we're standing now doesn't stand out much the landscape here is littered with Bronze
4:52	·	Age and neolithic long barrows of various shapes and sizes inside and outside of the now Forest as
4:58	·	it stands today and then we have the Romans Villas are scattered here especially on the south side
5:04	·	and why well because we have Aman Street sliding horizontally across the county here but let's move
5:09	·	forward just a couple of hundred years because we may get a clue of the meaning of the name at this
5:15	·	point so we're inside a very early Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Hwicce according to an Anglo-Saxon
	·	Whats in a Name
5:25	·	Charter was found or formed um around about 577 ad within about 50 years of that date became
5:32	·	a client Kingdom of Mercia so we're in that territory right now we disappointingly we're
5:37	·	walking through the middle of this for we're on a pathway obviously and we've got like a six or
5:42	·	7ft high fence surrounding us on both sides it's it's quite an extreme way to keep people
5:48	·	out of a forest a little bit disappointing but um we'll see what else we can find as time goes
5:53	·	on well ever the etymology for which well the word Still Remains with us today in many places around
6:07	·	here in Witchwood in warwickshire winchfield witchy Hill wycch drioitwych in Wychwood and
6:13	·	of course we have here in Wychwood in Oxfordshire fantastic now despite the fact that we seem to be
6:20	·	in an incredibly private area today in terms of access to the land but we are still treated with
6:27	·	a few gorgeous sites the little all the way there down and perhaps the other side of that
6:32	·	Valley too despite the fences we have been uh treated to a few nice views [Music] today so we
	·	What went wrong
6:45	·	have this Forest dating back probably to Saxon times if not certainly Norman so what exactly
6:50	·	went wrong how did we go from 182 square miles to perhaps just about five or six square miles
7:00	·	so we now know that in 1086 we have a Royal Forest now that didn't always mean forest in
7:05	·	the sense of the word of trees it was seen instead is an area outside of the lore so it would have
7:11	·	been segregated for hunting Forest so the 1200 saw Wychwood Forest probably its largest sauve
7:19	·	of land it ever had and ever will be it was reputed to stretch from Taynton to Woodstock
7:25	·	chipping Norton in the north to northmore in the south that is absolutely Monumental and perhaps
7:33	·	that even is larger than the 182 square miles that we uh talked about earlier but that was
7:41	·	all about to change and by 1300 we start to see its demise seemingly no longer a king's hunting
7:47	·	ground it split into three Woodstock cornbury and Whitney you see between then and 1700 the history
7:54	·	is not well documented we know that at some point cornbury District of the forest is now in private
8:00	·	hand and the Woodstock part was given to the crown by the Duke of Marlborough since that
8:05	·	point it has remained in that family that family is known as the bleinham family but what about the
8:12	·	rest it's not the first time we've looked into a the history of a place and seen a change in the
	·	Ships
8:19	·	landscape and a change in the law purely owing to ship building that's what happened in 1778
8:26	·	the Navy procured 500 trees from this very Forest we have an anglo French war between 1778 and 1783
8:36	·	all while Britain was fighting the American war of independence so resources were crucial
8:41	·	they need decent quality wood and that was high on the agenda and here at Wychwood we have that
8:47	·	wood that was our intention today to show you all sorts of quirky bits and pieces an old well some
8:55	·	long barrows you name it throughout the forest but so much of this is fenced off and marked as
9:01	·	private which is a real shame cuz there's a lot of history here to show you but such is the way
9:06	·	unfortunately sometimes trees were being chopped here back in the 1780s for the Navy But as time
9:13	·	went on when cartload and cartload were being produced but it wasn't enough to meet that demand
9:19	·	of and from the Navy there's a number of different reasons for this they said that um the quality of
9:27	·	the Oaks here wasn't good enough and and of course they blamed a lot of the locals for uh stealing a
9:32	·	lot of the wood and trees here for firewood all in all Witchwood supplied just 173 good quality
9:39	·	Oaks by 1859 it seemed the failing forest was in for more bad news a further 2,000 acres
9:47	·	across was cleared for Farmland housing and new infrastructure by 1867 we have pretty much exactly
9:53	·	where we are now around 1,700 Acres remained via enclosures the 82 square mile Forest we saw in the
10:02	·	1200 has now gone to around 5 square miles today so this has been the story of Wychwood one of the
	·	Weird and Wonderful
10:11	·	UK's or if not the UK's largest lost forest and as I said if you want to go for a bit of a deeper
10:17	·	dive and some of the weird and wonderful bits and pieces around here check out Sam's Channel we'll
10:22	·	put that in the link below in the meantime thanks for watching we'll see you next week [Music]