She would never have dreamed of it a few years ago, but when lockdown hit and she found herself cut off from family and friends, “I’m not ashamed to say I hugged a tree or two if I was feeling sad,” says Jane Barber. “When you can’t hug people – and I didn’t have a partner at the time – it was really challenging for people living alone.
“We need connection to feel connected to another living being. It’s great to connect with the history of the tree and reflect on what it may have witnessed.”
Like many of those jogging, walking dogs or simply meandering on a gloriously sun-drenched Friday morning in Hino Forest, near Romford in Essex, Barber is not one to need reminding of the value of ancient trees. “Would you like to see the Oak on the Squire?” she asks, leading the way under the rustling, chirping canopy to a venerable giant presiding over a hill at the northeast edge of the forest.
“Anything could happen under that tree,” says Barber, a nursery nurse from Ilford. “Bandits and trade, farmers on the way to market… lovers meeting under the oak. Before we had Google Maps, this would be our landmark.”
There are many such trees in these historic woods – at least 533 ancient hornbeams and oaks, according to the Woodland Trust, although another conservation body, the Ancient Tree Forum, put the figure at between 3,000 and 4,000. The trust said this week that it was a pattern, which is repeated throughout England, where the best extant estimate of ancient trees is now believed to be a dramatic underestimate.
According to research by the Woodland Trust and the University of Nottingham, instead of the 115,000 century-old trees currently registered in England, there could be as many as 2.1 million. These historic giants may stand majestically or half-forgotten in a field, but whether they harbored monarchs or just beetles, fungi and lichens, they all need the same enhanced protection, the trust claims.
We’ve lost a lot of our sense of connection with these trees, says Emma Gilmartin, an ecologist and conservation consultant, “and I personally think that speaks to a kind of cultural disconnect with the landscape and nature.
“These ancient trees can tell us so much about how we interacted with the earth. But because we don’t see them as having economic value, we’ve often lost a sense of wonder about them as well.”
The relationship between people and forests in this part of Essex is particularly close and ancient. Many of the remarkable trees in Hainault Forest – one of the last remnants of Essex’s ancient woodland – are hornbeams that have been polished over decades or even centuries. The natives had rights of common to cut the branches for fodder or to make charcoal, which were especially valued in this part of the county for the baking industry. Gnarled and gnarled, sometimes split or hollow, their chunky trunks are easy to spot throughout the forest.
Fearing a dilution of post-Brexit protections in the government’s green paper for nature restoration, the Woodland Trust is calling for a consistent system of protections that covers all ancient trees, whether they are part of valuable woodland or neglected country hedgerows.
“[As an organisation] we realized it wasn’t enough to just respond to the odd government consultation here and there and politely ask them to protect trees better,” says Gilmartin. “In fact, what we want to do is cause a cultural change that defines these [trees and woodlands] as a foundation for our quality of life.”
Sign up for First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BST.
Many of those in Essex are now firm believers. Lee Cole, who grew up in the area and now commutes 50 minutes a day from Saffron Walden to walk her dogs in Hainault, says: “I’ve always loved this forest, ever since my parents took us there as children.” Her mother, she says , would climb up to a tree and wrap her arms around it, saying she could feel its warmth. “I’m not that bad, but I really appreciate the trees because they’ve been here for a long time.
“And we need trees to live anyway, right? They are the lungs of the world.”
Add Comment