Historical Development of Heathland

Post-glacial Britain

8000-4000 BP, it is probable that Post-glacial Britain was covered entirely with forests. These primeval forest or ‘wild wood’, would have been managed by stone aged humans, clearing the primeval forests and heathland starting to encroach into these clearings. Heathland was becoming widespread during the Mesolithic period with open woodland with free- draining soils were heavily settled and clearances began. These clearances were use for game management. These created better browsing to attract wild herbivores, such as European bison, aurochs and deer which could be hunted with relative ease. Encouraging large amounts of browsing herbivores would of helped to temporarily suppress tree regeneration, whilst nutrients loss from the topsoil, would have encouraged heathland fauna and vegetation to develop.

Neolithic and Bronze age

6000- 2500 BP, some lowland heathland areas had developed into open heathland habitat. Neolithic farming has avoided these areas in great numbers mainly of the infertile soils. In the early Bronze Age, clearance of forests on easily worked sandy soils to grow crops, nutrients were washed out of some soils by the rain, leaving them poor and acidic. Heathland plants were well suited to these poor acid conditions, and while some open areas may have been heathland already, much of the exhausted farmland gradually became heath too. At the end of the Bronze Age heathlands expansion have been sustained since their creation by domesticated livestock and therefore kept the landscape open.

Iron Age and roman

-Accelerated deforestation for agriculture and timber

-More Areas cleared for common grazing.

Commoners rights

Common land is land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect firewood, or to cut turf for fuel. The term "commons" has come to be applied to other resources which a community has rights or access to.

Rights of common were appurtenant to particular plots of land, and the commoner would be the person who, for the time being, was the occupier of a particular plot of land (or in the case of turbary, even a particular heath).

Example rights of common are:

Pasture. Right to pasture cattle, horses, sheep or other animals on the common land. The most widespread right.

- Piscary. Right to fish.

- Turbary. Right to take sods of turf for fuel.

- Common of marl. Right to take sand and gravel.

- Mast or pannage. Right to turn out pigs for a period in autumn to eat mast (beech mast, acorns and other nuts).

- Estovers. Right to take sufficient wood for the commoner's house or holding; usually limited to smaller trees, bushes (such as gorse) and fallen branches.

Medieval royal hunting forest

Royal forests were designed as hunting areas for a monarch and the aristocracy. The concept was introduced by the Normans to England in the 11th century, and at the height of this practice in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, fully one-third of the land area of southern England was designated as royal forest. At that time, the practice of reserving areas of land for the sole use of the aristocracy was common throughout Europe during the medieval period. Royal forests usually included large areas of Heathland, — anywhere that supported deer and other game.

William the Conqueror, a great lover of hunting, established the system of forest law. This operated outside of the common law, and served to protect game animals and their forest habitat from destruction.

The kings discovered that the Royal forests could provide a useful source of income. Local nobles could be granted a royal licence to take a certain amount of game.

Changing Landscape

Enclosures Acts -17th/18th Century

The act of transferring resources from the commons to purely private ownership is known as enclosure, or Inclosure. The Enclosure Acts were a series of private Acts of Parliament, mainly from about 1750 to 1850, which enclosed large areas of common, especially the arable and hay meadow land and the better pasture land. The developments in agricultural mechanization during the 18th century required large, enclosed fields in order to be workable. This led to a series of government acts, culminating in the General enclosure Act of 1801, which sanctioned large-scale land reform.

These "parliamentary" enclosures consolidated strips in the open fields into more compact units, and enclosed much of the remaining pasture commons or wastes. Parliamentary enclosures usually provided commoners with some other land in compensation for the loss of common rights, although often of poor quality and limited extent.

Parliamentary enclosure was also used for the division and privatisation of common wastes (in the original sense of "uninhabited places"), such as heathland.

Reclamation for Agriculture -18th/19th Century

Lowland heathland in Britain began to decline with the large-scale land reform. Improvements in technology meant that previously infertile land could be utilised for agriculture or forestry. During the 18th century railway networks developed and made goods, such as timber and farm produce easier to transport. At the same time coal began to replace turvers and peat as fuel.

Forestry Commission -1919

By the end of the 19th century there were still areas of heathland, but the rate of loss was still accelerating

Afforestation was the main reason for the creation of the commission in 1919. Britain had only 5% of its original forest cover left and the government at that time wanted to create a strategic resource of timber. Since then forest area has more than doubled and the remit of the commission is much more focused on sustainable forest management. They were given land with low soil quality – usually in heathland areas.

Decline in exercising commoners rights -1918 onwards

After the Second World War, most lowland commons became neglected because commoners, who could find better-paid work in other sectors of the economy, largely stopped exercising their rights. When open habitats are no longer grazed they start to develop scrub and then dense woodland, losing the grassy or heathland vegetation which may have occupied the land continuously for many centuries.

Urban Expansion -19th and 20th Century

Between the periods after World War II losses of lowland heathland were attributed by the expansion of urban areas with an increased demand for sands and gravels to feed housing development. Housing developments have taken place on mires as well on the best heaths.

Present Day

The importance of lowland heathland for wildlife has been recognised only recently. A substational part of lowland heathland that survives has been protected as SSSis since the 1970s. The Countryside Act ( 1981) European Union directive to conserve birds and habitats and their species have protected important areas of lowland heathland in Britain.

The countryside and Rights of Way Act (2000) has provided positive conservation interest identified under both the EU Bird Directive and EU Habitats and Species Directive.

During the late 1990s heathland management projects were established for all larger heathland areas run by local authorities, or by voluntary conservation organisations, with support from English Nature’s Lowland Heathland Programme.

The government’s UK Biodiversity Action Plan (1994), supported most of the heathland areas in the UK through some level of conservation management, both by direct management projects and through the provision of grant aid.

The next step is to recreate some of the habitat that has been lost. Areas of forestry, agricultural land and quarry sites are now beginning to be returned to heathland.