Hatfield Forest
It’s just getting to that time of year when it’s nice enough to want to take a good long walk. And Hatfield Forest is a great place for walking.
It’s a strange place. For a start, it’s not all what we’d call ‘forest’ today; there are vast areas of open land as well. There are coppices, where the trees’ branches have been cut back almost to the ground, so that over time, the trunk becomes a huge hollow circle with straight branches growing out of the outside. And there are pollards – trees that have been cut back time and time again to the main trunk, so that they look like a tree drawn by a not very artistic three year old – just a massive bulk of trunk and little sticky-out bits of twig. There’s grassland, even fen.
And this is what the middle ages meant by ‘forest’. Oliver Rackham, the landscape historian, believes Hatfield is special – it has, he says, “all the elements of a medieval forest,” even including a rabbit warren, making it unique in England.
On a good day’s walking you can feel the history. I remember turning into a forest trackway one day, and seeing five or six deer just thirty or forty metres away – standing, looking back at me. And then, after just enough time for me to stop, and them to sniff the air, and the leader to look back at the others, off they went, easily loping off across the forest floor, between trees, in silence.
Out in the pastures, I heard the lowing of cattle. But deep in the forest, the only sound I could hear was the swish and rustle of last year’s leaf mould under my feet. I had stepped back into the middle ages.
Hatfield Forest was part of the Great Forest of Essex back in the twelfth century, when the King introduced the Fallow deer he wanted for his feasts – and for the sport of hunting. Unlike most medieval forests, it’s survived the centuries almost intact.
Almost – because the one other noise you’ll certainly hear in Hatfield Forest is that of planes landing at or taking off from nearby Stansted Airport. Back in 1999 a Korean Air cargo plane crashed in the forest. The long term threat, though, is more serious than a single plane crash; if the airport ever wants to expand, this unique forest is in the way.
For the moment, though, I have to say that the noise of jet engines forms a rather piquant addition to the forest’s reportory of sounds.
The practicalities
Hatfield is easy to get to if you’re driving – straight up the M11 to the Stansted turn-off, and fine the car park (which charges a small fee). By train, you’ll need to get off at the airport and walk three miles, or get a cab, to the forest itself.
In school holidays, there are refreshments at a little cafe by the lake – and this is a great place to come with children.
Photo credit: Paul and Aline Burland on Flickr
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