Hatfield Forest

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Hatfield Forest is a working example of what a medieval Forest must have been like. It is a landscape shaped by man's activities over hundreds, probably thousands, of years. There is certainly nothing as complete and well-preserved in Essex, and arguably in Europe.

Hatfield Forest is a compartmented forest. Open grazed areas, known as 'plains', are separated from the wooded areas by ditches and banks, once topped by paling fences designed to keep out grazing animals. Trees scattered across the plains are pollarded, in other words cut above head height where grazing animals cannot reach, while the wooded compartments are managed by coppicing, in other words trees are cut to ground level every ten years or so.

Ancient trees, and particularly ancient pollard trees, are what make Hatfield Forest so special. It has about 600 pollards in total, including not only oak and hornbeam, which can be seen elsewhere in Essex, but also many maple and hawthorn, which are rare as pollards, and just a handful of beech, lineage elm and crab apple. Nowhere else can you see such a variety of species nor such a variety of form, from gnarled, twisted old hawthorns to massive, stately oaks. It is also the stronghold in Essex of mistletoe, which is widespread on the ancient hawthorns and maples on the plains.

The coppice woods consist mainly of ash, hazel, and an unusually large number of maple. There are also some gigantic coppice stools of oak, particularly in Lodge Coppice to the west, while the west end of Street Coppice has four acres of alder on a plateau – alder is a plant of wet, flushed ground, in other words where water is moving through the soil, picking up oxygen as it goes.

The predominant woodland plant is dog's mercury but the coppice woodlands also support a very wide range of other flowers including indicators of ancient woodland such as oxlips (mainly in or near Hamptons Coppice) and herb paris (in Long Coppice).

Shermore Brook runs through the Forest from north to south, feeding into a chalky fen above the lake. Marshy areas around it are full of wetland plants and alive with insects in summer. Around the fen are a number of rare Essex plants, including tubular water-dropwort, marsh arrow-grass, marsh willowherb and marsh pennywort. Water rail are usually present here also.

A range of woodland birds breed in the Forest, including marsh tit and nightingale (decreasing), plus the odd woodcock and hawfinch. Look out for buzzards which are recolonising the county. Winter visitors include redwing and fieldfare.

Follow the road and then the boardwalk from the main car park at the entrance, bear left before Shell House and follow the rides to the south-west corner of the Forest, then turn right along the road. A short distance down on the left you can enter another ancient wood and from there reach an ancient common, both owned by the National Trust.

Wall Wood was one of Hatfield Forest's 'purlieu woods', which were associated with the Forest but not entirely part of it. Owned by the Essex & Puckeridge Hunt, it was given to the National Trust in 1946.

It has many ancient coppiced trees and, in the more open parts, good ground flora – carpets of dog's mercury, patches of bluebells and a scattering of primroses.

Alongside Wall Wood lies Woodside Green, an ancient common consisting of open grassland with scattered ancient trees, now grazed by cattle. It was given to the National Trust in 1935 by Major Houblon.