Short Wood otherwise known as Church Wood
By Alexander Wheaten
Church Wood, as an ancient wood, has a history of over eight hundred years, which can be studied in Canterbury Cathedral Archives. Some even earlier history also came to light recently following field walking by adult students of the former School of Continuing Education of the University of Kent at Canterbury. They found a quantity of various worked flints e.g. cords and blades in a field previously part of what had been known as Short Tenement, which had been part of Church Wood until the seventeenth century. It is near a stream, the Fishbourne, which comes out of the wood and flows in the direction of the main road (A290), which it crosses, and also of the nearby parish church of St. Cosmos and St. Damian in the Blean. [1]
As so much was found it was shown to archaeologists of the University of Manchester and Canterbury Archaeological Trust. The conclusion reached by them was that many of the flints found were either Mesolithic or Neolithic. It seems that the stream, which flows for over a mile from one end of the wood to the other, attracted people, who chose to be near it. More finds were also recorded from, in or near the stream not far further down the stream by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust. [2]
The road that crosses the Fishbourne stream is an old road that comes from the Westgate in Canterbury and is of Roman origin. It went to the north coast possibly to Whitstable or more likely to somewhere near Seasalter. As the road approaches Blean village on the other side of the road is Church Wood. Where there is a village the land is suitable for agriculture as had already been discovered when farm buildings were built there during the Roman period. It also seems that about this time an attempt was made to create more agricultural land over the road. Ditches found there appear to form a pattern whose character and situation suggest a ‘planned field system’ of Roman origin; the fact that the possible field system is parallel to the road is significant. [3]
This area along the side of the road extends northward as far as neighbouring woods, Crawford's Rough and Mincing Wood. These woods like Church Wood are ancient woods which must date from after the departure of the Romans. The land there did not make good quality farmland. [4]
Sometime after the departure of the Romans in the fifth century Kent became a Christian kingdom ready to make endowments to the church including monasteries. Such an endowment was made in 724 by Æthelbert, son of Wihtred King of Kent, to one of his cousins Abbess Mildred and her nuns of the convent in Minster in Thanet. Some of the land given was described as ‘pascua porcorum’ in East Kent and some was said to have been ‘on blean’. It appears therefore that this name, in use today, goes back before 724; but it is not known for certain if the woodland containing the pasture for swine was first given the name of Blean after the departure of the Romans by those speaking a language used on the continent as would appear from the definition in the Oxford Book of Place-Names. If the name’s origin may have been earlier it may be a version of a similar word in old Welsh ‘blaen’. [6]
Although the Domesday Book generally does not record large woods in Kent, it states that there was one near Canterbury that was the king's. It does not make it clear that it was part of the Blean woods although it is not likely to have been anywhere else. It does, however, given an estimate of its size ‘mille acrae’ i.e. a large wood, whose size, as is inevitable, is not exactly the size given in Domesday — a thousand acres. It also described the wood as being unproductive (infructuosa). This description is most likely to mean that it was unproductive because of its situation.
Even today the Blean woods are renowned for poor quality oaks. [7]
When in 1189 Richard I gave Canterbury Cathedral Priory an endowment of a large wood described in the king's charter as ‘totum boscum nostrum de Blen’ it was to be a piece of land valuable mostly for its healthy underwood. [8] By this gift much more of the Blean woods now ceased to be royal woodland as a result of gifts of endowment principally to monasteries but also to the archbishop. At first the name of the wood did not appear on charters giving wood in the Blean. If a name did appear it was ‘sorotte’ or a version of it such as ‘srutte’. [9] After some time however, perhaps after two hundred years, the name for Church Wood became Short Wood.
After the charter of 1189 the cathedral priory carried out a great deal of work on the construction of large earthworks around their woods. Some such work was done in 1236 on a woodbank for the wood given by King Richard I. This was, however, a year when very much more was spent ‘in fossatis de Pornden’ i.e. on woodbanks in Thornden where they had another wood. [10] The lesser amount spent than elsewhere could have been because much had already been done previously in the wood given by King Richard I.
Not long after much work had been done on boundary woodbanks there were changes to the cathedral priory’s newly acquired land. In one case the cathedral priory and Leeds priory were involved in a dispute and had to appear before the king's justices concerning woodland in the Blean, some of it to the north of the highway going towards Canterbury i.e. Watling Street; this was where Leeds priory had a right of common of pasture, which by agreement they surrendered to the cathedral priory in exchange for 150 acres of other land. [11] This woodland is where at this time archaeologists are conducting investigations to show whether there was occupation of the land in prehistoric times possibly as another hill fort. [12] On the boundary of Church Wood, there are woodbanks unusually of considerable size.
In the same year 1278 the cathedral priory gave ninety acres of its wood in the Blean to St. Sepulchre’s Priory, a convent in Canterbury. This was given in exchange for their giving up an opportunity to collect fuel there. In this case the chirograph gives the boundaries of the wood transferred: to the west of it was Bodsinde Wood of Faversham Abbey, to the south the king's highway (regale’ via or Watling Street) elsewhere woodland of the cathedral priory. The woodland received by the nuns came to be known first as Mincing Wood, meaning woodland of nuns and later as Manson wood. [13] Next to this wood the main road continues in the direction of Canterbury or to Ospringe with a large woodbank. This was made at a distance back from where those travelling along the road usually used to go. This would have been done to make it more difficult for robbers to surprise passing travellers. This kind of precaution was required by a statute of 1285. [14] The space created was called a trench. It is not certain if the woodbank was made before or after the date of the statute.
Another woodbank can be seen about a mile away. It is along the northern boundary of the wood and although eroded is up to about four feet in height. [15] An old road followed this boundary on the other side of which are several ancient woods such as Great Den Lees, until recently owned by Eastbridge Hospital in Canterbury since medieval times.
Not long before those taking part in the peasant’s revolt had killed Archbishop Simon Sudbury it had been seen that there might be trouble coming. The archbishop needed to attend a provincial council in London to adopt measures to be taken against those doing damage to property of the people of the church (persone ecclesiastice). In the year after the killing of the archbishop in 1382 his successor Thomas Courtenay applied the decisions of that council to those chopping trees in the coppiced wood (silva cedua) in the Blean belonging to the cathedral priory. The archbishop therefore issued a mandate authorising his commissary general to take measures against those responsible. [16] About this time would have been a suitable time for other measures to be taken against those who might cause damage to the wood and also his own wood that adjoined it, North Bishopsden Wood. In this wood there was built a moated site, which could have been used by those responsible for dealing with trespassers as the archbishop would have been aware. [17]
After the peasants’ revolt and after measures to preserve order had had some success it was possible for the monks and probably most likely for Thomas Chillenden, one of the treasurers and later prior from 1391 to seek to obtain more from managing woods. [18] That this was done can be seen from the late fourteenth century account rolls of the treasurers of the monastery. Until then little had been recorded of what exactly the woods produced. From the beginning of the fifteenth century however, several foresters’ accounts have more detail. Thus accounts for the wood called ‘Shurte’ or ‘Short’ for several years ending at Michaelmas record the cost of making various kinds of faggots in thousands and of cartloads of stubyll; the word stubyl may have meant stumps with their roots but in view of the large amount of it sold over the years it may have come to mean old wood also. Various other items occur, for example in 1413/14 there were ‘vynrodd’ costing 12d. for the monastery’s vineyards; 1434/35 work on repairing a pound for animals (claustura) for 18d.; in 1437/38 ‘lorgh’ sold for 22d.; in...
1441/2 ‘ostwode’ for hearths; in 1461/62 bark for tanning leather (tan) sold for 15s. 2d. and in 1488/89 an account of Thomas Morys, forester, has the cost of making Adventwode for the approaching winter. The foresters were paid more than sixty shillings for each year. [19] Very little is said in these accounts, which were written in Latin, about timber as they relate almost all of them to coppiced wood. Timber was not normally sold to the public.
In the years before the dissolution of the monasteries there were changes in Short Wood as it was now known. A salaried forester for a particular wood or woods does not seem to have been any longer needed to give detailed accounts of the making of the numbers of items previously shown. This was, however, before there was a decrease in the demand for wood for fuel. Meanwhile, however, the timber continued to be the monastery’s use or of its associates.
After the time of the dissolution of monasteries the newly created Dean and Chapter of Canterbury did not have the same needs of amounts of underwood or timber. Many of the monastery’s buildings were not required as before. They were also free to sell quantities of both underwood and timber. In the case of timber there therefore was a need to consider what was available after the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury had been recently despoiled of their estates. A survey was therefore commissioned of the timber in their largest woods. The survey was headed “A survey of Shoort alias X’t Church Wood” that is to say of Short or Christ Church wood. As the largest of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury’s woods it was estimated to be of between 1200 and 1400 acres with a total of about 32,000 oaks. The condition of the land varied; the survey stated that ‘about 800 acres is an indifferent good soile but the remainder is generally very barren and poor soile’. The surveyors report added that on the poor soil ‘the wood thrived very indifferently and the tillers thrived even worse; the tillers were young oaks allowed to develop into trees from coppiced stools. [20]
The timber surveyor’s report 1702 was supplemented by an excellent large map by the cartographer Jared Hill in 1718. It is headed ‘The map of Christ Church wood’. [21] At the middle of this map is a stream called on the map ‘The grill’ now known as ...
...the Fulbourne; it flows from the West for about 2 miles through the wood as far as the road to Whitstable and beyond. There the road crosses the stream where there had been a bridge since at least the 13th century, when it was called ‘fissemanebregge’ [22] and the stream ‘Vischmannysbourne’. [23] The 1718 map calls the bridge ‘Scott bridge’ named perhaps after a sponsor when repairs needed to be done. Going towards Canterbury the map shows a ‘moated house’ where there is a turning leading to other woods and which may sometime have been the house of wood reeve. The road leads to one of the woods of the archbishop, Stock Wood, which is next to Homestead Wood. This wood is now known as Homestall Wood, where archaeologists are now looking for evidence of a possible very ancient settlement or hill fort. So far images have been produced by lidar which have aroused interest. The woodbanks of Church Wood along the woods hereabouts have features unlike those of other woodbanks of the cathedral monastery suggesting that some of them could date from before 1189. Woodbanks appearing to have been made after that date include the large woodbank and trench along Watling Street. That woodbank extends towards Mincing Wood (now known as Manson Wood), where the boundary of Church Wood turns north towards another of the archbishops woods, North Bishopsden; this is where there was a recent find of a mediaeval moated site in the middle of the wood. [24]
At the north end of this there are the remains of an old pound (clausura) for herding animals pasturing in the woods. The cost of repairs of this were one of the expenses of the monastery’s forester of the Short Wood in the year 1413/14. [25] The pound was situated at a point where ancient tracks crossed. One of these was on the northern boundary of Church Wood with a Woodbank along it, which appears to be made in the 13th century along one side of an ancient road, now disused. This road is called on the 1718 map Mearencold Lane and today as the Radfall Road. On the other side of the road were other ancient woods with their own woodbanks. A mile along this road was another Mincing Wood. The name may refer to the same convent, St. Sepulchres Priory in Canterbury, which owned the Mincing Wood next Watling Street as it owned a number of properties in its day. [26]
This wood is not far from fields next to the stream that crosses the wood where stone age artefacts were found. An account of what the 1718 map can show us is largely about the boundaries of Church Wood and something around them. It shows...
...little of the inside the wood except roads or ways and a stream. The only other prominent features shown in the middle is the kind of thing to which the surveyors of the 1702 survey drew the attention of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury. They referred to large areas described as ‘very barren and poor soile’, which must mean much more than is shown on the 1718 map where the woodland on ‘barren land’ came to a total of only 104 acres. These barren acres when added to 853 acres of woodland and a total of ways of 59 acres give a total of 1016 acres. When a large part of Church Wood became a nature reserve, in which Mr. Michael Walter became warden, he found consulting the 1718 map useful as there were still parts the wood not very fertile. The map also shows that the condition of the soil did not wholly change over the centuries since the Domesday Book.
Towards the end of the 18th century when Edward Hasted was writing his history he may have possibly found some uncertainty about the name of Church Wood. The 1702 survey of oak timber gave two alternative names, one of which was its old mediaeval name Short, spelt in various ways. When the 1718 map was made, it was called ‘A mapp of Christ Church Wood’, probably the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury's preferred name; but this name was new and the old name was to continue in use for more than a century. These different names existing at the same time could be an explanation why the historian omits to mention its name. He did, however, give a short description of this wood and its management. He wrote the woods of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury in the Blean were “reputed to consist of about 1000 acres of land though by measurements made by order of the state they are said to contain 1403 acres Or. 30p. they are mostly oak coppice and are felled yearly in portions. ... The yearly profit of the oak timber felled of which there are great quantities growing over the whole of these woods, is applied to the use of the common fund. [27]
At this time there were of course other trees not mentioned by Hasted. One of these, chestnut was to become an important source of hop poles. The planting of these trees had already begun in Hasted’s lifetime; stools of chestnut from his time still to be found. The growing of chestnut increased in the 19th century when the management of Church Wood ceased to be in the hands of representatives of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury and passed into the hands of those of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. They appointed Cluttons as their surveyors not only of the woods of deans but also those bishops and archbishops. In this way they came into possession of thousands of acres of woodland in East Kent. As Church Wood adjoins North Bishopsden, which they also managed, a road was made to continue through Church Wood into North Bishopsden Wood. Another improvement was that made to the drainage of the Wood. [28]
An attempt was even made to grub out a part of Church Wood so as to create a small farm in the middle of the Wood. The existence of this farm appears on maps at the end of the century but its existence could not last long. The Blean woods are not really very suitable for farming; this is one the reasons why they have continued to survive so long in spite of most attempts to make the land, where they are, more useful for other purposes.
At this time the Church Wood came to be managed together with North Bishopsden Wood just as the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury’s wood, Thornden Wood, came to be managed with West Blean Wood. The management of Church Wood continued much as before by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners until after the last war. Their successors the Church Commissioners, however, in 1950 received advice from the Forestry Commission which, if followed, might have led to unexpected expense of some size. This advice was given as it had been decided that Blean woods were then in such a condition that they required ‘a minimum programme of rehabilitation and replacement’ which would have affected among others Church Wood. [29] This advice was to lead the Church Commissioners to sell ancient woodland, whose character was changed when new owners began planting many conifers. This kind of advice was not of the kind that might have been given by the Nature Conservancy. At that time they were looking for a wood as a nature reserve in ancient woods next to Church Wood. They began by buying Crawford’s Rough and Mincing Wood next to the northern boundary of Church Wood in 1953. These two small woods became part of one the first woodland national nature reserves. This reserve was gradually over the years increased in size. Meanwhile however, the planting of chestnut nearby was continuing.
It seems that the policy of the Forestry Commission did not wholly agree with the thinking of some others interest in conservation. Among these people was not only the Nature Conservancy but also the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who in 1981 were able to buy 360 acres of the wood. In the following years more woodland was bought e.g. a further 80 acres in the following year. The RSPB regarded much of the wood as threatened and this purchase was intended to safeguard ‘a large part of the remaining woodland in the Blean area’. By 1987 it seems that more doubts were beginning to arise about the benefits claimed from a programme of rehabilitation and replacement of ancient woodland. Some such doubts had already arisen when the School of Continuing Education at the University of Kent at ...
...Canterbury proposed a course for adult students on the archaeology and ecology of the Blean. The course attracted students, and the annual reports were made and circulated until the closure of the school in 1996. Meanwhile the RSPB warden Michael Walter was able to let the public know not only of birds e.g. nightingales nesting in the wood, but also of activities in the wood generally not only through lectures but also through many reports in local newspapers. At this time local authorities began to consider what further needed to be done for the conservation of ancient woods and in particular Church Wood. Eventually in 1991 a consortium was formed to purchase those parts of Church Wood which had not already been bought by the RSPB as a nature reserve. These local authorities were the Kent County Council, the Canterbury City Council and the Swale District Council. Together with the RSPB Church Wood was to be managed as one unit by the RSPB’s warden Michael Walter, who had already been looking after their wood for over 20 years. In the years that followed much more of the Blean woods were purchased as nature reserves some of which also came to be managed together with Church Wood. When this happened it was to be most unlikely that ancient woodland would be grubbed out and that old oak coppice of which Hasted spoke over 200 years before, should be replaced. The history of Church Wood as revealed in the archives of Canterbury Cathedral stretching over 500 years may no doubt be taken into account in any future management plans of Church Wood.
References
[1]: W. Holmes and A. Wheaten (eds.), The Blean, (2002), Chapter V, plates 1 (A-D), fig. 4 (III to V) and fig.5.1.
[2]: R. Cross, ‘Broad Oak Water’ in Canterbury Archaeology 1991/1992 pp. 42-44.
[3]: O. Rackham, Woodlands, (Collins New Naturalist Series, 2006) p. 215.
[4]: Blean (note 1) pp. 23-24.
[5]: W. de G. Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum (1865-93) no. 141.
[6]: J. K. Wallenberg, Kentish Place-Names, (Uppsala, 1931) p. 63.
[7]: Rackham (note 3) p. 80
[8]: CCA: DCc/ChAnt/B/319.
[9]: W. Somner, Antiquities of Canterbury, (1703, Reprint by E. P Publishing) p. 37.
[10]: CCA: Assisa Scaccarii 4.
[11]: Calendar of Patent Rolls 1272-1281 p. 266.
[12]: Kent Archaeological Society Newsletter 2010 no. 86 pp. 14-15.
[13]: CCA: ChAnt/B/319.
[14]: Rackham (note 2) pp. 208-210.
[15]: Blean (note 1) pp. 62-63.
[16]: CCA: ChAnt/B/334.
[17]: Blean (note 1) p. 57 & 61.
[18]: R. A. L. Smith, The Canterbury Cathedral Priory, (1969) pp. 191-192.
[19]: CCA: Rural Economy 114.
[20]: CCA: U63/70313.
[21]: CCA: Map 205.
[22]: Somner (note 9) Appendix XVII p. 15.
[23]: CCA: Eastbridge MSS B9.
[24]: Blean (note 1) p. 57
[25]: CCA: Rural Economy 114.
[26]: Valor Ecclesiasticus (Record Commission, 1810).
[27]: Edward Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: 1st Edition Vol. 3 page 573 note (a).
[28]: Ecclesiastical Commissioners: Church Commissioners Records Section file no. 28417.
[29]: Blean (note 1) p. 41.