The Pattern of Vegetation in the Vale of Pickering Area c. 1300 A. D.

Abstract

THE VEGETATION pattern of England has undergone radical alteration since the opening of the Neolithic period but dense oak forest is believed to have remained the dominant cover of the lowland until after the departure of the Romans.1 The arrival of the Anglo-Saxon settlers has generally been accepted as the beginning of widespread woodland clearance which continued into post-medieval times,2 probably with gradually decreasing intensity. However, as analysis of the Domesday Book has revealed, the English countryside was already beginning to assume an open look by the late years of the eleventh century.3 Such a discovery poses new questions concerning the subsequent appearance of the medieval landscape. The Domesday Survey was compiled in the early decades of Norman rule and represents a summary of land clearance effected by the close of the Anglo-Saxon period. However, the next three centuries were marked both by population increase and agricultural expansion,4 possibly continuing from the pre-Conquest years. This expansion may have been retarded in northern England (the population density of which increased greatly but remained consistently below that of the south throughout medieval times5) by punitive wasting under William the Conqueror and by devastative Scottish incursions of the eleventh century and later.6 The forces of growth and expansion undoubtedly exerted increasing pressure on existing woodland resources. This pressure, which was probably uneven over the countryside, seems unlikely to have been alleviated before the years of demographic and economic decline which followed the Black Death.7 In response to this pressure, the ratio of wooded to unwooded land probably underwent considerable alteration in the intervening period of almost 300 years. Indeed forces were already causing new reductions of woodland area in south-east England and possibly elsewhere during the actual years spanned by the Domesday Survey.8 No areally comprehensive survey comparable with the Domesday Book, however, exists in these early medieval centuries with which to test this hypothesis and other types of record must be relied upon to provide insight into the early medieval pattern of vegetation.