49 - Sherwood : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

The agricultural land and woodlands of the Southern Magnesian Limestone, and beyond that the Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire Coalfield, lie to the west of Sherwood where the legacy of the coal mining industry is a strong physical and cultural link throughout.

The open arable land of the Trent and Belvoir Vales lie to the east. The narrow river valleys and corridors of riparian vegetation form links between these character areas. Areas alongside these rivers provide flood storage. This has an influence on flooding downstream in the Humberhead Levels which lie to the north and the Trent Valley Washlands to the south.

The sandstone aquifer which underlies the majority of the Sherwood NCA and the adjoining NCAs provides functional inks between these areas and the population of the East Midlands region whose water the aquifer supplies.

Sherwood has a significantly more wooded and heathy character than adjoining character areas, due historically to the poor agricultural potential of the surface sandstone. In the past, Sherwood Forest would have covered a much larger area and extended into neighbouring NCAs, such as Trent and Belvoir Vales NCA, but the area of woodland is now much reduced. Despite some similarities, the landscape character differentiations with neighbouring areas are well defined.

Views between Sherwood and neighbouring character areas are limited because of the rolling landform and the woodland. From within Sherwood the rolling landform means there are views of varying distance within the character area, frequently shaped by wooded skylines or the heads of dry valleys. A high level of connection to surrounding character areas, for the movement of animals and plants, is provided through Sherwood’s woodland and farmland networks.

Distinct areas

• Historic heartlands of Sherwood Forest.
• Parklands and estates of The Dukeries.

The Sherwood today

The area largely coincides with an outcrop of the Permo-Triassic Sherwood Sandstone Group, comprising the Nottingham Castle and Permian Lenton Sandstone Formations. This underlying geology forms a belt of low, rolling hills and has strongly influenced the natural and cultural evolution of the landscape. Some sandstone outcrops are prominent in the landscape, the most famous being Castle Rock in Nottingham, and artificial caves are also distinctive features of this area. The sandstone is underlain at depth by the Coal Measures of Carboniferous age (which form the concealed coalfields), and also by impervious Permian marl, which forms the base of a major aquifer.

Sherwood is well wooded with a varied patchwork of broadleaved and coniferous woodland. The wood pasture in Sherwood Forest National Nature Reserve (NNR) contains more than a thousand ancient oaks, most of which are known to be over 500 years old. The most famous of these, the Major Oak, may be nearly twice that age. Clearings in the coniferous woodland provide habitats for nationally significant populations of woodlark and nightjar, while the wood pasture has been designated for its internationally significant old acidophilous oak woodland and the invertebrate assemblages which are associated with its deadwood and veteran trees. “Sherwood Forest” also has a strong cultural history and is internationally renowned as the home of Robin Hood, the heroic outlaw of English folklore.

Large-scale planting of conifers occurred during the first half of the 20th century and provide a strong contrast to native woodland elsewhere. There is generally less woodland cover in the north than in other places. Views throughout the area are often bounded by woodland on all sides, giving a sense of enclosure and tranquillity.

Often found within the wood pasture, the lowland heathland and acid grassland mosaic is a distinctive characteristic of this landscape. Open tracts of dry sandy heathland, dominated by heather, gorse and bracken, were once widespread across the great Forest of Sherwood, and remain in some areas such as Sherwood National Nature Reserve and Birklands and Bilhaugh Special Area of Conservation (SAC). The habitats are home to a wide variety of species, including one of the few remaining UK populations of the Hazel Pot Beetle.

The sandy soils of the Sherwood Sandstone have historically been poorly suited to arable farming, but modern farming methods have overcome many of these problems and the land is now intensively farmed, predominantly for root crops. Livestock rearing is evident, although mainly confined to pigs and poultry. Parliamentary enclosure field patterns remain the framework of the agricultural landscape, and medium to large rectilinear fields, divided by low treeless hawthorn hedges, are characteristic, especially to the north.

Rivers are not common due to the highly permeable nature of the bedrock and those that do flow across the landscape flow in narrow alluvial corridors with occasional wetland marshy flats. The large houses in the area dammed their rivers to create ornamental lakes in their grounds and narrow artificial lakes are now a feature of the landscape, such as at Clumber, Welbeck and Newstead.

Settlement throughout Sherwood was traditionally scattered villages and farmsteads. Many of these small farming settlements expanded during the last century to become mining villages. There is a variety of traditional building materials in the area. Red brick and pantiles are frequent in the east, limestone in the west, and older buildings are generally local sandstone with pantile roofs. In the area known as ‘The Dukeries’ (large estates originally owned by English Dukes), there are nucleated estate villages and some isolated farmsteads, but the large ducal houses define the area and include Welbeck Abbey, Thoresby Hall, Rufford Abbey and Newstead Abbey. Newstead Abbey was the family home of the poet, Lord Byron.

The coal industry has played a significant role in shaping the area and its decline has left behind a legacy of former colliery sites and spoil tips. Many of these have been reclaimed to agriculture, heathland, woodland, business, community and amenity uses and some mining relics are now landmark features.

The landscape through time

The area is characterised by a north-south ridge of Triassic Sherwood Sandstone. This sandstone was deposited by rivers that flowed northwards across the area. During the Quaternary geological period the area was periodically glaciated leaving deposits of clays, sands and gravels capping hills and filling valleys.

From the earliest periods of occupation the constraints imposed by the porosity and fragility of the soils have been a major influence on settlement and land use. There is limited evidence of occupation during most of the late prehistoric period, but there is some evidence of iron-age/Romano-British settlements and field systems.

During the Roman period, archaeological evidence indicates that much of the woodland was cleared, although substantial stands may have remained in the south, based on the density of crop mark evidence. In the post Roman period the area became largely depopulated allowing much of the woodland to regenerate. However by 1086 the area is recorded as wood pasture, and is likely to have been managed by the larger settlements on the margins of the area.

The Norman kings brought the area under Forest Law and by 1300 there was little land that was not linked to the economies of royal or monastic estates or of local manors and communities. Throughout the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, documentary references indicate a process of continual piecemeal enclosure, assarting (woodland clearance under licence from the lord) and illegal encroachment by both individuals and whole communities. It was during these medieval times that Robin Hood is said to have lived in Sherwood. Thoroton’s history of Nottinghamshire (written in 1677) describes Sherwood at that time as a place “where deer sported in groups unnumbered… where Robin Hood and his gay followers performed their many and long renowned exploits… Here the spreading oak stood for ages a grand monument of embellished nature, a shade and covert for the birds and beasts that inhabited this”, before going on to say, “all is now divided and subdivided by stumpy fences… On the forest I observed many capital farmhouses, and the adjoining fields, rich in a plentiful crop of corn”. This reference indicates that people have always valued the area’s woodland, as well as informing us of how the landscape changed during those centuries.

Sanderson’s Map of 1835 illustrates the habitat mosaic that formed Sherwood Forest as an area much greater than the present day NCA boundaries. The Forest was gradually eroded and by the 16th century only the core woods of the surviving royal estates and parks remained. Some attempts at the wider improvement of commons were made during the 16th century but the forest remained largely heath.

The dissolution of the monasteries was a particularly significant stage in the evolution of the landscape, as the transfer of the monastic estates was limited to a few powerful and influential families. Their wealth underpinned the establishment of a number of great country houses and their associated parklands and estates in the ‘The Dukeries’. This chain of parks continues to contribute to the sense of place in Sherwood today. Architecturally distinct estate farms are striking features in these areas. Other less fertile areas were taken in to the estates, providing shooting cover, timber and managed fuel supplies for local industry. Together with the enclosure of arable land, the physical framework of this landscape was established by the early 19th century and has been largely maintained to the present.

Formal enclosure arrived in the 18th and 19th centuries, primarily to allow for improved crop rotation and closer stock management. Regular and irregular geometric field patterns, the products of Georgian and early Victorian planned enclosure, were widespread across the Sherwood area, and remain a significant historical characteristic. Medieval open field patterns rarely existed in Sherwood except around the northern fringes of Mansfield, and to the north and north-west of Worksop, and there are some rare surviving areas of ridge and furrow such as at Blidworth.

The porous and nutrient poor sandy soils continued to be a constraint to viable agricultural production and within the last century there have been periods of decline. However, modern farming methods have facilitated improvement and the soil is now able to support extensive areas of arable land with cropping throughout the year.

The coal mining industry has also had a major effect on the Sherwood landscape. The sinking of deep mines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries resulted in the establishment of colliery sites, pit heads, spoil heaps and the adjacent mining settlements, many absorbing smaller existing settlements.

The network of railways and roads also added to the transformation of a once simple wood pasture and agrarian landscape to one with an industrial focus. Although the coal mining industry has declined, the legacy of this period is still evident. Some industrial relics in the landscape have now become landmark features including The Winding Engine House and Dynamo House at Bestwood.

Change continues to shape the landscape and the decline of the coal mining industry has lead to the closure of the majority of sites and their subsequent restoration to farmland. The artificial mounds now formed with spoil from the pit heaps are starting to become better integrated into the rolling, well-wooded landscape.

The regular field pattern of flailed thorn hedgerows associated with the enclosure period has since been altered, in places, by more intensive farming practises during the late 20th century. However, the uptake of agri-environment schemes by farmers in recent years has made a significant contribution to the restoration of the landscape, also bringing benefits to wildlife into the future. Field boundary management has generally lead to thicker and taller hedgerows, new areas of woodland have been planted and the general shift from coniferous to broadleaved woodland has continued. Areas of new heathland have also been created and heathland vegetation and acid grassland is becoming established across previously restored land on some of the old colliery sites. In places, plantations of short rotation coppice, established to supply a source of renewable energy, are beginning to be established in the landscape. Recent trends of urban expansion provide both challenges and opportunities.