Ancient woodland

Ancient woodlands are very special woodlands. They make up less than 5% of the landscape of the North York Moors but we can never replace them once lost.

Ancient woodlands have been in existence for at least 400 years and some may be the surviving relics of the natural prehistoric forest that once covered the area – a span of some 8000 years. Even those which are just hundreds of years old have survived from a time when the landscape was far less intensively managed. Many plants, such as herb Paris or yellow archangel, for example, are rarely found outside ancient woods because they cannot spread across ‘hostile’ ground such as modern day farmland.

Ancient woods therefore have a special value because they may support a range of wildlife which may be as near to natural as woodland can be in this country. Shrubs, ground flora plants, fungi, invertebrates may have maintained themselves naturally. Ancient woods may also be one of the few places in today’s countryside where soils are undisturbed by man.

However, this does not mean that these woods are natural. It is likely that all woodland has been managed in some way in the past and man will have modified ancient woods considerably over the millennia. They are a living record of centuries of interaction between men and trees. Valuable timber from the standard trees and a huge range of products from the underwood, or coppice, often provided our ancestors with a reason to keep them wooded. Others may have survived by chance on ground that was not worth clearing for agriculture. Most are now valued landscape features in today’s National Park.

About half of our ancient woods are made up of trees which are native to the site – the so called ‘ancient semi-natural woodlands’. These have usually regenerated by regrowth from cut stumps after coppicing, or by the natural regeneration of native trees on the site. They are often considered to be the most valuable for biodiversity. Others may have been felled and replanted with more productive timber trees from abroad and this has had a major impact on the ecology of the woods. However, policies have changed and this has now stopped. The emphasis is moving towards restoring the original native woodland interest.

Further reading on ancient woodlands can be found in various reports at the Woodland Trust website.