ENGLAND'S TREES: A PERSONAL JOURNEY THROUGH OUR ANCIENT FORESTS
By Glynn Burrows

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

So said Joyce Kilmer in his poem "Trees".

We all use trees in different ways during our lives, and think about them just as differently too. I was just thinking about what my first thought is when anyone mentions the word "tree", and so many things sprang to mind, making me realise just how important the tree really is.

One of my earliest memories involves me climbing a small tree in my aunt's garden and falling out into a bed of stinging nettles. Another picture from my early childhood is of us sitting under a tree, enjoying a packed lunch of tomato sandwiches, while my Mum was working, picking potatoes.

Later in life, trees became shelter from the weather — wind, rain or sun — and one particular tree at my primary school was "home" if we were playing catch. Funnily enough, I was at my old school a few years ago, and one of the first things I looked for was that tree, now sadly gone. The loss of a tree brings about an emotion I don't feel when a shrub or other plant dies; when we told my Mum we needed to prune a willow tree (because it was encroaching into the drains), she was most upset, because my Grandmother had planted it. Trees are real connections to the past, as they live so long, outliving several generations!

It is believed that hugging a tree is surprisingly satisfying, and one family group I took to Sandringham a few years ago decided they would encircle the biggest tree we could find. Thirteen of them held hands around the massive oak tree, and they could only just do it because the tree was so big.

In the UK, we have so many ancient forests, as many landowners in the past had parks which they laid out for various "sporting pursuits". One of these "sports" was deer hunting, and they needed large woodlands for the deer to live in. Some of these deer parks can still be found today and, as many of them were established in medieval times, they contain hundreds of very ancient trees.

Our preserved deer parks are a managed landscape, created by centuries of human intervention. Many of the traditional woodland techniques of coppicing, pollarding and grazing are still used, and this helps to keep nature thriving. One in particular, which belongs to The National Trust, is home to over 3,500 species of wildlife, some of which are rare and threatened, and the ancient woodland provides the perfect habitat for rare insects, lichens and fungi.

Apart from deer parks, we also have many other forests and woods. Many of these have reduced in size over the centuries, but they all contain ancient examples of our native tree species, as well as the younger trees which will eventually inherit their spaces.

Most of these forests and woods are managed, and many are on the list of The Woodland Trust, which helps owners preserve the character of the area and maintain the flora and fauna surrounding the trees.

It is very important to preserve our native species and encourage them to re-establish, as some are at risk, and many of our insects and birds depend on these trees, having evolved alongside them over the years.

Talking about the insects and birds being dependent on the trees, many of these magnificent plants provide us with food too. The tree I fell out of into the stinging nettles was an apple tree, and the apples were always a welcome snack.

Just look at the number of trees which provide us with food: apple, pear, plum, cherry, lemon, orange, grapefruit, lime, date, fig, olive, cocoa, coconut, and all types of nut — and, of course, the things trees give us, such as maple syrup, cinnamon, cloves, and more. The nectar also gives us honey, thanks to the bees, and smoke from burning wood has long helped us preserve food too.

Wood has been one of our main sources of heat since we lived in caves, and trees have provided us with tools for nearly as long. Wood has also provided us with shelter, and the development of carpentry has meant that wood still makes up a very large proportion of the houses we live in.

Paper is made from wood pulp, so, up to fairly recently, all our £ notes were made from trees too (they've since moved to polymer). Interestingly, US dollar bills have never actually been made from wood pulp — they're woven from a cotton and linen blend, which is why they survive so much better than ordinary paper if they go through the wash by mistake! Much of our furniture relies on this amazing material too, and many of us would have nothing to sit on or at, if it weren't for the tree.

So, bringing it back to what you might see on a visit to England if you wanted to celebrate the tree — here's where I'd take you.

Our first stop could take in two ancient forests: Hatfield Forest, managed by The National Trust, and Epping Forest, whose history is thought to stretch back to Neolithic times and which is cared for by the City of London Corporation. There, we can see trees by the thousand, and enjoy looking for the other flora and, of course, the fauna that live alongside them. Depending on the depth of interest in the forests themselves, we can easily spend two days exploring.

Moving on, we go to Lavenham. Not to see trees as such, but to see what the medieval people did with the wood. Lavenham is full of buildings which show off the expertise and skill of the carpenters of those times, and we can spend a day just looking at the carvings and joints used to construct buildings in the dim and distant past.

On our way up to Norfolk, we visit a very modern forest at Thetford. This massive forest was established in 1922. After the First World War, the government realised how many trees Britain had lost to the demands of war, and, with a number of large estates running into financial difficulty at the same time, it was able to buy up large swathes of this poor-quality sandy land around Thetford.

The area is farmed like any other crop, and it has also become an important area for recreation, with cycle hire, adventure play areas, walking trails, outdoor concerts, theatre and entertainment. It is also home to a high wire adventure course. As with any other forest, wildlife is a massive draw for visitors, especially the birders, who come from miles away to catch a glimpse of the rare birds which have made this area their home.

Looking at the various uses of the tree, we visit a museum which still smells of smoke. It is an old curing works, where we learn how herrings were smoked and turned into kippers. Although not directly connected to trees, if you are brave, we can visit a local beekeeper and see how bees are some of the most amazing creatures on the planet. You even get to sample some honey.

On another day, we move up to Nottingham to visit one of the most famous forests in the world: Sherwood Forest. The forest covers 375 hectares, and it is most famous for the ancient oaks that abound across the Sherwood landscape — almost 1,000 of them, making this one of the best places to find these trees anywhere in Europe. All of this, and the fact that it's one of the best surviving examples of oak-birch woodland in the UK, makes Sherwood a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC).

Sherwood's most famous tree was the Major Oak — believed to be somewhere between 800 and 1,200 years old, and a visitor attraction for well over a century. Sadly, the Major Oak died in June 2026 after failing to put out leaves that spring; the RSPB, who manage the site, have chosen to leave the tree standing, where it will continue to shelter fungi, insects, birds and bats for years to come. It is still very much worth the visit, even in its new role as a monument rather than a living giant.

After visiting the Major Oak, it's back to London ready for the flight home, but first, time for a visit to Runnymede, the place where one of the most important documents in history was agreed, and a visit to Windsor Castle, the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world.

I will end as I started, with two lines from Joyce Kilmer:

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

As the founder of Norfolk Tours, Glynn Burrows creates immersive, custom journeys through the heart of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. He also specializes in helping his clients trace their English ancestry and to visit historic familial sites. Learn more at https://www.englishconnection.uk/

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