‘Rewilding’ being a current buzzword people sometimes ask if it might be better to stop burning gorse on the hills and allow the tree cover to increase but while the argument might apply to other parts of Britain it doesn’t look as if the Quantocks have ever been forested on top, even back to the last ice age. Certainly in recent history they haven’t been much wooded.
Browsing old maps and photographs of the Quantocks it is striking how much more tree cover there is today than there was a hundred or so years ago. Part of it is the plantations of fir, spruce and larch, the result of 20th Century government programs to establish commercial forests for a domestic supply of timber, but also the natural growth of native oak and birch seems to have greatly increased on the margins of the heath, on tracksides and in the coombes.
One presumes that less intensive grazing has allowed the woodland to spread, and the woodland is no longer exploited as it once was for bark for tanning, for charcoal burning and for firewood.
A view of Ramscombe towards Great Wood, undated but presumably taken when the area was part of The Quantock Lodge Estate
A Victorian watercolour showing the unbroken view over treeless heath out towards the Bristol Channel from the area known as Great Bear with the steep side of Dowsborough Fort on the left. N ote the clump of Scots Pine which were possibly decorative planting. Small groups of pine can still be found in the oak woods
Ladies picnicing at Triscombe Stone, Wills Neck behind.
The Rectory at West Quantoxhead before the plantations were established on the hillside behind.