Alice Holt Forest - Archaeology and History

Archaeology and History

A few finds of Paleolithic tools indicate the use of the area by Old Stone Age hunters during previous inter-glacial periods, but the Forest as we know it originated in the Atlantic period: the warm, wet phase which followed the retreat of the last Ice Age in Britain, some 7000 years ago. Occasional Mesolithic flints show early hunter-gatherers utilised the Forest, and although there are a few Iron Age tumuli (burial mounds), the area seems to have been sparsely populated prior to the Roman period, on account of its unsuitability for farming.

Extensive kiln sites and associated claypits exist, which date from the Roman occupation of Britain. The local antiquary Major A.G. Wade undertook limited investigations in the 1930s and 40s. Major research was undertaken in the 1970s by the Alice Holt Survey Group, under the co-direction of Malcolm Lyne and Rosemary Jefferies. These indicated that the Forest and surrounding areas were one of the most important centres for the industrial-scale production of domestic ceramics in Roman Britannia, supplying up to 60% of all pottery found in excavations at Staines and London and being transported across south-east England throughout the period from AD60 to the early 5th century, when industrial pottery production ceased. Alice Holt gives its name to a particular diagnostic pottery style from the Romano-British period, Alice Holt Pottery, a coarse grey sandy ware .

The area was subject to Forest Law (together with nearby largely treeless Woolmer Forest) from the time of William the Conqueror and remained a Royal Forest thereafter.

The forests of Alice Holt and Woolmer, only separated by a narrow belt of cultivated and meadow land, were usually considered as one forest from at least medieval times, having been under the same administration from time immemorial and being managed by a single lord warden, and indeed were once known as the Royal Forest of Alice Holt and Woolmer.

Throughout the Middle Ages there are incidental documentary references to the deer (both red and fallow) and timber in the joint forest, but the first detailed survey was made in 1635, and this showed their total area to be 15,493 acres (6,270 ha); this was said to have been much the same as in the year 1300, though in earlier times the forest may have been considerably larger. Little had changed when a further survey was made in 1790, although by then 6,799 acres (2,751 ha) were privately owned.

From the 1770s onwards Alice Holt and Woolmer forests were required to devote themselves primarily to producing oak for the Royal Navy, though they had been neglected and their trees were past their prime. The Lieutenant of the Forest was dismissed in 1811 and four years later the Office of Woods initiated a massive re-planting programme on 1,600 acres (650 ha) of Alice Holt, all oaks. Records of traffic in oak timber during the Napoleonic wars indicate that the logs were taken not to Portsmouth, the nearest port, but 10 miles (16 km) overland to the River Wey at Godalming, Surrey, whence they were shipped or floated down to the Thames dockyards in London.

Many of the oaks planted in 1815 were still there 100 years later, but many were then felled during World War I. Replacement of the oaks by conifers took place between the two world wars, and accelerated in World War II. When the Forestry Commission took over Alice Holt, Woolmer and other Crown forests in 1924, Alice Holt had become much reduced in extent, covering 2,142 acres (867 ha), and Woolmer was slightly smaller.

On 31 March 2010 Alice Holt Forest, along with the rest of the western Weald, became part of the South Downs National Park.

Recently Alice Holt oak has been used to build a replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.