Alice Holt Forest - Geology and Ecology

Geology and Ecology

The Forest is situated in the western Weald. It lies in the Gault clay vale that separates the chalk ridge which runs between Farnham and Alton from the malmstone (Greensand) hills or "hangers" (from the Old English hangra, wood on a steep slope) around Binsted. It occupies a low plateau with steeply sloping edges where deposits of stony Pleistocene drift, the remnants of ancient pre-glacial river terrace of the "Proto-Wey", overlie the heavy, wet Gault.

Alice Holt Forest was noted for the oak woodlands that grew on its thick Gault clay. In the 18th century the celebrated naturalist, Gilbert White, who lived nearby at Selborne, contrasted Alice Holt with the adjacent Woolmer Forest. He noted 'Though these two forests are only parted by a narrow range of enclosures, yet no two soils can be more different; for the Holt consists of a strong loam, of a miry nature, carrying a good turf, and abounding with oaks that grow to be large timber; while Woolmer is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren waste', consisting 'entirely of sand covered with heath and fern...without having one standing tree in the whole extent'.

The forest is now mainly planted with conifers. According to the Forestry Commission, Alice Holt Forest Park today covers 851 hectares (2,100 acres) of mainly Corsican pine but approximately 140 hectares (350 acres) of oak, planted in 1815, still remain. Some broad-leaved species have also been reintroduced as part of a regeneration programme.