Trees are remarkably resilient, often able to re-grow after storm damage, after browsing by animals or cutting by people. In Britain, this resilience has probably been exploited for as long as people have needed to use timber.
Hornbeam pollard marking the edge of woodland, photo by J Volynchook
Coppicing is one way to produce small timber and involves cutting trees to ground level, then allowing them to re-grow. In old hedges and woods across Norfolk, multi-stemmed hazel and ash trees are relics of when coppicing was commonplace. Pollarding is effectively “aerial coppicing”, with trees cut and re-cut just above head height, the tender new growth out of the reach of deer or cattle.
Coppice and pollard served a multitude of functions in times when the needs of a local community were met by materials close at hand: small timber for tool handles, holly for cattle fodder in winter and willow for baskets or hurdles. The distinctive, stumpy growth of pollards makes them good markers on the boundaries of farms or woods, whilst in fields they allowed dual-use of the land, producing timber above, with hay or animals below. On heaths and commons in Norfolk, pollards were a traditional feature of these wood-pasture systems.
Pollarding slows the growth rate of trees, granting them long lives, sometimes with hollow trunks to give the trees stability and strength, or dead limbs that the tree no longer needs to survive. The Major Oak in Sherwood forest is possibly a pollard and at up to 1,000 years old, as venerable as a cathedral; across Norfolk an number of ‘Kett’s Oaks’ exist, where people met before marching to join Kett’s Rebellion in 1549. Many of these are old pollards, already mature trees when the rebels gathered beneath. The age of these trees, their gnarled trunks, their hollows and soft, dead branches create a rich habitat for wildlife, like a miniature forest in one old tree.
Barn-owl, photo by Nick Appleton
Barn owls can nest in the larger crevices of pollards and woodpeckers feed on the staggering array of insects gaining sustenance from the crumbling heartwood and bark. The lesser stag beetle is frequently found making complex tunnels in the heartwood of the tree and several different species of crane fly breed in high up rot holes, often where water has gathered. Fungi, like the spectacular chicken-of-the-woods, find a home in rotting wood, bats roost and breed under flaking bark and at ground level, great crested newts find shelter in the decaying roots. An old tree might look scruffy, but stay a while and you will find it is full of life.
Autumn is a good time to start spotting pollards in the Norfolk landscape. As leaves fall, the curious stunted trunks are revealed, with oaks to be found in old wood pasture, field maples on wood edges and hornbeam pollards in the ancient hedges of South Norfolk.
Most pollards have not been managed for many decades now, their products no longer required, but restoring such trees is tricky, as cutting can be too great a shock for them. Re-pollarding old trees should only ever be carried out carefully and with expert advice.
An alternative approach is to create new pollards, giving old trees to future generations of people and wildlife. Pollarding requires cutting the tree above a point of strong growth; different species respond best to cutting at specific times of the year.
Creating a new pollard means acting long beyond our lifetimes and making a place where one day, someone can stand to watch bats on a summer evening, watch a barn owl come into roost, or simply marvel at a tree that is a direct link with the past.
Helen Baczkowska is conservation officer at Norfolk Wildlife Trust