CleanSteve

By CleanSteve

Old beech trees in Buckholt Wood, near Birdlip

After a swift visit to the farm shop near Bisley I took a circuitous route to Gloucester using an old drove road to Birdlip along the top of the Cotswold escarpment. Birdlip was once a small Roman settlement where the significant (Roman) road from their main local town Corinium (now called Cirencester) dropped down the escarpment to their fortified bridging point of Sabrina (now named the River Severn) at Glevum, (now named Gloucester). 

Half a mile south of Birdlip, which now consists of just a few houses and a couple of farms, are ancient woodlands which are acknowledged to have been woodlands for more than five hundred years. They would have been managed for the production of timber, underwood, mast (the seed produce of beech and oak) and coppice. 

Buckholt Wood is one of these woodlands through which the drove road to Bisley passes. I think the original route was along the bank on the left of this picture, which you can see marked buy the tree on the far left, where a stone wall runs beside it being the more modern barrier to thew farmland beyond.

In the woodland there was some quarrying of limestone still marked by  deep pits. But the trees would have been consistently cut and allowed to regrow from their base called stools. I wanted to photograph this tree which is one of many now left completely alone to fall down and regrow in their own time. 

I was glad I went as the sunshine brought out the last of the colour in the leaves on the trees and in the newly forming litter which is so characteristic of these woods.

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