Jul 8, 2022
Langley Vale Wood is a really special place. Created as part of the Trust’s First World War Centenary Woods project, it’s a natural living legacy for the fallen that symbolises peace and hope. Memorials offer space to remember in an evocative and moving tribute. As well as these important reflections on the past, the site has a bright future. Previously an arable farm that became non-viable, nature is now thriving, with butterfly, bird and rare plant numbers all up.
Join site manager Guy Kent and volunteer David Hatcher to explore the ‘Regiment of Trees’, the ‘Witness’ memorial and Jutland Wood. Discover too how the site is being transformed into a peaceful oasis for people and nature and why some of these fields are internationally important.
Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk
Transcript
Voiceover: You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for
the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant
trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help
wildlife thrive.
Adam: Hello! I've got to start by telling you this. I have driven
to Langley Vale today and I've been driving through suburban
London, really not very much aware of my surroundings, and you come
up this hill and suddenly everything falls away and you burst out
onto the top of the hill and it's all sky and Epsom Downs. And the
racecourse is just ahead of you! And it dramatically changes. So,
it's quite, it's quite an entrance into the Langley Vale forest
area.
I've come to meet, well, a couple of people here. I’ve drawn up
next to a farm, I don’t really know where they are, but it gives me
a moment to tell you a little bit about the Langley Vale project
which is amazing.
It's a lovely thought behind it, because it is about honouring
those who died in the First World War, and of course, there are
many ways in which we honour and remember the people whose lives
were changed forever during that global conflict. There are war
memorials, headstones, poetry and paintings – and those man-made
accolades – they capture all the names, the dates, the emotions and
the places. And of course, they are vital in recording and
recounting the difficult and very harrowing experiences from that
conflict.
But, what this venture, I think, wanted to achieve with its First
World War Centenary Woods Project was a natural, living legacy for
the fallen. Flourishing places that symbolise peace and hope, as
well as remembering and marking the dreadful events of war, but
doing that in the shape of nature and hope for the future. Both now
and for many, many generations to come, providing havens for
wildlife and for people – and I'm one of those people – and so it’s
a great project, it's in its very early stages, but it’s a great
opportunity, I think, to have a look around today. So, oh! There's
two people wandering down the road there in shorts, I think they’re
hikers, I don’t think they are who I am seeing.
[Pause]
Adam: So, Guy you're the site manager here, just tell me a little
bit about the site.
Guy: So, we are on the North Downs here in Surrey. It's a huge
ridge of chalk that runs along southern England and down through
Kent, it pops under the channel and pops up again in France. And
this chalk ridge has got very special habitats on it in terms of
woodland, chalk grassland, and we're very thrilled here that we've
been able to buy, in 2014, a formerly intensively managed arable
farm that was actually not very productive. The soils are very thin
here on the hills the chalk with flints, so, pretty poor for
growing crops, and we were very lucky to buy it as part of our
First World War Centenary Woods project as England’s Centenary
Wood.
Adam: So, tell me a bit about the Centenary Woods part of this.
Guy: So, the idea of the project was to put a new woodland in each
country of the United Kingdom, that being Northern Ireland, Wales,
Scotland and England. This is the England site, and it is the
largest of the four sites. We've actually planted 170,000 trees
here. We did go through a full Environmental Impact Assessment and
this enabled us to find out where we could plant trees because
there are some special habitats here, and there is a national
character to the North Downs – national character being that much
of the woodland is planted on the high ground and much of the lower
land is actually open space, be that for arable use or pasture.
Adam: This is a Centenary Wood, so, is this just an ordinary
woodland planted in the name of those who died during the First
World War?
Guy: Yes. The difference is… one of the reasons this site was
selected was because we do actually have history here from the
First World War. We’ve got a number of memorials that I hope to
show you today.
One of which commemorates a day in January 1915. Lord Kitchener
inspected 20,000 troops here that had gathered and recently joined,
taking up the call to join his new army. So, there were many sorts
of civilians here in civilian clothing. They got up at 4am in the
morning, I’m told, to all assemble here for him arriving at 10am
with his equivalent French minister, and they inspected the troops
for a very short period of time because they had other troops to go
and inspect nearby. But many of those 20,000 actually then ended up
going over, obviously, over to the frontline and many were not to
return.
Adam: Shall we have a walk down? And what is there then to
commemorate that? Are there, are these just trees planted in memory
of that occasion, or have you got a sort of statue or
something?
Guy: Yeah, well, the Regiment of Trees as we’re just about to see,
as you go around the corner… An artist, we commissioned an artist
called Patrick Walls who has actually created some statues for us
replicating that event. So, we have men standing to attention
carved out of sandstone…
Adam: Wow, yes. Just turning around the corner here and you can see
this, yes, individual soldiers standing proud of a field of,
actually, white daisies just emerging made from that sandstone you
say?
Guy: Yes sandstone.
Adam: Sandstone soldiers. We are just walking up to them now, but
behind that is all, I mean, I'm assuming this is a statue, but a
statue made of trees.
Guy: Indeed, what you’re looking at there Adam is a memorial that
we've called Witness. It's actually created by an artist called
John Merrill and it is made up of parts of oak trees that have been
assembled and it's inspired by the World War One painter Paul Nash,
who was a cubist artist, and a particular painting of his called
‘Trees on the Downs’ and that's inspired by that. And we're very
lucky to have included within the memorial part of an oak out of
Wilfred Owen's garden.
Adam: Wow!
Guy: Yeah so it's constructed to look like trees that have been
obliterated, effectively, on the frontline, very evocative.
Adam: Yes, you get very evocative pictures of a single tree either,
you know, scarred black or sometimes actually still alive in a
field of chaos.
Guy: That's right yeah. And that's kind of trying to illustrate
that in our memorial here, and what you can do, the public can
actually walk through it. We've got a couple of benches within it,
actually, where people can sit and contemplate, and actually
written on the inside of some of these beams that go up are
actually excerpts from poems from First World War poets.
Adam: So, this first statue we’re actually standing by it’s sort of
transformed in the flow of the statue – so it comes out of the
ground as a sort of textured rock and as you go up 5 foot, 6 foot
the statue also transforms into a man, but this man is wearing a
suit and flat cap, so is a civilian.
Guy: Indeed, and that's kind of trying to illustrate the fact that
many of them are just joined up and a number of them haven't even
got their uniform yet.
Adam: So, let's move on, ahead of us, there’s this sort of city
gent on the left but looks a bit grander, but on the right, there
are obviously… these look like officers.
Guy: Yeah, the best, how I can best describe this is, that we've
actually got 12 statues here and they're actually sitting among
standard trees that were planted. So, we've got birch here, we've
got beech, we've got whitebeam and we've got maple. But, these
statues, the twelve of them, are in four lines. The guys at the
back have only just joined up and they haven't had their uniform
yet. And what the artist wanted to illustrate was the fact that all
classes joined up at the same time. So, we have a working-class guy
with his flat cap down the end there, we have our middle-class guy
here with his hat on, and then we have the upper classes as well –
it's meant to illustrate that everybody was in it together and
joined in.
Adam: I thought this was an officer, but I can see from his
insignia he's a corporal.
Guy: Indeed, and if you look at the statues Adam, as we go nearer
the front to where Kitchener would have inspected, they all put the
guys at the front who had all their webbing, all their uniform
already, and as we move back through the lines it was less and less
uniform and equipment.
Adam: It’s very evocative, I have to say, it’s much more emotional
than I thought it would be. Shall we go over to the sculpture?
Guy: Yes let’s.
Adam: So, this is called ‘Witness’.
Guy: So, this is ‘Witness’ yes, and this is… John Merrill created
this, he's got a yard in Wales where he works wood of this size. As
you can see, it's quite a structure.
Adam: So, yes as you say this size… So, I'm very bad at judging,
six… I am trying to think, how many six-foot men could you fit
under here? Six, twelve, I dunno thirty foot high? Was that
fair?
Guy: I tend to work in metres, I don’t know about you, but I'm
going to say about six metres at its highest point.
Adam: So, it’s made of, sort of, coming into it… it's… actually,
it's quite cathedral-like inside. Small but is that a fair
description?
Guy: Yeah, I think so.
Adam: *inaudible* Now, every second tree here has a line of First
World War poetry etched into it rather beautifully. Do you want to
read just a couple out for us?
Guy: Yes… so here we have one saying: “And lying in sheer I look
round at the corpses of the larches. Whom they slew to make
pit-props.” [editor: Afterwards by Margaret Postgate Cole]. “At
evening the autumn woodlands ring with deadly weapons. Over the
golden plains and lakes…” [editor: Grodek by Georg Trakl].
Adam: Amazing, it’s an amazing place. There are a couple of benches
here and these are…
Guy: These are the names of the poets. So, we have W Owen here, we
have E Thomas, J W Streets, M P Cole, amongst others.
Adam: Very moving, very moving. Okay, well it’s a big site isn’t
it, a big site. So, where are we going to go to next?
Guy: Well, we can walk through now Adam, we can see a new community
orchard that we planted in 2017.
Adam: So, we’ve come into, well a big part of, well there are a
huge number of trees here. So, is this the main planting area?
Guy: Yes, this is the main planting area. There are approximately
40,000 trees in here.
Adam: We’re quite near a lot of urban areas, but here they’ve all
disappeared, and well, the field goes down and dips up again. Is
that all Woodland Trust forest?
Guy: That’s right, what you can see ahead of us there is actually
the first planting that we did on this site in 2014, on that
hillside beyond.
Adam: 2014? So, eight, eight…
Guy: Eight years old.
Adam: [laughs] Thank you, yes mental maths took me a moment. So,
the reason I was doing that, is that they look like proper trees
for only eight years old.
Guy: It just shows you that obviously, you think that when we're
planting all these trees now – that none of us will perhaps be here
long enough to enjoy them when they’re mature trees, but I think
you can see from just by looking over there that that woodland is
eight years old and it's very much started to look like a
woodland.
Adam: Very much so, well, brilliant. Well, very aptly I can see,
starting to see poppies emerging in the fields amongst the trees.
They do have this sort of sense of gravestones, in a way, don’t
they? They’re sort of standing there in regimented rows amongst the
poppy fields.
So, where to now?
Guy: So, we’ll go to Jutland Wood, which is our memorial to the
Battle of Jutland.
Adam: The famous sea battle
Guy: Yes, it was the largest battle of the First World War which
raged over two days, the 31st of May to the 1st of June 1916. We're
going to meet our volunteer, lead volunteer, David Hatcher now,
who's been working with us on the site for a number of years, and
he's going to tell you about this memorial that we've got to the
Battle of Jutland.
Adam: Right, I mean, here it's, it's different because there are
these rather nice, actually, sculpted wooden stands. What are
these?
Guy: Yeah, these are… actually commemorate… we've got what we call
naval oaks. So, we've got a standard oak planted for each of the
ships that were lost in that particular battle and we've also,
between them, we've got these port holes that have been made by an
artist called Andrew Lapthorn, and if I can describe those to you,
they are sort of a nice piece, monolith of wood with a porthole in
the middle of…, a glass porthole, that indicates how many lives
were lost and it has the name of the ship.
Adam: So, this is HMS Sparrowhawk where six lives were lost, 84
survivors, but HMS Fortune next door, 67 lives lost, only ten
survivors, and it just goes on all the way through.
Guy: As you walk through the feature Adam, the actual lives lost
gets a bit more, bigger and bigger, and by the end it’s… there were
very few survivors on some of the ships that went down, and they
are illustrated on these nice portholes that commemorate that.
Adam: And this is all from the Battle of Jutland?
Guy: Battle of Jutland this is yeah.
Adam: And just at the end here HMS Queen Mary, 1,266 lives lost,
only 20 survivors from 1913. Very, very difficult.
[Walking]
Guy: This memorial, actually illustrates…, is by a lady called
Christine Charlesworth, and what we have here is a metal
representation of a sailor from 1916 in his uniform. And that faces
the woodland here, where you can see ancient semi natural woodland
that would have been here in 1916. So, this sailor is looking to
the past and our ancient woodland. If we look to the other side of
the sailor, we have a sailor from 2016 in his uniform and he’s
looking in the opposite direction, and he’s looking at our newly
planted trees – looking to the future.
Adam: Let’s walk through here, and at the end of this rather… I
mean it is very elegantly done but obviously sombre. But, at the
end here we’re going to meet David who’s your lead volunteer.
So, David, so you’re the lead volunteer for this site? And, I know
that’s, must be quite a responsibility because this is quite a
site!
David: That’s very flattering - I’m a lead volunteer - I have lots
of brilliant colleagues.
Adam: Really? So, how many of you are there here?
David: About seven lead volunteers, there are about one hundred
volunteers on the list.
Adam: And what do you actually do here?
David: Ah well it’s a whole range of different things. As you know
this was an intensively farmed arable site. And there were lots of
things like old fences and other debris. It was also used as a
shooting estate, so there were things left over from feeding
pheasants and what have you.
Adam: Right.
David: A lot of rubbish that all had to be cleared because it’s
open access land from the Woodland Trust, and we don’t want dogs
running into barbed wire fences and things like that.
Adam: And it’s different from, well I think, almost any other wood.
It has this reflection of World War One in it. What does that mean
to you?
David: Well, it actually means a lot to me personally, because I
was the first chairman of the Veteran’s Gateway. So, I had a
connection with the military, and it was brilliant for me to be
able to come and do something practical, rather than just sitting
at a desk, to honour our veterans.
Adam: And do you notice that people bring their families here who
have had grandfathers or great grandfathers who died in World War
One?
David: Yes, they do and in particular we have a memorial trail in
November, every year, and there’s a wreath where you can pick up a
little tag and write a name on it and pin it to this wreath, and
that honours one of your relatives or a friend, or somebody like
that, and families come, and children love writing the names of
their grandpa on and sticking it to the wreath.
Adam: And do you have a family connection here at all?
David: My father actually served in the, sorry, actually my
grandfather served at the Battle of Jutland.
Adam: Wow and what did he do there?
David: He was a chief petty officer on a battleship, and he
survived I am happy to say, and perhaps I would never have been
here had he not, and all of my family – my father, my mother, both
my grandfathers were all in the military.
Adam: And do you remember him talking to you about the Battle of
Jutland?
David: He didn't, but what he did have was, he had a ceremonial
sword which I loved, I loved playing with his ceremonial sword.
Adam: Gotcha. And you are still here to tell the tale!
[Laughter]
David: And so are all my relatives! [Laughter]
Adam: Yes, please don’t play with ceremonial swords! [Laughter]
That’s amazing. Of course, a lot of people don’t talk about those
times.
David: No.
Adam: Because it’s too traumatic, you know… as we’ve seen how many
people died here.
David: Yes.
Adam: Well look, it’s a relatively new woodland and we’re just
amongst, here in this bit, which commemorates Jutland, the trees
are really only, some of them, poking above their really protective
tubes. But what sort of changes have you seen in the last seven,
eight odd years or so since it’s been planted?
David: It's changed enormously. It's quite extraordinary to see how
some trees have really come on very well indeed, but also a lot of
wildflowers have been sown. We have to be very careful about which
we sow and where because it's also a very valuable natural
wildflower site, so we don't want them getting mixed up.
Adam: So, what's your favourite part of the site then?
David: Ah well my favourite part…, I'm an amateur naturalist, so
there’s the sort of dark and gloomy things that are very like
ancient woodland. We call them ancient semi-natural woodland. So
there is Great Hurst Wood which is one of the ancient
woodlands.
Adam: Here on this site?
David: Yes, on this site. It's just over there, but we have another
couple of areas that are really ancient semi-natural woodland, but
actually, I love it all. There's something for everybody: there’s
the skylarks that we can hear at the moment; the arable fields with
very rare plants in; the very rare fungi in the woods. Actually,
that line of trees that you can see behind you is something called
the Sheep Walk, and the Sheep Walk is so-called because they used
to drive sheep from all the way from Kent to markets in the west of
the county, and they've always had that shelterbelt there – it's
very narrow – so they've always had it there to protect the sheep
from the sun, or the weather, or whatever. And it's the most
natural bit of ancient woodland that there is, even though it's so
narrow and it's fascinating what you can find under there.
Adam: And I saw you brought some binoculars with you today. So, I
mean, what about sort of the birds and other animals that
presumably have flourished since this was planted?
David: It's getting a lot better. The Woodland Trust has a general
no chemicals and fertiliser policy and so as the soil returns to
its natural state then other things that were here before,
sometimes resting in the soil, are beginning to come up. We, I
think, we surveyed maybe 20 species of butterflies in the first
year… there are now over… 32! And there are only 56 different
species over the country, so we have a jolly good proportion! We
have two Red List birds at least here – skylarks and lapwings
nesting.
It's all getting better; it’s getting a lot better under new
management.
Adam: [chuckle] Fantastic! Well, it’s a real, a real joy to be here
today. Er so, we’re here in the Jutland woodland. Where, where are
we going to next do you think? Where's the best place…?
David: We’re going to have a look at one of the wonderful poppy
fields.
Adam: Right.
David: Because the poppies come up just as they did in Flanders
every summer and it's, it really is a sight to behold.
Adam: And is this peak poppy season?
David: It's just passed…
Adam: Just passed.
David: So, we hope they are still there and haven't been blown
away.
Adam: It would be typical if I have got here and all the poppies
have gone. Forget it, alright, let's go up there.
So, well this is quite something! So, we've turned into this other
field, and it is a field, well never in my life have I seen so many
poppies! Mainly red poppies, but then there are…, what are these
amongst them?
Guy: Yeah. So, what you can see is a number of species of poppies
here. The main one you can see, it's the red Flanders poppy.
Adam: And is this natural or planted because of the First World War
reference?
Guy: No, it's mostly…, we did supplement this with some…, we've
actually planted some of these poppy seeds, but most of them are
natural and it's a direct result of the fact that we continue to
cultivate the land. One of the most important conservation features
we have here on site is rare arable plants. Bizarrely, these plants
were once called arable weeds, but when intensification of farming
began in the mid-20th century, the timing of ploughing was changed,
the introduction of herbicides, all these things meant that these
so-called arable weeds actually became quite rare and they were
just hanging on to the edges of fields. What we've been able to do
here is to continue to cultivate the land sympathetically for these
plants and we now have much, much better arable plant assemblages
here. We have rare arable plants here now, that mean that some of
these fields are of national importance and a couple of them are of
international importance, but a by-product of cultivating the land
every year for these is that we get displays of poppies like this
every year.
Adam: And when you cultivate, you’re talking about cultivating the
land, you’re planting these poppies, or what does that mean?
Guy: No, it’s almost like replicating the fact…, it’s as if we're
going to plant a crop, so we actually plough the field and then we
roll it as if we're going to prepare a crop.
Adam: But you don't actually plant a crop.
Guy: No, no exactly. And then we leave it fallow and then naturally
these arable plants tend to actually populate these fields. Poppies
are incredibly nectar-rich, they're actually quite short-lived…
Some of you may know poppies that grow in your garden, and they
could be out in bloom one day and completely blown off their petals
the next day. They don't, like, last very long, but they do pack a
powerful punch for nectar, so definitely invertebrates… Because we
don't use chemicals here anymore which would have been used
constantly on this farm – and what that means is that many of these
arable plants, they require low fertility otherwise they get
out-competed by all the things you'd expect like nettles, docks and
thistles. So as the land improves so will hopefully arable plant
assemblages making them even more impressive than they already
are.
Adam: But actually, as the, as the soil improves isn't that a
problem for things like poppies ‘cause they'll get out-competed by
other plants which thrive better?
Guy: It's a fair point, but what is actually crucial – is that to
actually increase biodiversity in these fields it actually requires
low nutrients. In terms of a lot of these fields, as well, we have,
from years of chemical application, we have a lot of potassium, we
have a lot of magnesium in them, and they have a lot of phosphorus
too now. Magnesium and potassium tend to leach out of the soil so
they will improve naturally, phosphorus tends to bind the soil and
sticks around for a long time. So, we're trying to get these
chemicals down to acceptable levels to make them more attractive
for rare plants and therefore increasing biodiversity.
Adam: Well, it is, it is like a painting and I'm going to take a
photo and put it on my Twitter feed. I just, [gasp] so if anyone
wants to see that, head over there. But it is beautiful, properly
beautiful.
I mean, so we were walking by this extraordinary painting of a
poppy field to our right. It's a site which has been revolutionised
because it was all arable farming less than a decade ago. What has
that done for biodiversity here?
Guy: Well, as we can imagine these fields, it’s quite difficult to
imagine them as we walk through them now, but these would have all
been bare fields that were basically in crop production and there’s
clearly been an explosion of invertebrate activity here.
We've got increasing butterfly species every year, our bird numbers
are starting to go up, but also importantly we've got certain areas
where habitats are being allowed to develop. So, we have a former
arable field here that is now developing, it has been planted up
with hazel coppice in a system we call ‘coppice with standards’,
where we plant…
Adam: Coppice with standards?
Guy: Coppice with standards yeah.
Adam: Oo, well very grand!
Guy: It is! It’s an old forestry practice where they planted lots
of hazel trees that would have been worked and then periodically in
amongst them, there will be oak trees that would be allowed to grow
longer and then harvested at a later date.
What this has meant is that we've got long grass now that is
growing between these trees and that's making it much more
attractive for small mammals on site.
Adam: Like what? What sort of small mammals?
Guy: Things like voles, wood mice, field voles, these sort of
things that make sort of tracks and sort of tunnels within the
grass.
And what that has meant is, as we go up the food chain is, that
that's become more attractive now on the site for raptors. A nice
story from two years ago - we have a volunteer that works with us
who is a BTO bird ringer, and he sort of approached us to say
“you've got barn owls nearby and your site is starting to develop
nicely. How do you fancy putting up some raptor boxes to see if we
can attract them in?” So, which was great, and we managed…, the
local bird club donated some barn owl boxes, we put the barn owl
boxes up in this field we have just talked about – the hazel
coppice field – and the expert said “well they probably won't nest
in it this year. They'll come and have a look…” Anyway, we put it
up…, two months later… it was being used and we were able to ring
those three chicks that came from that and they've been breeding
ever since.
Adam: Wow, how amazing! Must be very heartening to be working on
the site which is growing like that so quickly.
Guy: It is, it's amazing and when you consider that we’re within
the M25, we’re very close to London, but we've got this site that
is growing and it's only going to get better as we manage it
sympathetically for the wildlife that it hosts.
Adam: We’re just coming round the bend and back to almost where we
started into this field of standing soldiers amongst the growing
trees, and the cathedral-like tree sculpture there which will take
us back to the beginning. So we’ve just done a little tour…
Guy: Yeah,
Adam: So, I dunno half an hour, 40 minutes or so. Presumably, we
skirted the edges of this…
Guy: You certainly have Adam! It’s a fraction of the site. We are
640 acres in size and we're just at the top part of it. This area
that we've largely walked around today is very much focused on
World War One and our memorials, but much of the rest of the site
is, actually, is quite a bit quieter, there are fewer people around
and the focus is definitely more on wildlife.
Adam: Yes, well, it has been an amazing trip, I have to say, I’ve
been to lots of different Woodland Trust woods all the way up the
country, to the far stretches of Scotland. I have to say I think
this is my favourite. It’s quite, quite a site! And the memorial is
done really tastefully and fits in with the landscape. I think this
is quite, quite a site for you to manage, it's quite a thing.
Guy: It’s incredible and we are just so proud of it and we just
can't wait to be able to open our car park and invite people from
further afield, and not just locals who get to enjoy it as is the
case at the moment.
Adam: Absolutely. Well look, thank you! It started this morning,
bright sun, it looked like I shouldn’t need to bring a coat then
all of a sudden, I thought “Oh my goodness”, we’re standing under a
completely black cloud but it has not rained, it is not raining,
we're in running distance of the car so…
Guy: Somebody's looking down on us Adam, at least for a couple of
hours.
Adam: They are indeed, well thank you very much!
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