The Wood for the Trees

by Richard Fortey

  The owners of Greys Court—and of the wood—were changing again. In 1724 the title to the manor had passed from the last of the Knollys line, by virtue of marriage, to Sir William Stapleton, Fourth Baronet. The new owner was descended from a William Stapleton who was largely a self-made man, and rose to become Governor General of the Leeward Islands in 1671. The first William grew wealthy through owning sugar plantations on four of these West Indian islands (St. Kitts, Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat). His money and status as First Baronet was achieved on the back of slavery, which was usual when British territories in the Caribbean were colonised and “developed.” He appears to have been a hardworking and trustworthy administrator by the standards of the time. It was not uncommon for descendants of moneymakers to remove themselves from the relentless toil and unhealthy life in the colonies, while still enjoying the fruits of the labours of people they did not care about. The Fourth Baronet was an absentee slave-owner who aspired to join the gentry of Oxfordshire. He tried, nonetheless, to extract as much money as he could from the portion of the family estates he still owned on Nevis. His manuscript letter-book is preserved in the Harvard Library,4 and shows William badgering his agent Tim Tyrell to get what he regarded as his due from the plantations. He was convinced that he was being cheated, that the expenses of running the plantation were too high, that the estate managers could not be trusted; but the daunting voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to check up on matters in person was out of the question. If anything, he was “running” the plantation on too few slaves, of whose conditions he knew little.5 In 1725 Tyrell had reported to William’s mother “a great many negroes that died from want of provisions as well as by sickness…ye caterpillars and worms have swept away a great many young canes for ye next year’s crop.”

  The unappealing picture of Sir William when acting by proxy in Nevis is reinforced by his reputation at home. He was elected to Parliament for Oxford unopposed in the general election of 1727, but as Dr. Stratford of Christ Church College remarked: “Our knighthood of the shire went a-begging…One Sir William Stapleton, a West Indian, formerly of Christ Church, a rake then and I hear he is still, is to be [the] man.” Once elected, he voted against the administration in every division on record, and made but one speech, in 1733, when he successfully opposed rum being imported from the North American colonies into Ireland because of the damage it might do to his plantation interests in the West Indies.

  William’s son Thomas was born at Greys Court in 1727, but was not resident there for some time after his father’s death in 1739 (it was let to the local parson). By the time he took up residence again at the age of twenty-four, he was well on his way to becoming something of a rake in his father’s mould. His cousin Francis Dashwood lived not many miles to the north across the hills at West Wycombe. Young Thomas enthusiastically joined the Medmenham Monks, aka the Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe, today usually recognised as the notorious Hellfire Club. The caves where this group of free-thinking libertines allegedly got up to all sorts of tricks are now a tourist attraction opposite Dashwood’s house next to the River Wye.6 Meetings of the “Friars” were held at Medmenham Abbey on the Thames between Henley and Marlow. Since no detailed minutes were kept, it is not clear whether the posthumous reputation of the club has been embellished, and it has even been suggested that the club had political intentions, but it is certain that its members were mightily against religion, and mightily for individual freedom. A Hogarth portrait of Dashwood as St. Francis portrays him reading an erotic novel where the Bible should be. Alcohol was liberally involved. The National Trust guide to Greys Court rather proudly tells readers that in 1762 “Thomas de Grey [a nickname used by Stapleton] and John of Henley consumed four bottles of port, two of claret and one of Lisbon at one sitting.” Claims that the “Friars” met in the dower house at Greys are consistent with a Latin inscription there that insists “Nothing is better than the bachelor life.” The Hellfire Club dotted its other venues with Latin tags.

  The irony of the Fifth Baronet as champion of individual liberty deriving some of his wealth from slavery does not have to be dwelt upon. A further irony is the use of de Grey as a nickname, since that too returns us to a previous age when near-slavery was part of the feudal system. Thomas Stapleton did promise to reform on his marriage in 1765 to Mary Fane, who hailed from yet another nearby Chiltern estate at Wormsley. By now, connections between the grander families were established all over the southern lobe of Oxfordshire and the adjacent counties. Thomas added a delightful floral plasterwork ceiling to the drawing room of the big house to welcome his new wife, and extended the east end of the building with a typical Georgian bay that would not look out of place in Mayfair. He also built the ha-ha that continues to enhance the view from the lawn. Quite soon, he ran short of money. He could not afford wholesale rebuilding, nor to construct grand parks like those that would be planned nearby. For our wood, it meant continuation of its old ways, and another escape from obliteration. But now it was connected to a world so much wider than in the time of the de Greys, when the estate was nearly self-sufficient; for the economy of which Grim’s Dyke Wood was a tiny part stretched halfway across the world to the Leeward Isles.

  On the other side of the Fair Mile, the Fawley Court estate was bought by William Freeman, who completely rebuilt the house in 1684, after the ruination it had suffered in the time of Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke. Freeman was another “West Indian,” born on St. Kitts in 1645, who made his fortune as a sugar merchant in London, from the proceeds of which he purchased his Henley estate. He also retained estates in Nevis, which he continued to manage as an absentee planter. His copybook shows him taking some interest in the welfare and nutrition of his slaves, even training them up for “trades” like cooperage. It is extraordinary that Stapletons and Freemans were neighbours both in England and on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Every quarter that could be seen from our wood at the end of the seventeenth century was partly underwritten by the profits from slavery.

  Fawley Court: engraving after a drawing by J. P. Neale, c. 1826.

  The Freemans who followed in the eighteenth century prospered greatly in business and politics. The grounds of Fawley Court and Henley Park came to be regarded by their wealthy owners as so much landscape that could be moulded to aesthetic ends. From their side of the Fair Mile, Lambridge Wood played a new role—it became a distant prospect, a component element of the view. John Freeman built a “tumulus” in Henley Park, under which he buried various bits and bobs of broken crockery and household items as a “time capsule” that might be discovered by future archaeologists.7 He was an early member of the Society of Antiquaries. His son Sambrooke Freeman was more ambitious, remodelling Fawley Court in the latest neoclassical style, and between 1764 and 1766 employing the most prestigious of landscape architects, Lancelot “Capability” Brown, to design the grounds. Sambrooke commissioned one of Henley’s famous landmarks, the classical “temple” on Temple Island in the middle of the river at what is now the start of the Regatta course. The folly was used for fishing and picnics; the sophisticated gentry who dined there admired the scenic qualities of river, hills and woods all around. Sambrooke Freeman appears to have considered much of the Henley area as an extension of his park. He purchased more land and manors as part of the project, including Phyllis Court on the north side of town.

  When at last in 1781 the ramshackle wooden bridge over the Thames was replaced, the aesthetic qualities of its stone successor were much discussed by the local grandees; after all, it was going to be an important part of their prospect. General Henry Seymour Conway (Commander in Chief of the Forces) himself attended the planning meetings, crossing over from the Berkshire side of the river where he owned Park Place, yet another grand house set in its own extensive landscaped grounds. It must be admitted that the “gentlemen” had excellent taste: the present bridge is a pleasing and elegant construction that sits wonderfully well just where it is. General Conway’s daughter Anne Damer de
signed the stone faces portraying Thamesis and Isis that still overlook the flowing waters. This Georgian elite could be enlightened enough to conceive of women as artists. The social structure of the Henley countryside was by now established: it was “posh.” The landscape was for the enjoyment of the wealthy. That exclusive image has stuck.

  Early-nineteenth-century view of Henley Bridge from the bottom of New Street, with a barge tied up at the wharf.

  THE EXPLOITATION OF WOODLAND continued at Stonor, where income from the estate still guaranteed the future of a family that had owned the same land in the Assendon Valley for centuries. The papers and records of the estate provide an unmatched picture of local silviculture. In the middle of the eighteenth century Thomas Stonor advised his uncle Talbot on how to manage the woods while he was absent. “The woodmen order the workmen what trees are fite to be felled and when a wood is felled sufficiently. They are to give notice to the steward that he or his Deputy take the tale [tally] thereof and immediately pay the workmen for the same.” Other obligations were to be discharged: “a woodfeast at my expense at Henley to encourage the chapmen [middlemen] to bring part of their money…within a month after midsummer.” There were instructions on how to prevent workmen stealing “shouldersticks,” but allowing them the odd “brush fagot.” Hedging and ditching were necessary to define areas of coppice, and to keep deer from the regenerating growth. William Strongharm’s disbursements in 1749 include £10.3s “for heging and diching”—could a better name be imagined for an estate employee than “Strongharm”?

  The account books prove that oak timber was more valuable than beech. Hundreds of loads of firewood embarked at Henley, where wharfage was paid. Bavins for bakers, town billets for hearths, long faggots for kilns; nothing was wasted. Tenants were allowed “woodboote,” “cart boote” and “hurdle boote”; the rights of “botes” dating from the Middle Ages still continued. There is a timeless quality about these account books, a sense of centuries recycled, and yet new markets were opening up. Wood for furniture is listed, as Daniel Defoe had noticed in Buckinghamshire. A new use for beech was in lining the canals that were feeding the nascent Industrial Revolution. There is no way of knowing how many of the practices up at Stonor were applied in Lambridge Wood, but it is certain that our woods too were managed for income for the Stapletons. In due season, men with names like Strongharm and skills to match tramped through the beech trees about their business.

  Stonor and the other Chiltern Hills estates could prosper sufficiently on a mixture of arable and, to a lesser extent, pastoral farming, combined with exploitation of their “semi-natural” ancient woods. A rather wonderful continuity was maintained. During the eighteenth century the relative proportion of wheat increased at the expense of other grains in response to demand from London.8 Methods of soil “improvement” and crop rotation, coupled with mechanical sowing and harvesting aids like those championed by Jethro Tull, led to more efficient farming and higher yields. Despite these changes, ancient patterns of land use continued in South Oxfordshire, while they progressively disappeared elsewhere. In the hills, such enclosure of fields as was necessary had already happened long ago.

  Meanwhile, on the flatter territory beyond the Chiltern scarp the countryside was undergoing a profound reorganisation. The Vale of Aylesbury and all the low ground towards Oxford was starting to resemble the pattern of generous fields, so often surrounded by thorn hedges, that we now think of as “typical” lowland English countryside. The medieval arrangement of open fields, strips and common land was inexorably transformed into the planned patchwork of fields that look so appealing when viewed from Watlington Hill, or from an aircraft taking a wide loop around London.9 “Inclosure Acts” were passed in Parliament that legitimised a much more efficient use of fertile land. The same Acts caused considerable grief to the ordinary folk in rural communities, as they were poorly compensated for the loss of their traditional rights. However, Chiltern Hills life continued in many ways much as it always had done. The mix of woods and fields around gentle dry valleys that so delighted Sir Sambrooke Freeman and his friends was an ancient landscape that persisted despite advances in agricultural techniques. Chiltern woods are survivors, including our own. The whole area is a “time capsule” more authentic than that devised by the antiquarian John Freeman at Fawley Court.

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  THE ROAD RUNNING PAST our wood over the Chiltern Hills to Nettlebed and Oxford has already figured several times in this history. If eighteenth-century country estates were affluent and ordered, the roads connecting them were appalling. Here is Robert Phillips’s description in 1736: “In the Summer the Roads are suffocated and smothered with Dust; and towards the Winter between wet and dry, there are deep Ruts full of Water with hard dry Ridges, which make it difficult for Passengers to cross by one another without overturning; and in the Winter they are all Mud, which rises, spues, and squeezes in the Ditches; so that the Ditches and Roads are full of Mud and Dirt all alike.”10 Negotiating hills was even worse. The old road up the hill beyond the Fair Mile to Bix at the top is still open, running past Cecil Roberts’s Pilgrim Cottage into a deep and dark holloway that was cut by countless carts as they laboured up the steep chalk slope. Drovers had probably followed the same route centuries earlier. Now the old track’s brooding presence is enhanced by neglect: tree roots twist out of the high banks, and hazels that should have been coppiced years ago lean out from both sides to almost meet across the middle, turning the road into a tunnel. Ivy runs amok, and dangles in festoons from overhanging branches. It is a place of deep memories, where the past might stage an ambush at any moment.

  Three hundred years ago the chance of ambush was real enough; travellers would have more to worry about than mud or a broken axle. As the road from Henley passed up into the woods there was cover and opportunity for robbers of all kinds: “If you beat a bush, ’tis odds you’ll start a thief,” as a local saying had it. Lybbe Powys of Hardwick House11 kept a diary detailing the almost relentless social whirl among the affluent families around eighteenth-century Henley—one long round of parties, plays and lavish suppers. In 1777 she had a narrow escape. “Miss Pratt and I thought ourselves amazingly lucky” to get away unharmed when the chaise behind theirs was robbed. “It would be silly to have lost one’s diamonds so totally unexpected; and diamonds it seems they came after. More in number than mine indeed.” On 19 December 1779, “Mr. Powys and Tom went to Bletchingdon Park to shoot, and were robbed by a highwayman only four miles from Henley on the Oxford road, just at three o’clock. We hear the poor man was drowned the week after, by trying to escape (after having robbed a carriage) through some water which was very deep. He behaved civilly, and seemed, as he said, greatly distress’d.” The robbery must have happened just beyond our wood, towards Nettlebed.

  The sad story of this particular crime was not unusual; some gentlemanly highwaymen were driven to desperate measures by desperate circumstances. Isaac Darkin, however, was of the swashbuckling kind that would have been played by Errol Flynn in an old-style Hollywood movie. His weakness was the fair sex, and he was an attractive rogue. As the Newgate Calendar said: “Darkin was so distinguished by the gracefulness of his person that he was the favourite of unthinking women wherever he came.” His adventures as a gentleman of the road led to an early deportation to Antigua, where he found army service not to his taste. By devious means he escaped back to England, where he took up his old ways with gusto. His undoing came about when “he stopped a gentleman named Gammon, near Nettlebed, and robbed him of his watch and money.” Darkin could very well have passed through our wood on the way to his last robbery, but on this occasion he could not wriggle out of responsibility for the crime. He was arrested while in bed with a “woman of the town.” He treated his death sentence insouciantly, and the Calendar tells us: “On the day of his execution his behaviour was remarkably intrepid; and at the place of his death he fitted the halter to his own neck.” He was twenty years old.

  Something ha
d to be done, both about the roads and about the footpads and highwaymen. Less than half a mile from Lambridge Wood at the top of the hill at Bix, an oddly angled single-storeyed white house stands adjacent to the highway. The windows at the front of the little building face both ways along the road, so the occupier could spy on who was coming and who was going. This tollhouse for the turnpike is a legacy of the road improvements that slowly transformed transport around Britain. Turnpike Trusts were established to improve sections of road—at a profit for the trustees. Tollhouses were quickly thrown up along many of the main routes; at least three survive around Henley. The practice of preventing passage of vehicles that had not paid their fees by putting a pikestaff across the road did not last long, but it did give us the word turnpike, which now applies to highways in the United States, which are about as different from the road from Henley to Wallingford by way of Nettlebed as could be imagined. I count driving down (or was it up?) the multifarious New Jersey Turnpike in rush hour as one of the more terrifying experiences in my life.