Felsham's farmland trees: Introduction

Although Felsham may not have the extensive woodland of neighbouring parishes such as Bradfield St George, Cockfield and Brettenham, it does possess many valuable trees of hedgerow and farmland. Hedgerows and trees provide a key refuge for wildlife in our intensively farmed parish and provide links for movement between gardens, meadows and woodland coppices. Even isolated trees in fields will support a variety of species but they are vulnerable to close ploughing. They may be particularly important for some bats, birds and insects. Dead trees are also valuable wildlife habitats.

How many farmland trees are there? How does the total compare with a hundred years ago? Do we need to plant more trees? These are all questions that the FELSHAM TREE GROUP hopes to answer. The initial task is to count all farmland trees in the parish using the km grid system on OS maps to organise the work. The second task is to estimate the number of farmland trees that grew in the parish over a 100 years ago. This can be done using the 1st edition of the OS map for Felsham surveyed in 1895. If you would like to help with this project please contact us via the Comments section.



Click to enlarge


Click to enlarge

Survey of farmland trees August 2010

A survey of farmland trees in a sample km square in the south east part of Felsham parish was carried out on 22 August 2010. The area surveyed is shown in the Google satellite picture.

Result: 140 trees

On the 1st edition of the OS map [1895]for the same area the number of distinct trees shown =499 trees
(Note: this result is almost certainly an underestimate because the OS did not record every farmland tree - partly because the scale of the maps precluded the depiction of more than one specimen per 15m or so of hedge line, and partly because the instructions given to the surveyors meant that trees with girths of less than 60 cm [diameter around 20 cm] were omitted anyway.)

Comparing these two results implies that over the last 115 years we have lost between two-thirds and three-quarters of our farmland trees!

However, there are three big provisos:
1. How accurate was the OS map for 1895?
2. The situation today is complicated by the fact that many hedges around meadows are over-grown. This "overgrowth" cannot be measured accurately: much depends on how many trees would be allowed as "standards" if the hedges were coppiced.
3. Is the km square of Felsham parish representative of the whole area?

An additional complication is that some hedgerow trees, such as maple trees, are clearly overgrown hedge plants. The most obvious [and oldest?] trees are oak and ash.

Felsham farmland trees survey

For the purposes of the survey only non-woodland trees of more than 10 cm in diameter will be counted.

Other proposed criteria:
Trees must stand proud of hedge and not part of "overgrowth" in the hedge line. See photo
Trees must stand adjacent to, or within, farmland. Garden trees are not part of the survey unless the gardens abut fields
Some species of trees should be recorded: oak, ash, poplar, willow, horse chestnut, crab apple

Aerial photography can supply useful details on situation of larger trees especially when taken early or late in day where sun casts long shadows. See this image of meadow trees just south west of Hill Farm:




The Woodland Trust