Historical maps are helping to find and protect Greater London's ancient trees. The evocative maps, showing details from towns, villages and countryside from 1843 to 1893, have been added to the Ancient Tree Hunt website, run by the Woodland Trust, the UK's leading woodland conservation charity.
To show the history behind today's landscape, the Ancient Tree Hunt teamed up with Landmark Information Group, home of the UK's largest digital archive with nearly a million historical Ordnance Survey maps from the 1840s. On the Ancient Tree Hunt website, these old maps are overlaid with the current road network so woods, copses, parkland, buildings and streets that existed in the past can be located.
While historical maps reveal the loss of ancient trees and woodland on the landscape, happily they can also be used to trace and record survivors. Ancient tree hunters can navigate their way around the UK as it was up to 160 years ago, just after the arrival of the railways. They are urged to look for surviving ancient trees on the boundaries of parks and estates, which may have shifted over time. Ancient trees - those with the saggiest, fattest trunks - are living relics, some are incredibly old. The Trust believes the UK has more of them than any other country in Northern Europe, but their locations are unknown, so it is asking members of the public to join the Ancient Tree Hunt, recording trees they find at www.ancienttreehunt.org.uk
One of Greater London's oldest trees is the Chandos, or Minchenden, oak, just off Waterfall Road in Southgate, North London - the location was opposite a private cricket ground, shown on the old maps. The tree is now in its own garden, which was opened by the Borough Council in 1934 as a garden of remembrance. The tree has a six metre girth and many bird holes and local children are convinced "good fairies" live inside!
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The Ancient Tree Hunt aims to record at least 100,000 surviving ancient trees throughout the UK by 2011. More than 4,000 ancient trees have been recorded and verified since the launch of the project six months ago
"These wonderful maps are helping us identify some of the best places to search for remaining ancient trees," says Nikki Williams, project manager for the Ancient Tree Hunt. "People joining the Ancient Tree Hunt can step back in time to see former landscapes of parks, gardens and tree-lined avenues - all strong clues to follow up to find surviving ancient trees as well as a fascinating glimpse of local history.
"As the trees get older, they develop holes, nooks and crannies providing perfect homes for insects, bats and birds, including rare and threatened species, so groups of ancient trees are extremely important wildlife habitats. The old maps show us exactly where larger concentrations of trees once stood," she said. "We can use this information to target searches for remaining clusters of ancient trees."
Richmond Crowhurst, Public Sector and Data Sales Manager of Landmark Information Group said: "This is one of the more unusual applications for our 1:10 560 scale digital maps, but we're delighted they are proving to be so useful in tracing surviving pieces of living history across the UK."
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