What is a forest'? The term, as we know it today, denotes an extensive area of tree covered land. This has not always been the case and the following summary gives some of the historical and etymological uses of the word "forest".

Many dictionaries define "forest" as a derivative of the Latin word foris, meaning out of doors or the unenclosed land. Through the ages the word seems to have changed somewhat to :

Latin - foris. Middle Latin - forestis. Anglo Latin - foresta, forestum.

J.C. Cox, a great Victorian historian, in "The Royal Forests of England", notes the alternative that "forest" may be derived from the Welsh word gores or gorest, meaning waste or waste ground, from which we also have the words "gorse" and "furze".

Cox states additionally that "In Norman, Plantagenet and early Tudor days a forest was a portion of territory, consisting of extensive waste lands and including a certain amount of both woodland and pasture, circumscribed by defined metes and bounds, within which the right of hunting was reserved exclusively to the King, and which was subject to a special code of laws administered by local as well as central ministers".

The Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary defines Forest Land as land which "abounds with grass and is the only ground which is fit to graze". According to the local distinction the grass is the delimiting character and not the trees i.e. land distinct from brush or scrub, which are not fit for grazing.

In 1659, a reference to a forest as a "wild uncultivated place" is recorded. Other definitions are "Deer Park whether with or without trees". (Shipley was a deer park as early as 1350 and remnants of a "deer leap", with a fence and ditch on the inner side, can still be found. An exchange of land took place in 1570 between Strelley, owner of Shipley, and Sacheverell, owner of Kidsley Park, so that the latter could better construct a deer leap.

In Scotland, it was recognised as a tract of usually treeless upland reserved for deer and Boswell, visiting Skye in 1773, noted that the Cuillins made part of a great range for deer which, though it had no trees, was called a forest. Much later, in 1872, an English traveller to the Highlands expressed curiosity over a local deer-forest which had no trees. A Highlander is quoted as replying "Wha ever heard o trees in a forest" (Scottish Dictionary, Ilkeston Library).

However, Deering, in his 1751 treatise on "The History of Nottingham", wrote on Sherwood Forest. It was "one of the ancient ones, considerably older than the conquest " and was divided into "the high-forest, and thorny-woods, or the chace". He goes on "That part called the high forest was anciently most richly provided with stately oaks... ....quite free from any thorns or underwooods, where....... nothing is to be seen but ove's and boves" (sheep and cattle) "grazing upon a green carpet, without so much as a bush for a nightingale to rest in". Later he states, "the red-deer entirely keep in the high-forest", whereas the King's fallow deer were in the thorny-wood. Originally the -forest laws under the Norman Kings were very burdensome to their subjects but under King John and his son Henry III the boundaries of Sherwood were determined and the lands outside the boundaries were disforested. A footnote gives Manwood's difference of a chace from a forest which amounts to the chace having no especial legal properties and no officers such as a forest has "viz, verderers, foresters, regarders or registers".

Webster's Dictionary defines the origins of "forest" as Middle English, from Old French, from Middle Latin (forestis), from Latin (foris). Other words derived from foris are "foreign" and the French "forêt" = forest.

Further research could lead on to Forest Law and Deer Parks.

References

Oxford English Dictionary and Supplements (alternatively and less confusing, the Shorter/Concise Oxford Dictionaries).
Origins, E. Partridge (etymology).
Scottish Dictionary.
Royal forests of England, J.C. Cox, Methuen, 1905.

next Chapter

Return to Cover Page

Comments to dr.brian.taylor@ntlworld.com

href="/shipley/studhistory3.htm"