Our return to meetings in September saw Patrick Roberts, a former villager, come to talk about Hatfield Forest, based on texts from Dr Oliver Rackham’s book ‘The Last Forest – The story of Hatfield Forest’, published in 1989.
Dr Oliver Rackham was a distinguished Cambridge researcher in the Botany Department but his interests covered a wide spectrum, allowing his books to cover not only the trees and plants in an area but also the interaction with animals and human activities. Hatfield Forest is made up of Coppices and Plains. Eleven coppices survive out of seventeen originally whilst the Plains have grass for deer & cattle grazing and scattered trees that are pollarded, thus keeping the new growth out of reach of the deer. The Forest boundary is defined by a ring of farms and their houses but the area covered by Forestry Laws is much greater. Whilst popular teaching had that the King liked to hunt in his royal parks and forests, there is little written record of this happening, e.g. Henry III is only recorded as visiting Hatfield Forest once. The records do indicate that the king ordered professional hunters to supply the palace with venison, with Henry III ordering 334 carcases from Hatfield Forest over a 41 year reign and 125 deer as gifts to stock parks. Justice was another area with its own complex set of rules, regulations and bureaucratic appointments. Locally the Keeper of the Forest of Hatfield was a hereditary office belonging to the Barrington family. It is the records from the Eyre court, that met every 20 years or so to review the cases from the lower courts, that details of transgressions tried. The records from the lower courts do not survive. Hatfield Forest’s most famous tree was the Doodle Oak, one of England’s three stoutest oak trees, with a circumference of 60 feet in 1813. It died off after 1860’s but a bough remained into the 1900’s. The Broad Oak, after which the town was named by 1136, was likely to have been on or near Hatfield Heath, but no records of its size remain. The evening was an interesting delve into a very readable and informative book. Our next meeting is on 15 November at 7.30pm in the Hatfield Heath URC Church Hall, when Brian Wingate will talk about the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is 105 years old this year. Following the success of the exhibition held at Hatfield Heath for the Queen’s Platinum Anniversary, on October 8th our Vice Chairman Mark Ratcliff curated another exhibition in Hatfield Broad Oak to highlight that villages history. With an eclectic set of topics ranging from village fairs and Fire Fighting, artist Robert Lumley’s use of village buildings and people to illustrate Ladybird books in the 1960’s, Rev Galpin’s 600 ancient musical instruments that have ended up in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a tale of a Foundling who experienced the worst and best of foster care in the village before a career in the Royal Navy, there was much to hold your attention. The comments from some of the 80+ visitors would indicate this was very much the case. Well done Mark. Quentin Spear
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