Introduction

‘Woodland Recollections’ is a project with its focus on oral history, with a variety of other associated materials (see the note below), to investigate the changing practices and cultures of woodland management in the Arnside – Silverdale AONB and South Lakeland, including a large area of the Lake District National Park. These woodlands are a unique and highly valued landscape feature of this area which contains a large number of ancient woodlands and many other wooded areas often within sites designated as SSSIs and/or nature reserves. The project, initially set up in October 2005 and re-launched in 2008, aims to show how current woodland designations and valued practices have emerged from the past and how they are represented, not only as products and designations, but also in names and stories.

Personal historical accounts collected from woodland practitioners, land agents, farmers, public agencies and local people have been recorded and archived. Many of the accounts relate to woodland practices like coppicing and woodcrafts and to timber production, they also trace the history of individual woodlands like Eaves Wood, Gait Barrows, or the woodlands of the Sizergh Estate. There are many reasons for undertaking this project. Primarily, this is a cultural landscape shaped over thousands of years and we believe that appreciation of this cultural heritage adds to the quality of life of the residents and visitor alike.

A NOTE ABOUT FILES:
Downloadable files are - Interview transcripts *.pdf; Audio - *.mp3; Video - *.mp4 (NB that audio and video files were produced under variable conditions are not, therefore, of equal quality) -- download of larger files may be slow, depending on your system and setup. File content remains the copyright of the original authors, the Woodland Recollections project and the Wood Education Programme Trust. Enquiries about the use of materials from this site should be made at Wood Education Programme Trust