Forest of Dean

Tennis rackets gets a bit busy.

Ash from the Forest of Dean.

Like, yeah.

What

In this episode, we reflect back with some new voices, and together ask what we have learned and what we still hope for.

I'm Elle McAllister, and I'm joined by Nick Adams, director of the Forestry Contracting Association and forest contractor based in the Forest of Dean, Iwan Lloyd Williams, a forester and trainer based in North Wales, Toby Allen, owner of Say It With Wood, a timber business in Herefordshire, and Chris Williams, CEO of the Royal Forestry Society and chair of the Wellbeing in Forestry group set up in 2024.

[gentle music] Nick, I want to start with you.

Last year you shared a lot of stories about colleagues you'd lost, conversations with those on the very edge, and realistically a lot of the harsh reality of what forestry can be like when under a lot of pressure.

I think the other thing I'm kind of proud of is we haven't made a mistake yet.

The things that we've produced, the animations, the Pint and Pint thing, it's been amazing.

Like, the fact that people turned up and wanted to talk, and the fact we got pretty well kicked out of a pub in Forest of Dean because we were there too late.

[laughs]

I can't remember what it was called.

Because there's this other place that's like a prison in the Forest of Dean.

No, it's not that.

But basically, it's not cool, really.

Nice.

Um, there's, um, an, Amy, really beautiful video of wild boar in the Forest of Dean, and it's just lovely seeing this trail of little piglets behind the mom, so.

Oh.

And I should...

Plans changed, so we decided to kind of meet halfway.

Um, which turned out we met up in the Forest of Dean.

Ever been? No, I hadn't either.

[laughs]

Uh, th- no, I think it's been, like, there's, like, there's a...

It's a resort-type thing now rather than the name of the...

So I've, I get, like, the Forest of Dean Golf Club.

That's what he sent me.

And I heard one say that he had five great trees standing together blown down, and beginning to lop them, one of them, as soon as the lops were cut off, did, by the weight of the root, rise again and fasten.

We have letters from the Forest of Dean that above a thousand oaks and as many beeches are blown down in one walk there, and letters from my father tell me of twenty pounds hurt done to us at Brampton.

This day in the news book I find that my Lord Buckhurst and his fellows have printed their case as they did give it in upon examination to a justice of peace, wherein they make themselves a very good tale, that they were in pursuit of thieves, and that they took this man for one of them and so killed him, and that he himself confessed it was the first time of his robbing, and that he did pay dearly for it, for he was a dead man.

But I doubt things will be proved otherwise, as they say.

At noon Mr. Creed came to me about business, and he and I walked as far as Lincoln’s Inn Fields together.

After a turn or two in the walks we parted, and I to my Lord Crew’s and dined with him, where I hear the courage of Sir H. Vane at his death is talked on everywhere as a miracle.

Thence to Somerset House to Sir J. Winter’s chamber by appointment, and met Mr. Pett, where he and I read over his last contract with the King for the forest of Dean, whereof I took notes because of this new one that he is now in making.

That done, he and I walked to Lillie’s the painter’s, where we saw among other rare things the Duchess of York, her whole body sitting in state in a chair in white satin, and another of the King that is not finished.

Nothing demonstrates this better than Rochester in 1215, when King John besieged the rebel garrison there for some seven weeks that autumn.

His miners, 13 men from the Forest of Dean, went under the Bailey Wall first and then under the southeast corner of the Great Keep.

On November 25th, the king sent a famous order for 40 pigs, specifying the kind not fit for eating, so their fat could fuel the fire under the props.

The corner of the keep came down, the defenders retreated behind the internal spine wall, and starvation finished the job on November 30th.