Agricultural History Review, Volume 59 Part 2 (2011), p. 328

Both author and publisher should be congratulated on the appearance of this handsome book. Solid and beautifully printed, and illustrated with clear and relevant figures, it is a pleasure to handle. Straightforward in style, encyclopaedic and authoritative in content, consistent in quality, and shot through with a vivid aesthetic appreciation of trees, it is a pleasure to read.

The book is divided into three sections. The first takes as its focus the symbolism of trees in pre-Christian and Christian contexts, in Anglo-Saxon and other contemporary literature, and finally as an element in national consciousness. The second section locates trees and woodland in the Anglo-Saxon landscape, discussing the nature and distribution of Anglo-Saxon woodland, the evidence for woodland management in early charters, and the use of individual trees or groups of trees in boundaries, assembly places and significant locations. The last section deals with trees across three ecological settings, wood–pasture and ‘ancient’ countryside, damp places, and open or planned landscapes. There is a critical evaluation of early medieval sources, an extensive bibliography and a sound index.

The volume is valuable in a number of ways. It is a compendium of primary material drawn from an impressive range of sources: place-names and Anglo-Saxon charters, early medieval literature, archaeological and landscape evidence, and documentary sources. There is, for instance, a discussion of the distribution of the Celtic place-name nemet, which (as is well known) indicates trees or woodland with sacred attributes (pp. 46–8). What is new (to this reviewer, at least) is the evidence for the size of some of these groves, and their setting in even larger areas of open grazing. For example, there are 13 place- and river-names derived from nemet on the northern reaches of Dartmoor within an area just 20 km by 40 km, itself located in much wider wood–pasture. Yet we know almost nothing about how such landscapes worked in practice. Local communities clearly managed and exploited these large areas of grazing for their flocks and herds, and some areas were enclosed for coppicing and the growing of standards. What is completely unknown is whether the sacred areas were under a different management regime, whether they were continuously or only seasonally important, how their boundaries were marked, or how they were accessed and by whom. Underpinning such questions are, of course, wider issues of social and economic organization.

The book is also valuable in including evaluations and interpretations of primary material in the wider context of an up-to-date historiography. To take just one of innumerable examples: lēah is one of the most commonly known place-name elements associated with woodland landscapes. Yet despite its ubiquity, it can be difficult to interpret accurately, being found across Britain in regions of extensive woodland as well as in areas of more open wood–pasture. Hooke is nonetheless sure-footed in finding her way through a range of interpretations that combine charter material (which is difficult to interpret) with regional geographies and the preferences of individual scholars, to conclude that it was most probably used to indicate open grazing, interspersed with stands of wood, even in places like Andredesleag, the Sussex and Kentish Weald (pp. 125–6).

And finally, there is much here to stimulate new research. Some will be based on the unavoidable flaws that specialists in one discipline and another will find in this book. That surely is one of the roles of publication, and is in itself a cause for congratulation provided that (as is the case here) the material being criticized is of fundamentally high quality. Yet others will seek to drill down into the inevitable generalities that must accompany such a wide-ranging view. The figures showing national distributions of many individual species (hampered, of course, by the unequal distribution of early charters across the English counties) could offer a springboard for new research on the regional character of early medieval ecology and land use, especially when integrated with archaeological, palynological, environmental, documentary and architectural sources. The wider context of generalizations of ash and oak found in so many early records, and yet (apparently) so rarely found in place-names or assembly places, fruit trees in river valleys, especially those with a long history of cultivation, and the thorns that enclosed early arable, offer exciting possibilities for research focused on particular regional landscapes. The cumulative longer-term results of such work might throw some light on the origins and development of English regional landscapes.

Trees in Anglo-Saxon England will be an essential reference work, and one of the few to be read for both interest and to support other research, moving seamlessly between bedside table and library shelf of interested layman and committed scholar.