Timber
It is a mistake to suppose that even the physical Forests were set aside solely
for the use of the king's deer. Land within them was bought, inherited, and
given just like any other land. Landowners wishing to cut timber trees within a
legal Forest were supposed to get a felling licence and to pay a tax, chiminage,
on extracting the timber, although most landowners seem to have got exemp-
tion. A transaction concerning Monk Wood, Loughton, in c. 1250 shows that
complicated arrangements could be made regarding joint ownership of land and
sharing of the timber on it (65).
Few such private documents survive; nearly all our information comes from
Henry Ill's letters, which reveal the use which he, as landlord, made of the
timber on the part of Hainault which he owned. As owner of the Forestal rights,
he also gave felling licences and exemptions from chiminage, but most of these
applied to private woods which do not concern us.
The Close Rolls carefully distinguish between timber and wood. Timber is
always oak; the word quercus means, not an oak-tree in general, but an oak
suitable for timber (quercus apta ad meremium). The king used oaks on his own
buildings and also gave them away, especially to religious houses. Among other
gifts from the S.W. Forests are two quercus given in 1220 to the Abbess of
Barking for new tables in the refectory; 50 in 1256 to what is now St Alban's
Cathedral; and 83 from 1259 to 1267 to the Blackfriars of London. These may
seem small numbers of trees, but the king's oaks were often unusually large; for
instance, he gave 82 oaks, chiefly from the Forest of Dean, to the Blackfriars of
Gloucester, and an examination of the timber fabric, which still survives, in-
dicates that these were great trees which accounted for over half the timber used
in the buildings (42).
During his reign Henry III ordered 482 quercus from Hainault Forest
(often called "the outwood (boscus forinsecus) outside Havering Park") (Fig.
9). Allowing for orders not specifying the number of trees, this works out at
about 10 oaks a year, surprisingly few for several hundred acres of the king's
land. From Havering Park he got 189 oaks, mostly used on his own works at
Havering and Westminster Palaces and the Tower of London; in 1275 Edward I
felled 100 more in the Park.
This strongly suggests that Hainault Forest, and by implication Epping,
was not a good source of timber. Had it been, it is inconceivable that it should
not have been more fully exploited, being so near London. The small Forest of
Colchester was a large producer of oaks, most of them sent to Dover. Another
indication of a lack of timber in Hainault is in an order of 1232:
The king sends . . . Mr Peter de Luton, carpenter, with certain other
carpenters, to select timber in the king's outwood outside the park of
Havering, where it can most conveniently and suitably be selected for the
work which the king is having done in the king's great chamber at
Westminster . . . And if it happens that enough suitable timber cannot be
found in the said wood, . . . to go into the king's park at Havering to see if
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