Ancient woodland boundaries in Europe

In Western and Central Europe, many woods are clearly separated from the surrounding countryside by permanent physical boundaries. While such boundaries are now out of use, in the past they were widespread and important landscape features. This paper argues that many woodland boundaries originate from the Middle Ages and perhaps even more from the Early Modern Period. Their existence was connected to a specific form of woodland management (coppicing) but also to ownership structures and through these to grazing regimes. With their various forms, permanent woodland boundaries served to separate woodland from the surrounding countryside both in a legal and physical sense. There are four basic types of permanent woodland boundaries: woodbanks, walls, stone rows and lynchets, all of which can still be studied in the landscape today. Because of their varied state of preservation and also because of the difficulties in creating relative chronologies, dating woodland boundaries is a very challenging task. However, even a basic typology can provide valuable information for a number of scientific disciplines, including landscape history, historical geography, archaeology and ecology. Permanent woodland boundaries are a part of European cultural heritage. They should be recognised and protected similarly to all other ancient landscape features.