COST Action E 52 - vTI - Bund.de

Fig. 4: Premier beech stand – Chiltern beechwoods
sILvIcuLTure oF beech IN brITaIN
A variety of silvicultural approaches has been applied to beech woodlands in Britain over the past
300 – 400 years for which reliable records are available (Rackham 2003). These can be summarized
as:
• selection forestry – based on classic Continental European systems of beech woodland
management for timber production. Many of the better quality stands of pure beech within the
natural range in Britain have been managed under variants of the group selection and single-tree
selection systems for production of quality timber for the furniture-making industry. This was
the prominent system applied in the Chiltern beechwoods, during the period 1 50 – 1950, where
a traditional furniture-making industry developed, concentrated in the towns of High Wycombe
and Princes Risborough. More recently, the best examples of this type of silvicultural management
have been in the Cotswold beechwoods, principally in those owned by the Workman family. Only
a small area of British beech woodland currently remains under traditional selection silviculture.
Since the mid-19 0s, timber values obtainable for mature beech crops have been depressed in
Britain, with the exception of high quality stems suitable for veneer, and this has made it difficult
to cover the costs of selection silviculture from timber income alone.
• regular forestry – remains the predominant silvicultural approach in British woodlands
managed for timber production on a rotational basis, both on public and private lands. During
the two world wars significant areas of beech woodland were clear-felled under emergency
timber supply programmes and later re-planted with new beech crops. Other areas of open
ground were planted with beech during the twentieth century, particularly on the public forest,
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