Woodland Management

Iron axe head from Kirkstall Abbey
© Abbey House Museum
<click to enlarge>

The Cistercians gained a reputation for assarting, in other words for clearing woodland to cultivate the land. Fountains cleared the forest at Warsill in the twelfth century to make a grange here. The community also assarted the land around its granges at Brimham and Bradley, and around Kettlewell, Littondale and Malham. Pollen analysis from Fountains Earth in Upper Nidderdale,(9) has indicated that this dense woodland was cleared by the monks in the late twelfth century, when alder and oak were replaced by cereal grasses and pasture.(10)

It has recently been suggested that the Cistercians strove to conserve woodland, as well as to use, it, and that the monks had an eye on the future. The agreement between Fountains and Sawley abbeys in 1279, that neither community would assart Rys wood in Cliftondale, has been cited as evidence of this desire.(11) Leases forbidding abbey tenants from felling wood and restricting their removal of timber the community's woods have also been seen as a reflection of their concern to conserve.(12) For example, the lease of a tenement in Galphay ('Galgha') by Abbot Marmaduke Huby to William Steill in 1525 stipulated

William is not to fell, sell or take away any 'principal wood'
Growing on the tenement, and the abbot and convent are to
have the right to fell, sell and carry away at their pleasure
wood growing in the tenement, this lease notwithstanding.(13)

However, clauses of this kind are perhaps more a reflection of the monks' self-interest and a concern to safeguard their own resources, rather than of sign of genuine interest in woodland conservation.