How premodern energy shaped Britain

Entering Shadow Woods, a coppice just outside the town of Haven in West Sussex, England, is like stepping into a medieval fairy-tale. Before the Industrial Revolution, coppicing, a method of harvesting wood on a multi-year cycle by cutting trees back to a stump, helped meet Britain’s energy needs. After the tree, usually hazel, hornbeam or oak, is cut, new shoots spring to life. A coppiced tree looks more like a porcupine than the arboreal lollipop of a child’s picture book. Shadow Woods was largely abandoned after the second world war and many of the trees are now “overstood”, grown beyond the point at which they would be harvested, shading the ground and preventing the growth of any new saplings. But they have kept their shape. From each of the hornbeams as many as half a dozen thin trunks rise from a thick stump, resembling the crown of some pagan god.