STOURTON and GASPER HISTORY

FORESTRY

  
       

       

HINTS on PLANTING.

WHILST, at a period when the population of Great-Britain has been ascertained to be rapidly increasing, and the produce of grain found inadequate to the consumption of its inhabitants the attention of Land-owners has been very justly directed towards the cultivation Of Our Waste Lands with Corn; yet there are instances where that attention might be more advantageously directed towards the growth of Timber...

CLICK FOR FULL TEXT

...These trees grew in a plantation just beneath the building in my woods, called the Convent...

...My sole object has been to shew what an advantageous profit may be made on and which has been rendered unfit by nature for the growth of corn.

 

 

                                       RICHARD COLT HOARE,

 

STOURHEAD,  1814.
   
Tom Hutchison and his Clogmaking Gang in Stourton Woods, c. 1903

Billy Curtis and C. Hain with Timber Wagon pulled by mules in Stourton Woods, c. 1925
     

'My father (Rennie Hoare) took Eric Bealing (Head Forester) and John Trussler (Land Agent) to Switzerland to study forestry, where he discovered that clear felling was illegal - really for avalanches. That made him realise that the best form of forestry is to selectively thin and have natural regeneration. So he and Eric Beeling started that here and they were hugely ahead of their time...' Henry Hoare

 'Eric Beeeling (Head Forester) was known as Danny Boy...' Edward Hoare

'...because he had lots of romantic liaisons, didn't he?' Audrey Hoare
     
Rennie Hoare and Bill Garrett (Game Keeper) with Dachshund Pack

'My father (Rennie Hoare), as part of his forestry, wanted natural regeneration and all the young trees were being eaten by rabbits.  So he decided that the whole woods should be a rabbit-free area.  He had a big map on the wall of the Estate Office for anyone that saw a rabbit to put a coloured pin in the point where it was (sighted). 

Rennie Hoare with Dachshund Pack
Bill Garrett was our Gamekeeper, a splendid character, an absolute rogue - he had to come into the Office, look at the pin, go and kill the rabbit and then he could take the pin out...'  Henry Hoare.