A short history of woodland in Thorpe

The first recorded lord of the Manor of Thorpe was Stigand, Bishop of East Anglia from 1042 and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1052 until 1070. He had it from Edward the Confessor and there was a manor house used by the Bishops at least from the early 1200s. Stigand's successor Bishop Herbert de Losinga built a succession of churches along the edges of Thorpe Wood and Mousehold, and was most probably the founder of the first Church in Thorpe, at the site of what is now the top of the allotments. (Stigand was unusual in that he was a Saxon who survived well into the Norman era)

Thorpe Wood is mentioned in the Doomesday Book and at that time would have stretched virtually unbroken from the river in the west almost to Postwick, with Mousehold Heath to the north. Some think it likely that at one time Mousehold was also woodland, but that it became progressively overgrazed.

If Thorpe Wood was the hunting ground of the Bishops of Norwich, and before them the King – as some suggest Thorpe was an early Royal Manor – then the woods would have been jealously protected and no commoners’ animals would have been allowed to graze it. This is quite possibly why parts of ‘Ancient Woodland’ has survived while Mousehold became a heathland environment . The wood is likely to have been managed through coppicing for firewood and building materials, and hunting for deer and boar.

The main remnants of the Wood from the Domesday book, which lists ‘woodland for 1200 pigs’ are now Lion Wood and Weston Wood.  That number of pigs would have made it the largest wood in Norfolk – and the only village in the Mousehold area listed as having significant woodland. None of them had woodland for more than 15 pigs. This would tend to confirm the idea that the Thorpe woodland was specially protected, and possibly a Royal Manor. This may have been true even before the Normal Conquest.

The part of the wood to the east of Harvey Lane was probably cleared for cultivation in the 13th or 14th centuries.  An agreement of 1239 divided that part of Thorpe Wood covered with Oaks between the Bishop of Norwich and the Cathedral Priory and a later document of the 14th century measured the main part of the woodland at more than 155 acres.
What’s left today are fragments, but they are very useful fragments as they have helped woodland to colonise other areas, including the gardens for which Thorpe was once famous.
The role and place in this story that is held by the large block of woodland in the North - the Belmore, Brown's and Racecourse plantations - is yet to be determined. However, the eastern part of Racecourse has recently been classified as semi-natural Ancient Woodland and contains many species of ground flora usually associated with the land use known as 'wood pasture'. This area that is now woodland has for many years been something of a moveable feast between woodland, heath and wood pasture, with some arable cropping too. The balance between these different types of cover was in former times largely determined by the intensity of grazing.

(With thanks to Trevor Nuthall's excellent Thorpe St Andrew - A History)