Wildlife in depression, C.1870–1940^145by the start of the twentieth century, turning their back on local fuels. Bird,
describing East Ruston ‘Common’ in 1909, noted that the cutting of flags,
peat and furze for firing had ceased ‘since the old larger brick ovens and
open chimneys have entirely disappeared’, replaced, presumably, by grates
and ranges designed for coal.^35 Surviving commons and most fuel allotments
gradually became areas of scrub and woodland, and were used for fly
tipping, dumping, fires and gypsy camps.
One striking feature of the period, shared by moorland and heath and
also, as we have noted, enclosed fields on the margins of such land, was the
inexorable spread of bracken. If allowed to grow to maturity the plant is
unpalatable to livestock but if regularly harvested in the traditional manner,
for bedding or firing, the young fronds can be consumed by sheep and cattle,
which also keep the plant in check by treading. With declining numbers
of stock, and a cessation of cutting, bracken spread unchecked across
extensive areas of marginal, acidic land. Clarke in 1908 described how in
East Anglia it was: ‘certainly the dominant plant of the “breck” district, and
on several heaths has usurped the position which heather occupied some
20 years ago. Bracken lacks its former economic importance’.^36 Gorse, no
longer harvested for fuel or fencing, also expanded. Bird reported how at
East Ruston ‘The best parts of the common for grazing purposes are now
being much encroached upon by the spreading of furze’.^37
On chalk downland rabbits, continuing to increase in numbers in this
period – in part because of the increase in the area of derelict land – often
kept in check the growth of scrub and rank vegetation. Alien invaders
they might have been, but to some extent they thus compensated for the
decline in livestock numbers in areas of marginal grazing. In areas of heath,
moreover, their burrowing activities provided opportunities for the ruderal
plants formerly dependent on the disturbances resulting from periodic
cultivation and the digging of heather turfs for fuel.^38 But in other ways they
were less beneficial. They did little to arrest the spread of bracken, partly
because of their small size but also because they were averse to consuming
it. Contemporaries often connected the increasing significance of both,
Michael Home for example memorably describing the hamlets and villages
of the East Anglian Breckland as ‘oases... fighting a losing battle against
the insidious onslaughts of both rabbits and bracken’.^39
Dereliction of these kinds was not, for the most part, environmentally
beneficial. Vast numbers of rare heathland plants were lost, out-competed
by coarser vegetation. Clarke described in 1918 how, on Barnham Common
near Thetford, in Norfolk, ‘the original steppe flora has been greatly reduced
by the encroachments of furze’.^40 The spread of scrub also caused problems
for the ground-nesting birds of heath and down, which require open tracts
for ‘feeding areas, to detect predators and allow chicks easy movement’.^41
Birds like the stone curlew, which had suffered dramatic declines during the
previous period of agricultural intensification, did not now exhibit rapid
recoveries.^42 A few bird species characteristic of heaths and downs probably