sevenTeenTh-CenTury environmenTs: Woodland and WasTe 31and Hertfordshire. Small areas survive on the Wolds of Lincolnshire and
Yorkshire. But vast tracts were ploughed up in the course of the eighteenth,
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially in the east of England. Much
of what remained was subsequently compromised by neglect, followed by
the adoption of modern management practices. We do not know for certain
how much chalk grassland there may have been in the mid-seventeenth
century, still in pristine condition, but it must have been at least three times
and quite possibly five times the amount which remains today. Like many
heathlands, most downs were managed as part of sheep-corn systems, with
flocks being moved on a daily basis from upland pasture to the night fold
on the arable, constantly depleting them of nutrients.^58 This together with
the thin, dry character of the soils and intensive grazing by sheep and,
increasingly in the post-medieval period, rabbits created a distinctive, close-
cropped turf characterized by low-growing calcicole herbs like cowslip
(Primula veris), sheep’s fescue (Festuca ovina), kidney vetch (Anthyllis
vulnerana), the pasqueflower (Pulsatilla vulgaris), as well as many species
of orchid. Areas of downland commonly support as many as 40 different
plant species per square metre, sometimes more.^59 These in turn provide
food and shelter for a phenomenal range of invertebrates, including crickets,
grasshoppers and butterflies like the Adonis blue, gatekeeper, silver-spotted
skipper, chalkhill blue and Duke of Burgundy fritillary. Snails, too, form
an important part of the fauna, including such species as the heath snail,
moss snail and large chrysalis snail. The range of mammals, amphibians
and reptiles is more limited in these dry and open landscapes, but the bird
life was diverse, including – as well as numerous common farmland types –
open-country species like the stone curlew, bustard, buzzard, skylark,
stonechat, corn bunting and lapwing.
Wetlands
In the seventeenth century, there were vast areas of unreclaimed wetland in
England. They fell into three main categories, only one of which constituted
a truly natural environment. This was salt marsh, which developed along
the coast where silt and marine alluvium had accumulated in estuaries or
behind shingle spits or sandbanks, to such a depth that extensive areas were
only inundated by the highest tides, and could thus be colonized by salt-
tolerant vegetation such as sea fern-grass (Catapodium marinum) and red
fescue (Festuca rubra). The marsh surface was dissected by creeks which
filled and emptied with the tides. Such areas graded almost imperceptibly
into mudflats, inundated by tides twice a day, rich in sediments and with
large numbers (but relatively few different species of) invertebrates, such
as lugworm (Arenicola marina) and ragworm (Nereis diversicula), upon
which migratory waders came to feed.^60 Curlew, bar-tailed godwit, dunlin,
oystercatcher, shelduck, redshank, ringed plover, turnstone and avocet were