For centuries, coppice and coppice-with-standards were the main forest management systems in the northern and central parts of present Belgium. A high population density and a low forest cover in the whole region resulted in a high demand for wood, therefore strict regulations and management regimes were necessary to prevent overexploitation. We illustrate this with a well-documented case, that of Meerdaal Forest in Central Belgium, with reference to other sites in the region. Meerdaal Forest is a woodland 30 km east of Brussels. For centuries its high quality timber stands, especially oak, were managed as coppice-with-standards, with a gradually increasing share of standard trees. Using archive documents and ancient maps, we have reconstructed how this coppice-with-standard management has been developed and optimized over a period of about 500 years. Changes in cutting cycles and configurations were discerned, with a gradual increase of the importance of the standard layer over time. The analysis also showed how wood production could be successfully combined with other sources of income like grazing and pannage. We conclude that former managers of Meerdaal Forest, notwithstanding their lack of scholarship and reference works, developed a state-of-the-art sustainable and flexible management regime that allowed to provide high revenues during many centuries.
Since the Middle Ages, the northern and central region of present Belgium has been a densely populated and economically important area. Its countryside has been intensively used and altered by man over centuries. With a present-day forest cover of barely 12%, this area belongs to the least forested regions of Europe. This low forest cover is not a recent phenomenon. As early as 2100 BP, forest cover had already been gradually decreased to about 50% of the total land cover, followed by a slight recovery during the Early Middle Ages (4th-8th century -
Not only was the total forest cover very low during past centuries, but the remaining forests were also used very intensively in order to meet high demands for resources like firewood, utensils and construction wood (
The continuous high demand for wood products required strict regulation, control and proper management in order to prevent depletion of essential wood resources (
Until the 19th century, most forests were managed as coppice and, in larger estates of the nobility and monasteries on the more productive soils, as coppice with standards. High forest was exceptional at that time (
Scientifically trained foresters in the 19th and 20th century apparently had a rather low esteem of traditional forest management (
Recent insights, based on the study of archives and historic descriptions of specific woodlands in present Flanders (
The aim of this study was to reconstruct the management history of the coppice-with-standards oak stands for Meerdaal Forest, a well-documented example of this traditional forest management regime for Central Belgium, by combining the numerous historical sources that were at our disposal.
Meerdaal Forest is an ancient woodland site, located 30 km east of Brussels (
Predominant soil types in Meerdaal Forest are Luvisols (in the south) and Podzoluvisols (in the north), which developed in Pleistocene aeolian deposits of loamy loess on top of tertiary sandy formations (
We reconstructed the management history of the coppice-with-standards oak stands for this forest by the analysis and combination of different historical sources. We consulted archives of the House of Arenberg, partly conserved at the Library of the University of Leuven (AAH-KUL), at the National Archives of Belgium in Brussels (ARB-APA) and at the private archive of Arenberg in Enghien (ACA). These archives contain manuscripts and maps concerning management regulations, wood sale conditions, court cases and detailed accounts of annual revenues from the forest.
These archives all have a general inventory (
Furthermore, information on the management was compiled from published historical sources (
Based on all these sources, management regulations and regimes were reconstructed, as well as species composition and revenue shares for both the coppice and the standard fraction. The first compilations were made by Baeté et al. (
The first known document referring to woodland in the area of the present Meerdaal Forest dates back to the end of the 12th century, when a “silva de Miradal” is mentioned in a charter of Pope Urbanus III.
During the 13th century, Meerdaal Forest was under supervision of the Duke of Brabant. During the 14th century it became temporarily subdivided between the House of Harcourt and the House of Gulik (Jülich), later Schoonvorst (Schönau). Through marriage in 1432, the part of the House of Harcourt came to Antoine de Croÿ. In 1442, he managed to buy the remaining part of the forest from the family of Schoonvorst and to reunite the ducal Meerdaal Forest (Charter, AAH-KUL).
The House of de Croÿ represented an important and influential dynasty and the Meerdaal Forest was an important part of their domain, both as a source of income from wood and as an important hunting ground.
In 1615, the ownership passed on through marriage from de Croÿ to the House of Arenberg. This equally prominent noble family already owned several estates and large areas of land and continued to expand its territories in the Low Countries during the 18th and 19th century (
The forest of Meerdaal was declared a “Free Wood” (
Meerdaal Forest remained under the Houses of de Croÿ and Arenberg until 1918, when the real estate of Arenberg was sequestered by the Belgian state, on the accusation of collaboration with the German enemy. In 1930 the forest was officially seized and became state forest (
Already in the 15th century, a Wood Court was installed for the Free Wood of Meerdaal, containing two “chambers”, of which one dealt with trials on hunting and poaching, and the second specifically on wood theft and related offenses, illustrating the equal importance of both aspects of the forest (
The earliest detailed forestry-related documents retrieved in the archives date back to the second half of the 16th century (1552-1567 - AAH-KUL, folder BBM 682). It is a bundle of hand-written conditions and regulations concerning the sale of wood in the Meerdaal Forest (including fines and punishments for theft and fraud). They allow us to reconstruct in fair detail how the forest was managed, and show a very elaborate and sophisticated coppice-with-standards management regime.
Separate sale conditions were made for the sale of the coppice on the one hand and for the standards on the other. Both were sold to the highest bidder during separate sale auctions.
In autumn of the first year, the coppice wood was sold. The “coupe” of that year had been subdivided in advance into small parcels of coppice (with a customary size of 0.25 to 0.35 ha). Buyers were bound to follow strict regulations on when and how to cut the parcels they bought.
Fellings were to be done during the following winter, and concluded by the beginning of May. By the end of May, all coppiced wood had to be cross-cut and stacked between two standard trees in piles of maximum three feet high (=90 cm), and the twigs had to be bound together and piled up. All coppiced wood and twigs had to be removed from the forest by the end of March of the subsequent year (in later sale conditions shortened to the end of October of the second year, so within one year after the original sale). If not, all wood was confiscated and resold.
Moreover, there were strict guidelines on trees that had to be spared (
In addition, all standard trees had to be pruned, and all brambles (
Immediately after the cut of the coppice, a selective cut in the standards was organized. In the beginning of the second year, the local forest guards marked the trees that were to be felled with a “marking hammer”, a small axe bearing a mark of the owner on the backside of the blade. This mark was imprinted on the trunk and the base of the tree. These trees were subsequently sold in a new auction, organized in May of that same year. Standard trees were sold in parcels of about 5 trees each. Similar strict regulations as in regard to the coppice had to be obeyed. All trees had to be felled by the beginning of the third year and checked by the local foresters to ensure that only marked trees were felled. For that purpose, all felling marks had to remain on the trees at all times. Again all trees had to be felled by the first of May of that third year, and removed by the end of May (or according to some regulations by St. John’s Day, being 24th of June), with the fine of confiscation imposed on any buyer who was not able to comply.
Buyers were allowed to harvest the trees including their root bole. In that case the buyer had to cut the roots as close to the bole as possible, and had to refill the resulting pit.
Similar restrictions as in regard to the coppice applied for grazing of animals, the collection of hay or the picking of fruits.
These 16th century regulations remained active until the beginning of the 20th century, being only slightly amended over time, as demonstrated by the sale conditions and other regulative documents in the archives (AAH-KUL) from 1597, 1615, 1627, 1641, 1730 and 1785 and also from the management plan of 1913 (
Important amendments over time concerned the number of new standard trees (“leave-oaks”) that were to be left by the buyers of the coppice. The regulation of 1597 increased this figure from 16 to 32 trees per ha. The instructions to the forest guards of 1615 further raised this figure to 40 trees per ha, which was consequently adopted in the sale conditions (
From 1785 onwards, the buyers of standard trees were obliged to plant a new tree when filling the pit originating from the felling of a standard. They even had to provide supporting stakes to make sure newly planted trees would not bend over.
Finally, documents and maps in the archives also contain information on rotation periods, and the spatial organization of the cuts. The first indication concerning rotation periods dates back to 1610. A document states that the forest is to be evenly subdivided in 20 “coupes” of which each year one is to be cut. The document however does not contain any spatial indication on the form and lay-out of these coupes.
The first maps giving details on the lay-out of the coupes date back to the beginning of the 18th century (1723-1790 -
This lay-out was continued until the first half of the 20th century (
These alterations and adaptations were partly done because the total area of coppice-with-standards changed as some of the lesser productive stands were transformed into high forest of beech or Scots pine (
Information concerning the ultimate period of coppice-with-standards management in Meerdaal Forest is found in several documents (
The archives not only contain sale conditions, but also detailed registers of revenues. By analyzing these registers, a reconstruction of the forest composition and overall structure, including the relative income share of the standard layer, can be reconstructed. Most of these registers still remain to be analyzed in detail, but a first sample already allowed to reconstitute developments in forest structure and composition over time.
The composition of Meerdaal Forest at the end of the 17th century could be derived from sale registers from 1692 (coppice) and 1693 (standards). In 1692, 221 parcels of coppice were sold. The following year, 197 parcels of standards were traded. The sale parcels of the standards contained detailed descriptions of the species composition of each parcel, allowing to reconstruct the species composition of that time, assuming the composition of spared and cut trees was similar. In total 1393 trees were sold, of which 1072 were oaks, 80 cherry trees, 65 crab apples, 7 beeches, 19 alders (
At that time, the coppice fraction constituted 68% of the revenue, thus being the main source of income.
There are, however, clear indications that the importance and volume of standards in Meerdaal Forest gradually increased over time, as was already illustrated by the increased number of young trees that had to be spared on coppice sales.
Sale parcels of standard trees halfway the 18th century contained on average not 5-7, but over 10 trees. The sale of 1760 contained two times as many trees for a similar number of parcels compared to the year 1693.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the shares of coppice and standards in the annual revenue had entirely reversed. A map of the 1823 sale (ARB-APA, K&P, 509) mentions the overall income from that parcel. The coppice produced 11 700 Francs (31%), while the standards yielded over 26 000 Francs (69%). This share further increased in the following century. An overview of revenues for the period 1902-1913 (
Basal area of the standard layer at that time varied from stand to stand between 14 and 18 m² per ha. By 1938, this basal area further increased to 21 m² per ha before, and 16 m² per ha after the fellings in the standards (
By that time, the average growing stock of the oak stands had gradually increased to reach values comparable to mixed uneven aged high forests. When the periodic cutting of the coppice was abolished (
Grazing and pannage - the practice of releasing domestic pigs in a forest, in order that they may feed on fallen acorns, beech mast, etc;
However, the owners of Meerdaal used this prerogative only to a limited extent, as they considered grazing and other former common rights to be detrimental to wood production.
In regard to pannage, the oldest documented regulations that could be retrieved for Meerdaal Forest date back to 1553. The right of pannage was awarded to the highest bidder. The animals were only allowed in the forest from autumn to the first of February. The conditions included that the animals should be herded at all times, and fenced in for the night. From 1785 onwards, only the collection of acorns by hand was still leased to the highest bidder, and only during mast years (
Cattle grazing was not a source of direct income. According to a document from 1570 (AAH-KUL), it was only allowed as a specific user right to the monastery of Valduc, and also by the forest guards as an indirect source of income. All animals had to be herded, and no animals were allowed in coppice of less than five years old. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Arenbergs concluded that there was too much damage in the forest due to grazing and instructed that all formal and informal grazing rights were to be abolished (
The study of archives to reconstruct historic forest management is often burdened by incompleteness of the information, and uncertainties in how far the information in the documents (like regulations) reflected the reality in the field. Nevertheless, they provide useful insights in the knowledge and practices over time (
The rich archives of the House of Arenberg allowed us to reconstruct in a detailed manner management practices and revenues from coppice-with-standard stands in Meerdaal Forest. The larger part of the extensive archives of Arenberg miraculously survived over time and still present a unique potential for further investigation, especially as they can be very informative and remain partially unexplored.
For this study, we could only analyze a fraction of these extensive and elaborate archives. The inventories allowed to make a selection of documents that provided good first insight in the management techniques. Many meters of archive however await further analysis and screening. By further elaborating on the account books, screening all available years from as early as 1690 until around 1900, and relating the mentioned income and currencies, it should be possible to reconstruct even more in detail the development of species composition and economic return, both in absolute and relative figures, from the forest over the centuries.
Still, the analyzed documents already allow us to reconstitute the forest management practices to a fair level of detail. Combined with other sources and in comparison with other coppice-with-standards from the Low Countries an even more complete picture could be composed.
Exactly for how long a coppice-with-standard management has been in use in Meerdaal Forest remains unclear, although at least since 1552, the date of the earliest studied documents on wood sale conditions in the archives. However, there are indications that this kind of management was already applied much earlier. Regulations in documents from the 1550’s are indeed very detailed and elaborate, suggesting they relied on a longer tradition.
This is corroborated by wood sale conditions of the forest of Grotenhout that originally had the same owner: the Duke of Brabant. These sale conditions date back much earlier, the year 1432, and clearly describe a coppice-with-standards management. These conditions are strikingly similar to the earliest sale conditions from Meerdaal Forest. They include identical formulations for maintaining fruit-bearing trees and instructions to leave 16 young trees per hectare as future standards (
This management regime indeed perfectly combined the two main objectives of such ducal forests, being hunting and wood production. Coppice-with-standards management not only provided an important source of income from the sale of wood. It also resulted in temporarily open forest stands that were very suitable for hunting purposes. Especially during the first years after harvesting, the coppice with the retained standard trees provided an ideal “landscape setting” for the predominant hunting practice of that time: the par force hunting on red deer (
The archives also reveal a well-organized, high performance silviculture by skilled forest managers resulting in a sustained high revenue for its owners.
Illustrative for their management skills is the number of young trees that were to be left on every cut. The original figure of 16 per ha halfway the 16th century was adjusted to 32 and finally 40 per ha at the beginning of the 17th century. This number of 40 standards per hectare in the smallest diameter class is perfectly in line with recommendations in 20th century reference handbooks on coppice-with-standard management for the Low Countries (
The analysis further shows an adaptive management where the consuming market is the main driving force. The traditional coppice-with-standard management, with the main focus on the coppice layer, as it was performed in Meerdaal Forest until the 17th century, was gradually transformed under the influence of the Arenberg dynasty to a subtype with a strong dominance of quality standard trees.
Indeed, the original income proportion of standards (30%) and coppice (70%) that was in line with other coppice-with-standards forests in the Low Countries, even up to the 19th century (
Hence, the quality timber trees of the Arenbergs were widely renowned at that time. In this respect
This reputation surpassed the local market and attracted merchants from a wider area, resulting in a higher demand for construction wood, on which the forest management became attuned, with higher numbers of standard trees being spared.
A gradual increase in the number of standard trees was also found in other studies (
The documented reduction of the rotation period from 20 years to 12-14 years is quite remarkable.
In our particular case, however, the rotation period was clearly reduced, which appears in contradiction to the general trend mentioned above. However, the extension trend refers mainly to an earlier era: short rotations of 5-8 years are mainly related to the middle ages, and were already extended to 20-25 years by the 17th to 18th century (depending on the region -
It also appears that this management regime was successful, as they could gradually increase the amount of standards, while at the same time, the average coppice parcels remained of the same size over the whole period, indicating that they continued to produce sufficient volumes of firewood, even on shorter rotations.
The 18th century forest managers of Arenberg apparently succeeded to increase production of construction wood aimed at a wider market, with a sustained delivery of sufficient amounts of coppice wood for the local market.
This again illustrates the exceptional skills of the local foresters of that time who, even in the absence of scientific training, scholarship and reference literature, developed an effective and productive management that provided in a sustained delivery of desired quantities and qualities of goods and services.
This case study based on archives concerning Meerdaal Forest illustrates that its former managers, notwithstanding a lack of scholarship and reference works, developed a state-of-the-art sustainable and flexible management regime that allowed to provide high revenues for many centuries.
It is made clear that long before modern science-based forestry, proper knowledge and craftsmanship in forest management was already present, tailored to local and regional market needs, providing high revenues to its owner and concurrently holding on to the principles of sustainability long before the word was invented.
The following abbreviations have been used throughout the paper:
AAH-KUL: archive of the Arenberg family at the Library of the University of Leuven, Belgium.
ACA: the private archive of the Arenberg family in Enghien, Belgium.
ARB-APA: Arenberg archive at the National Archives of Belgium in Brussels, Belgium.
ARB-APA, K&P : the section “Kaarten en Plannen” (maps and charts) of the Arenberg archive at the National Archives of Belgium in Brussels, Belgium.
Special thanks to Jean Paul Peeters, Thomas Van Driessche, Hilde Verboven, Guido Tack and Paul Van den Bremt for their help in the transcription and interpretation of ancient handwritings. Photographs of figures 3b and 4 were made by Kris Vandevorst.
Location of Meerdaal Forest in Belgium, and outline of the current forest (red) on a large-scale map also showing other forests (green), the river Dyle (blue) highways (purple) and settlements (grey).
Excerpt from the sale conditions for the coppice wood, dated 1567 with the instructions on the conservation of standard trees. It reads “every buyer shall leave on his parcel all fruit-bearing trees, and all the ’ leave-oaks’ that were left on his parcel at previous sales, and above these on every ha 16 oaks that are decent to develop to standard oaks, with a size of at least 8 inches in girth [= 6.5 cm DBH], and if not enough oaks are available, he shall choose beeches or other species with valuable wood on pain of a fine of 6 golden reales’ [if these conditions are not met] (AAH-KUL- folder BBM 682).
Examples of manuscript maps representing the cut and the parcels for the years 1735 (a - AAH-KUL - folder BBM 927) and 1823 (b - ARB-APA-folder KP509): lay-out and size of the parcels remain very similar over time.
Manuscript map representing the lay-out of the yearly cuts for the period 1835-1885 (ARB-APA-folder KP50).