Foxley Wood is a nature reserve in Foxley,

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

, England, the largest

ancient woodland In the United Kingdom, an ancient woodland is a woodland that has existed continuously since 1600 or before in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (or 1750 in Scotland). Planting of woodland was uncommon before those dates, so a wood present in 16 ...

and

coppice Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which exploits the capacity of many species of trees to put out new shoots from their stump or roots if cut down. In a coppiced wood, which is called a copse, young tree stems are repeate ...

in Norfolk. The

Norfolk Wildlife Trust The Norfolk Wildlife Trust (NWT) is one of 46 wildlife trusts covering Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man and Alderney. Founded in 1926, it is the oldest of all the trusts. It has over 35,500 members and eight local groups and it ma ...

, which manages this reserve, bought it in 1998. It is in size. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a

Nature Conservation Review ''A Nature Conservation Review'' is a two-volume work by Derek Ratcliffe, published by Cambridge University Press in 1977. It set out to identify the most important places for nature conservation in Great Britain. It is often known by the initial ...

site, Grade 2, and a National Nature Reserve.

Location and history

Foxley Wood is north-west of Norwich, away from the Fakenham road (the A1067), near Honeypot Wood. The nature reserve is currently the largest ancient woodland and coppice in Norfolk. The woodland is recorded in

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

and parts of it are known to be over 6,000 years old. For the past 1,000 years, it was a source of wood (including hazel), but demand decreased in the 20th century. Because of the drop in demand, Foxley Wood became neglected. In the 1990s it was privately owned and managed by the Forestry Commission, and was acquired by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust in 1998. It is open to the public every day except Thursday.

Flora and fauna

The woodland is rich in flora with over 250 species recorded. These include herb paris,

early purple orchid ''Orchis mascula'', the early-purple orchid, early spring orchis, is a species of flowering plant in the orchid family, Orchidaceae. Description ''Orchis mascula'' is a perennial herbaceous plant with stems up to high, green at the base and ...

lily of the valley Lily of the valley (''Convallaria majalis'' (), sometimes written lily-of-the-valley, is a woodland flowering plant with sweetly scented, pendent, bell-shaped white flowers borne in sprays in spring. It is native throughout the cool temperate No ...

common bluebell ''Hyacinthoides non-scripta'' (formerly ''Endymion non-scriptus'' or ''Scilla non-scripta'') is a bulbous perennial plant, found in Atlantic areas from north-western Spain to the British Isles, and also frequently used as a garden plant. It is ...

dog's mercury ''Mercurialis perennis'', commonly known as dog's mercury, is a poisonous woodland plant found in much of Europe as well as in Algeria, Iran, Turkey, and the Caucasus, but almost absent from Ireland, Orkney and Shetland.purple hairstreak The purple hairstreak (''Favonius quercus'') is a butterfly in the family Lycaenidae distributed throughout much of Europe, North Africa, Anatolia, Caucasia, and Transcaucasia. The larva feeds on ''Quercus robur'', ''Quercus petraea'', ''Querc ...

, meadowsweet, water avens, fleabane (common name for flowering plants in family

Asteraceae The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. Commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family, Compositae w ...

) and

meadow brown The meadow brown (''Maniola jurtina'') is a butterfly found in the Palearctic realm. Its range includes Europe south of 62°N, Russia eastwards to the Urals, Asia Minor, Iraq, Iran, North Africa and the Canary Islands. The larvae feed on grasse ...

. Bluebells are among the main attractions for visitors in spring. Trees growing in the reserve include

oak An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...

(found in the centre of the wood on sandy ground Conifers were planted throughout as timber, disturbing the original distribution of stand types; they are being removed. Areas have been indiscriminately sprayed with herbicides in the past. Fauna include insects such as dark bush-crickets, white admiral and ringlet butterflies, and bird species such as

sparrowhawk Sparrowhawk (sometimes sparrow hawk) may refer to several species of small hawk in the genus ''Accipiter''. "Sparrow-hawk" or sparhawk originally referred to ''Accipiter nisus'', now called "Eurasian" or "northern" sparrowhawk to distinguish it f ...

tawny owl The tawny owl (''Strix aluco''), also called the brown owl, is commonly found in woodlands across Europe to western Siberia, and has seven recognized subspecies. It is a stocky, medium-sized owl, whose underparts are pale with dark streaks, a ...

s, great spotted woodpeckers and European green woodpeckers. Songbirds and sparrowhawks are popular sights. Besides conifer planting, spraying with herbicides, and the cutting of all saleable trees (before the Forestry Commission began managing the wood), the wood is damaged by roads and ditches resulting from timber exploitation: "Foxley Wood has been badly damaged by modern forestry."

References

{{Norfolk Wildlife Trust Forests and woodlands of Norfolk Norfolk Wildlife Trust Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Norfolk