393
Beach,” suggests Sternfeld, was “perhaps the first poem of the modern era”…
[Arnold] “seems to know that mass warfare, atomic weaponry, all-pervasive pollution, and a planet struggling to drink and to breathe is coming.”
14
Crome’s day remained indebted to trees not yet subject to cynicism, though the
unbashful historian could not fail to compare the devastations by deforestation
occurring throughout the world’s remaining neotropics to those same impulses for
gain that compelled earlier peoples to inflict massive defoliation. “A brief history
of British woodlands” makes clear that during the Bronze Age (ca. 3800 BC to
40 AD) Neolithic residents began a patchwork of woodland clearance for agriculture that took out at least half of all forests on the British Isles. For 400 subsequent
years, Roman occupation simply added more insult, an ecologically disastrous
segue to the advent of Anglo-Saxon “skilled carpenters” whose machinations further reduced the possibilities of the temperance of shady groves to roughly 25% of
England. By the time Norwich had been initially settled, woodland cover was a
mere 7%.
Only the Black Death of 1349 provided relief for remaining trees (the way many
residents of Northern India would get their first ever glimpse of the Himalayas following Covid-19-induced cessation of auto traffic/pollution). Populations had been
far too decimated to mount further assaults on potential wood products, at least for
a century or two.
15
Speaking to the trends throughout the Middle and Late Middle
Ages, environmental historian Clarence J. Glacken would summarize: “Landscapes
whose appearance reflected new kinds of densities arising out of human choices
replaced the older environment…The age as a whole is marked by the retreat of forest, heath, marsh, and bog, and the creation of new towns….”
16
Crome is remembered for having been one of the first artists in England to actually depict precise species of trees accurately in his works. The sheer diversity of
silva fauna in East Anglia is impressive: 28 primary broadleaf species in Norfolk
County, including Alder, Beech, Horse Chestnut, Wych Elm, Hornbeam, the London
Plane, Black, White, and Lombardy Poplar, Weeping Willow, Rowan, and one of
Crome’s favorites, the Holm Oak, Quercus ilex.
17
This is not surprising given the intense conservation efforts that have always
been focused on the region, with a current 81 conservation areas designated just in
14 In Landscapes after Ruskin – Redefining The Sublime, Hall Art Foundation, Hirmer, Grey Art
NYU Gallery, Reading, Vermont 2016, p. 13.
15 See “A brief history of British woodlands,” Royal Forestry Society, Forestry Commission of
England, 2015, https://www.rfs.org.uk/media/441738/7-a-brief-history-of-british-woodlands.pdf,
Accessed April 20, 2020.
16 See Traces on the Rhodian Shore – Nature And Culture In Western Thought From Ancient Times
To The End Of The Eighteenth Century, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles,
p. 290.
17 http://norfolknaturalists.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Trees_1_broadleaf.pdf.
43.2 A Cosmic Norwich
Beach,” suggests Sternfeld, was “perhaps the first poem of the modern era”…
[Arnold] “seems to know that mass warfare, atomic weaponry, all-pervasive pollution, and a planet struggling to drink and to breathe is coming.”
14
Crome’s day remained indebted to trees not yet subject to cynicism, though the
unbashful historian could not fail to compare the devastations by deforestation
occurring throughout the world’s remaining neotropics to those same impulses for
gain that compelled earlier peoples to inflict massive defoliation. “A brief history
of British woodlands” makes clear that during the Bronze Age (ca. 3800 BC to
40 AD) Neolithic residents began a patchwork of woodland clearance for agriculture that took out at least half of all forests on the British Isles. For 400 subsequent
years, Roman occupation simply added more insult, an ecologically disastrous
segue to the advent of Anglo-Saxon “skilled carpenters” whose machinations further reduced the possibilities of the temperance of shady groves to roughly 25% of
England. By the time Norwich had been initially settled, woodland cover was a
mere 7%.
Only the Black Death of 1349 provided relief for remaining trees (the way many
residents of Northern India would get their first ever glimpse of the Himalayas following Covid-19-induced cessation of auto traffic/pollution). Populations had been
far too decimated to mount further assaults on potential wood products, at least for
a century or two.
15
Speaking to the trends throughout the Middle and Late Middle
Ages, environmental historian Clarence J. Glacken would summarize: “Landscapes
whose appearance reflected new kinds of densities arising out of human choices
replaced the older environment…The age as a whole is marked by the retreat of forest, heath, marsh, and bog, and the creation of new towns….”
16
Crome is remembered for having been one of the first artists in England to actually depict precise species of trees accurately in his works. The sheer diversity of
silva fauna in East Anglia is impressive: 28 primary broadleaf species in Norfolk
County, including Alder, Beech, Horse Chestnut, Wych Elm, Hornbeam, the London
Plane, Black, White, and Lombardy Poplar, Weeping Willow, Rowan, and one of
Crome’s favorites, the Holm Oak, Quercus ilex.
17
This is not surprising given the intense conservation efforts that have always
been focused on the region, with a current 81 conservation areas designated just in
14 In Landscapes after Ruskin – Redefining The Sublime, Hall Art Foundation, Hirmer, Grey Art
NYU Gallery, Reading, Vermont 2016, p. 13.
15 See “A brief history of British woodlands,” Royal Forestry Society, Forestry Commission of
England, 2015, https://www.rfs.org.uk/media/441738/7-a-brief-history-of-british-woodlands.pdf,
Accessed April 20, 2020.
16 See Traces on the Rhodian Shore – Nature And Culture In Western Thought From Ancient Times
To The End Of The Eighteenth Century, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles,
p. 290.
17 http://norfolknaturalists.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Trees_1_broadleaf.pdf.
43.2 A Cosmic Norwich