Earliest image in our feature on the Millennium Wood.
‘During the morning of 9 December, hundreds of villagers donned their boots, grabbed a spade, crossed the A40, and planted a couple of trees each on a 13-acre field opposite the Evenlode restaurant. The site had been bought by The Woodland Trust as part of its 'Woods on your Doorstep' project, to create 200 new woods around towns and villages in the country by the millennium. In fact Eynsham's was the 200th!
‘Most of the 9000 trees planted are broad-leaved species such as oak, ash and field maple, wild cherry and crab apple, all of which grow well in the area and were abundant in the ancient Wychwood Forest which extended more or less to here. Other trees and shrubs to be planted along the edges of the paths and rides include disease-resistant elm, walnut, bullace, hazel, spindle, hawthorn, blackthorn, buckthorn and wild privet. Some areas of hazel are intended to be coppiced to meet the demands of local craftsmen for their hurdles, thatching spars, pea sticks and so on.
‘The central glade will include a 'group of locally distinctive fruit trees', and it would be good if one or more of F.W.Wastie's apple trees could be resurrected to this end’.
Extract from The Eynsham Record 18, 2001
Ten years later: read the Eynsham Society update