URPoint Details
The trails in this forest are not waymarked.
The wood is of great value to wildlife, especially the plants which flower in the light along side the rides. Stokepark conceals the site of a Roman villa and was inhabited until 1940's as recorded by John Boyden in his wartime memoirs.
"Most people lived in decent little cottages, many with thatched roofs, but some people lived in extreme conditions. None was more extreme than those two old ladies who lived in a very dank part of the woods behind the churchyard. This house must have disappeared by now. Certainly by 1954, when I last walked through these woods, not much of it was left. But when I was a small child, this strange little house, surrounded if I remember correctly with redcurrant bushes, had much of the atmosphere of a gingerbread house. There was no electricity and no piped water, they had a well and were, presumably, on the list of clients for Charley's scent cart. What these old people lived on, or how they scratched their income, still intrigues me".
- Type:
- Parks