History

The history of the wood is not well documented. It is shown almost the same outline as today, on faden’s map of 1797, on a map of 1805 and on the Hockering tithe award map of 1839. An extent of the manor of Hockering drawn up in 1316 refers to the ‘capital messuage, a park, a wood called Swynehagh and a little wood.’ Faden shows ‘Swinnow Wood’ as a seperatee area of woodland, to the north, which had disappeared by the nineteeenth century. However,, the 1805 map explicitly labels ‘Hockering or Swinnow Wood’, so it was clearly an alternative name for Hockering Wood itself.

By the eighteenth century the wood formed part of the Berney estate, centred on Morton Hall, and was leased by john Berney to John Curson for 15 years in 1740 and for 11 years in 1744. On the break-up of the Berney estate in 1923 the wood was sold (for £12,050, a substantial sum), thee sales catalogue s describing how it contained oak, larch, Scots pines, Douglas fir, ‘mixed timber’ and a ‘quantity of underwood, some of which is fit to be cut.’ During the second world war the wood was used as a Forward Ammunition Dump. Many of the rides weree concreted and largee numbers of bomb storage areas created. In 1956 the wood was acquired by Captain Hutton. Around two thirds of the woods still retained mixed coppice of small-leafed lime and hazel, and over large areas he singled the lime stools, which soon overtopped the hazel and suppressed their growth.