Coldfall Wood is anancient woodland inMuswell Hill,North London. It covers an area of approximately 14 hectares (35 acres) and is surrounded bySt Pancras and Islington Cemetery, theEast Finchley public allotments, and the residential streets Creighton Avenue and Barrenger Road. It is the site of the discoveries which first led to the recognition that glaciation had once reached southern England. It was declared alocal nature reserve in 2013,[1] and is also aSite of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation, Grade 1.[2][3]
TheLondon Borough of Haringey contains four ancient woods:Highgate Wood,Queen's Wood, Coldfall Wood, andBluebell Wood.[4] All are shown onJohn Rocque's 1754 Map ofMiddlesex.[citation needed]
Until the early 20th century Coldfall Wood was more than twice its current size, reaching south to the properties borderingFortis Green.[5] The southern section was felled and partially excavated for gravel, before being used for residential development and the sites ofTollington and William Grimshaw schools (laterFortismere School). Tollington first rented and felled part of the wood for a sports field in the 1920s[6] and subsequently moved to a new building on the site. William Grimshaw was built later to the north.
Coldfall Wood was purchased in 1930 byHornsey Council and the remaining section is now owned and managed by its successor, theLondon Borough of Haringey. It is bounded to the north bySt Pancras and Islington Cemetery and Muswell Hill Sports Ground (formerlyFinchley Common). Its western boundary is the boundary line between the London Boroughs ofBarnet andHaringey. This western boundary and its northern boundaries are demarcated by the remains of an ancient woodbank with a ditch on the outer side. This would have prevented grazing animals from the surroundingFinchley Common andHorseshoe Farm (as they then were) from entering the wood and destroying the young coppice.
Coldfall Wood has been examined in some detail by Silvertown (1978), who used historical sources to show that the woodlands are likely to be of primary origin (i.e. continuously present since prehistoric times).[7]
In March 2011, the Friends of Coldfall Wood launched anonline interactive map that included historical maps of the area overlaid on a modern streetmap, showing how the wood has dwindled in size since 1864.
Like the other localancient woodlands in the area, the wood is dominated byoak standards, but theunderstorey is much less diverse and consists of almost pure stands of multi-stemmed, overgrownhornbeamcoppice.Beech,hazel,mountain ash andwild service tree are all rare, though there are some fine specimens of the last species.
Little light penetrates to the woodland floor in the most wooded places and large areas of the wood are devoid of either shrub, field or ground layers of vegetation. Consequently, parts of the wood can present a dark and gloomy appearance in the summer months. Nevertheless, in the few glade areas, caused by the collapse of an occasional canopy tree, or by more recent coppicing, the flora is of considerable interest.Pill sedge hangs on in its only known Haringey site, and tiny populations ofcow-wheat, slenderSt John's wort,wood anemone, andheath speedwell manage to survive, though they seldom flower.
An area of approximately oneacre was cut in the north-western corner of the wood in December 1990 with the assistance of theBritish Trust for Conservation Volunteers, theFriends of Coldfall Wood, and the Haringey Branch of theLondon Wildlife Trust. The felled hornbeam poles were cut, stacked on site, and allowed to decay in situ to provide deadwood habitat for the benefit ofinvertebrates andfungi. Brushwood was used to construct adead hedge around the coppice. This has protected the area from trampling, both by dogs and humans, and will hopefully provide a nesting habitat forwrens and other woodland birds. Regrowth from the cut hornbeam stools has been encouraging with a maximum growth of two metres being recorded by the end of 1991.
The vegetational succession following the coppice is being carefully monitored by means of permanent quadrats. In the first year after coppicing, more than seventy species of flowering plant have been recorded here – a gratifying increase from the original flora of a mere six species. The newcomers includeheath groundsel, which is unknown elsewhere in the Borough, suggesting the possibility that its seed may have lain dormant in the soil since the last coppice was cut before the Second World War. Ring counts of the coppice poles suggest that this was done about sixty years ago. The majority of new plants, however, will have colonised from outside and many of the arrivals are widespreadruderal species typical of disturbed open habitats, such asmugwort,sow-thistles andwillowherbs.Rosebay willowherb dominates much of the area. A hundred years ago this was a rare plant in southernEngland and it was recorded from Coldfall Wood as early as 1901 (Kent 1975). The appearance ofSumatran fleabane was not entirely unexpected, for it has spread rapidly throughout Haringey since first being recorded from the Borough in 1985 (Wurzell 1988). It is also present in North Wood. There can be few other ancient woods in Britain that include this subtropical species in their flora.
The wood lies on the northern margin of the glacial ridge that forms Muswell Hill. The surviving section of the wood lies onLondon Clay overlain byhead. To the immediate west and south this is overlain by gravels of a former course of the Thames, capped by glacialtill ofAnglian age.[8] It was here in 1835 thatN. T. Wetherell discovered a strange mixture of rocks and fossils normally found in the north of England that led to the subsequent recognition of glacial deposits in southern England.[9]
Coldfall Wood was selected as one of six "Flagship Woods" in the whole of London, to be included as part of the "Capital Woodlands Project" application to theHeritage Lottery Fund (HLF) which was prepared by a range of partners, including theGreater London Authority, theForestry Commission, and several London Boroughs including Haringey. The bid was taken forward byTrees for Cities.
The improvement programme consisted of the following projects, completed over a three-year period.
51°35′49″N00°09′33″W / 51.59694°N 0.15917°W /51.59694; -0.15917
