Locked in ice for more than twenty thousand years, the lands that now make up Britain and Ireland were some of the last settled by humans. The earliest people, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers like Cheddar Man, arrived around eleven thousand years ago to find dense forests. While they lived lightly, they did introduce fire, which they used to create clearings, and this was the beginning of the reshaping of Britain’s forests.

When Neolithic farmers migrated to Britain from Europe some six thousand years ago, it meant a violent end to the hunter-gatherers’ way of life. It also indicated a dramatic change for the ecosystems. Forests were cleared for fields, trees and plants fed to livestock and predators hunted. A wild, forested world became one of agriculture and villages.

As humans learned to work bronze, then iron, they also used wood in myriad ways, building homes, then cathedrals, hand tools then furniture and early machines, boats and eventually immense ships. The forests