21.05.2026 - Indoor Meeting : Foxley Wood & Wood Norton

Speaker: Will Russell
Report by: Steph Plaster

On a lovely May evening we heard from Will Russell, the Woods and Heaths Manager for Norfolk Wildlife Trust, who spoke to the group about Foxley Wood and the newly acquired site at Wood Norton. Will started his talk by giving some background information about the NWT reserve sites and advised that although there are 42 well known reserves, in reality there are around 70 or so as some are very small or have no public access. One of the smallest sites is the Hethel Old Thorn, an impressive ancient hawthorn tree reputed to date back to the 13th century!

Will and the Woods and Heath team are based at Foxley and the swathe of central Norfolk they manage reaches down from Holt and Buxton in the north and east to Wayland Wood just south of Watton. He said there were eight different reserve teams at the NWT including Coastal, three teams for the Broads, Urban (Sweetbriar and BCP), a Brecks team and a West Norfolk Team that covers Roydon Common and the Dersingham area.
Will’s team care for and manage four ancient woodland sites including Thursford Wood, a small wood containing old, pollarded oaks and a good variety of other species; Ashwelthorpe near Wymondham, a wood coppice with standards; Honeypot wood near Wendling which contains coppiced hazel and is good for spring flowers and the much larger Wayland wood. There are also four large heaths at Marsham and Cawston, plus Holt Lowes and Buxton, some of which have a unique mire system - a rich habitat for plants. Hoes and roughs also come under their jurisdiction with lots of smaller sites like Hoe Rough, Potters Fen, Booton Common and Rush Meadows, a small area near Dereham sewage works that is a great spot for flowers and birds.
The main wood Will looked at was the ancient Foxley Wood - the largest area of ancient woodland left in the county (around 123 ha) which has remained virtually the same size for centuries as recorded
on Faden’s map of Norfolk.
Foxley Wood was mapped by William Faden, geographer to King George III, in August 1797 - the shape of the wood is almost the same today - but sadly the contents are not. In the 1960’s era of mass
destruction they did not think twice about obliterating our countryside. Some bright spark in the Forestry Commission thought it was a good idea to rip out the ancient oaks in Foxley and then to add insult to injury decided to defoliate the wood with Agent Orange! This was a terrible chemical defoliant used in Vietnam during the unedifying, prolonged and pointless conflict that blighted the lives of a whole a generation.
Luckily for us, Foxley wood, which could be over 10,000 years old according to Will, survived man’s horrendous 1960’s assault and is now being carefully managed by the Trust to enhance, nurture and increase the current woodland, plants and wildlife found there. The wood is a rich mix of habitats and has some spectacular butterfly species living here, plus in spring the northern part of the wood is
covered in a carpet of bluebells. The soil structure in the wood is mixed with it predominantly being on Norfolk ‘claylands’, but the top of the wood is some 20 or so metres higher than the southern most part and is more sandy. The bottom wetter zone contains a lot of Sallow and Alder and as you progress north to the plateau area more oak and birch trees are apparent. Will also looked at the issues facing Foxley and the main one today is tree disease as Ash dieback has killed thousands of Ash trees in Norfolk and the wider UK, plus there is acute oak decline, but also the vast, unmanaged deer population - estimated to be at 1.5 to 2 million animals which is a serious risk to native woodland. Grey squirrels are also a big problem as we know. They have had to put in a lot of deer fencing at Foxley and this is very costly so the need for deer management in Norfolk is very apparent if we want to really protect our ancient woods. At Foxley the main woodland management is coppicing - an ancient woodland system that cuts back young tree stems or rods on a regular rotation of between 7 to 20 years depending on the species. Hazel is the main species managed in this manner at Foxley and is rotated around a 15-year cycle. They try to sell the coppiced material locally for hedge laying stakes and binders - plus coppiced wood can be made in charcoal or used for bean sticks and poles. Coppicing is a fantastic form of harvesting a natural regenerating material and has been carried out for thousands of years. Coppiced woodland is a rich habitat - full of flowers and wildlife. Species found at Foxley include Blackcap, Garden warbler, Butterfly orchids, Dog’s mercury, Herb Paris, Purple emperor and White admiral butterflies and other tree species include the rare Wild service- tree, Field maple, Small-leaved lime and Midland hawthorn. The Trust has also acquired Foxley North and Foxley Far North - two arable areas that will be planted with the 100 Oak trees grown by Patrick Barkham. The aim is to increase the size of the woodland area and the ‘missing patch’ of woodland at the southern end has also been taken into the Trust’s management too. Will also touched briefly on the new Manor Farm at Wood Norton - 336 acres of farmland that will be improved and rewilded to help increase biodiversity. The stream here known as Norton Beck will be returned to a more natural profile with bends and features to slow the water down. This will encourage more wildlife and plants. As this is a new acquisition there are not many details about public access to the site - so that is all for the future - but it was a very interesting talk from Will. Will showed us the map of Wood Norton farm site which is hopefully somewhere the group can visit in the future.