North Yorkshire‘s Mulgrave Estate is set to plant a whole 300,000 trees over 500 acres of land in a new pioneering woodland project. Phase One of the project will cover the Glaisdale and Egton parishes in what will be one of the largest private woodland creation projects in the North.
Located in the North Yorkshire near Sandsend, the Mulgrave Estate extends over 6,000 hectres with 1,000 hectres of woodland and forestry currently.
Robert Childerhouse, Mulgrave’s estate manager, said: “This is probably one of the largest private woodland creation projects in the North East and is something the estate is very passionate about, with woodland currently making up some 16 per cent of the estate’s 15,000 acre area.”
He said that the consultation that will take place on the 12th March between 3pm and 7pm “will enable us to share our revised plans with residents and obtain their views. It’s very important to us that the public are kept informed about what we are planning and what we are hoping to achieve with our new woodland.
He continued: “We received pretty good feedback from our previous public meeting, which was also held at Egton Village Hall, but we have revised our plans to take into account comments from residents and statutory authorities.
“Our estate woodland is used for both commercial timber production as well as amenity and conservation. We have a very successful firewood business and we employ four foresters on the estate. Mulgrave Woods at Sandsend are open on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays throughout the year, except in May when the birds are nesting.”
The drop-in consultations will take place at Egton Village Hall and once the final consent of the Forestry Commission has been given the first trees will be planted this winter.
The Mulgrave Estate woodland project is not the only going on at the minute. Work has resumed on the huge project that aims for 100,000’s of trees to be planted in the Yorkshire Dales to create a huge native woodland spreading from coast to coast. The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority has commenced work on the creation of 43 hectares of native woodland this winter.
The the third year of the funding scheme called ‘Grow Back Greener’, 12 sites are working to create what will be known as the Nothern Forest. It’s expected that a further 550 hectares of woodland this winter in the National Park meaning they’re on course to meet the target of creating an average of 600 hectares of woodland each year with the aim of increasing the area of woodland in the National Park from 4% to 7% by 2030, according to the Yorkshire Dales website.
About Mulgrave Estate
The Mulgrave Estate came into the Phipps family in the early part of the 18th Century, from lands belonging to John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham. The first house there was constructed by his Duchess, Lady Katherine Darnley, the illegitimate daughter of James II. She left the Estate to her daughter by her first husband, The Earl of Anglesey: Catherine Annesley, who married William Phipps. We have no pictures of this building, except for some tiny images on early 18th Century maps. These show a rectangular three-storey house with a single, lower, two storey extension to the left (looking from the sea).
In the late 1780s, Constantine John Phipps, 2nd Baron Mulgrave, engaged Sir John Soane, the architect, to remodel and enlarge the mansion. Soane built two new wings and completely reconstructed the interior of the original house, to produce a handsome pedimented Georgian residence in 1786-7. The middle part of the present-day building, with somewhat smaller windows, is what remains of the original house. Though Soane’s drawing names it Mulgrave Hall, it had been re-named Mulgrave Castle before 1792. Accordingly, the architect William Atkinson added battlements to the roof in 1804-5. By the 1840s the baronial front hall and towers that we see today had gone up, in response to the Gothicizing enthusiasms of the time.
Mulgrave Estate and Counting Carbon
Carbon seems to be the up and coming currency within world markets. Saving and holding carbon to prevent it being released into the atmosphere is a clear priority to reduce the effects of global warming. At Mulgrave Estate, they are contributing to the effort to reduce carbon emissions in a variety of ways. Planning trees from local seed sources, storing rainwater, installing renewable energy, grip blocking to rewet the moor and switching to electric vehicles are all commitments they have made to reduce their emissions in the last 2 years.
They have also recently carried out a carbon audit of their home farm which gives an indication of where they can improve their performance. The estate is committed to carbon capturing and storage wherever this is possible and feasible.
Tree Weaver 