Alice Holt Forest

The first part of the name, Alice, is believed to be most likely derived from Ælfsige, Bishop of Winchester in AD 984, whose see (or diocese) had rights over the forest, and was responsible for the land on behalf of the king.

It lies in the Gault clay vale that separates the chalk ridge which runs between Farnham and Alton from the malmstone (Greensand) hills or "hangers" (from the Old English hangra, wood on a steep slope) around Binsted.

It occupies a low plateau with steeply sloping edges where deposits of stony Pleistocene drift, the remnants of ancient pre-glacial river terrace of the "Proto-Wey", overlie the heavy, wet Gault.

In the 18th century the celebrated naturalist, Gilbert White, who lived nearby at Selborne, contrasted Alice Holt with the adjacent Woolmer Forest.

He noted 'Though these two forests are only parted by a narrow range of enclosures, yet no two soils can be more different; for the Holt consists of a strong loam, of a miry nature, carrying a good turf, and abounding with oaks that grow to be large timber; while Woolmer is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren waste', consisting 'entirely of sand covered with heath and fern...without having one standing tree in the whole extent'.

Occasional Mesolithic flints show early hunter-gatherers utilised the Forest, and although there are a few Iron Age tumuli (burial mounds), the area seems to have been sparsely populated prior to the Roman period, on account of its unsuitability for farming.

From the 1770s onwards the Alice Holt and Woolmer forests were required to devote themselves primarily to producing oak for the Royal Navy, though they had been neglected and their trees were past their prime.

The Lieutenant of the Forest was dismissed in 1811 and four years later the Office of Woods initiated a massive re-planting programme on 1,600 acres (650 ha) of Alice Holt, all oaks.

Records of traffic in oak timber during the Napoleonic Wars indicate that the logs were taken not to Portsmouth, the nearest port, but 10 miles (16 km) overland to the River Wey at Godalming, Surrey, whence they were shipped or floated down to the Thames dockyards in London.