Savernake Forest stands on a Cretaceous chalk plateau between Marlborough and Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire, England.

The valleys within the forest, of which there are four, are all dry, and the presence of Cretaceous deposits of Clay-with-Flints creates the damp, heavy soils suited to dense cover of oak and beech.

The head of the family (Sir John Seymour) was used to welcoming Henry VIII to the forest, where the king was very keen on deer-hunting.

After the execution of Anne Boleyn in May 1536, they were subsequently married, and Jane was crowned Queen just months later, causing the head of the family at Savernake to suddenly find himself father-in-law to Henry VIII.

Thomas Bruce, 2nd Earl of Ailesbury, as head of the family, made a great success, and had risen at Court to be Governor to the King George IV.

He employed Lancelot 'Capability' Brown to plant great beech avenues in Savernake Forest, which was then some 40,000 acres (160 km2), nearly ten times its present size.

A stone column[4] some 90 feet (27 m) high was erected by Lord Ailesbury as an impressive viewpoint at the end of a vista from Tottenham House.

[5] Re-planting with conifer plantations was modest by 1950s' standards, and today the Forestry Commission has engaged in a programme more sympathetic to the restoration and preservation of the ancient trees.

David Brudenell-Bruce, 9th Marquess of Ailesbury is the current and thirty-first warden of Savernake Forest, having been handed the wardenship by his father in 1987.

), where farmland occurs as clearings in a wider forest, creating a distinctive and memorable, 'secret' landscape [10] Capability Brown worked out a strategy for linking coppices with oak plantings, lining forest trails with beech trees, and providing vistas with "proper objects" on which the eye might rest.

"[11] As times changed, and social expectations altered, a later warden George Frederick was eager to show off his forest.

Included among the 778,000 trees he planted were a high proportion of softwoods, placed outside the forest's core (e.g.: Birch Copse in the SE).

This warden was too deeply imbued with tradition to contemplate industrialized forestry but he was the first of his family to introduce a measure of systematic management of larch and spruce plantations.

Chandos Bruce, the sixth marquess, did everything possible to carry on with this combination of systematic management and concern for amenity and symbolic representation.

Eventually, however, he found the burden too heavy due to increasing costs, Lloyd George's taxes on inherited wealth, and the impossibility of hiring enough labour during and after the First World War.

In 1930 he approached the government Forestry Commission but drew back when he recognised that surrendering control would probably bring on an invasion by ranks of straight-backed conifers.

Eight years later the commission became more open to the suggestion that recreational uses might be as legitimate as commercial ones and agreed to the special conditions the sixth marquess had stubbornly laid down.

As a result, after 800 years of wardenship, the family surrendered control and the public, because of Lord Ailesbury's dedication, gained a handsome amenity.

A coppice is a wood where broad-leaved trees, typically hazel, grow out of the stumps or "stools" left from previous cuttings.

In other cases the bough weight (an outward force) begins to tear the lower trunk apart creating a cavity which can over decades become cavernous in size.

Big Belly is one of Fifty Great British Trees named and honoured as part of the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations.

[16] Such controlled grazing should recreate the naturally open glades ideal for the ancient oak and beech and their specialist lichen and fungal communities, as well as rare woodland and grassland flora; the exact wildlife features for which Savernake Forest is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

On the hilltop is a small Forestry Commission Camp Site – Postern Hill Campsite – together with a public car park and barbecue area.

After crossing the Grand Avenue the valley runs into Red Vein Bottom (grid reference SU219676) with its rough pasture and rabbit warrens.

The path from Red Vein Bottom skirts the Ashdale Firs and passes some huge beeches before arriving at the Amity Oak (grid reference SU232675), an old tree which serves as a parish boundary marker.

The third valley starts near the column at Three Oak Hill Drive (grid reference SU231662) which, despite its name, has fine stands of beech and also of Scots pine.

The Grand Avenue continues southeast to Eight Walks (grid reference SU225668) where Capability Brown laid out the hub to Savernake's eight radial drives.