Wychwood
The Wychwood, or Wychwood Forest, is an area now covering a small part of rural Oxfordshire. In past centuries the forest covered a much larger area, since cleared in favour of agriculture, villages and towns. However, the forest's area has fluctuated. Parts cleared for agriculture during Britain's centuries under Roman rule later reverted to forest.
The existence of the ancient Wychwood is recognised by the authoritative Victoria County History, but the planned Volume XIX has yet to be completed.
Wychwood is derived from an Old English name Huiccewudu meaning 'wood of a tribe called the Hwicce. The Hwicce were the Anglo-Saxon people living in the area from some time in the 6th century until the assimilation of the Old English peoples into the wider Middle English society.
Early medieval clearings were made to convert forest land to pasture for wool production. Irregular field boundaries in parts of the forest's former area are evidence of mediaeval assarting. Later clearances elsewhere in the former forest area have left more regular field boundaries, as for example in Leafield parish where the area south of the hamlet of Langley was cleared in 1857-58.
