page_title: Little Birch
section_title: Landmarks
hierarchical_section_title: Little Birch / Landmarks
caption_attribution_description: English: Sunset in Athelstans Wood
context_page_description: Little Birch is a hamlet and civil parish in Herefordshire, England. It is approximately 5 miles south from the city and county town of Hereford and 7 miles north-west from the market town of Ross-on-Wye. The parish is significant for its Grade II* listed church, and Athelstan Wood, formerly anciently managed but now largely coniferised.
context_section_description: There are five listed buildings in the parish. The 1869 Anglican Church of St Mary by W. Chick on Ruff Lane is rated Grade II*, its churchyard gate piers and walls, again possibly 1869 by W. Chick, being Grade II.
  Other Grade II buildings are 1 mile (2 km) south-east from the church at Cider Mill Farm on the Wriggle Brook, being the 17th-century and later New Mills Farmhouse, with its associated 1801-dated barn, and granary with former cider house, both c.1800, and a store at the time of listing.
  At the north-east centre of the parish is Athelstans (or Athelstan's) Wood, rectilinear of 1,200 yards (1,000 m) by 800 yards (700 m) and extending to all but 100 yards (90 m)  across the parish. The wood is conjoined at north to Rough Hill Wood in Aconbury parish. Athelstans Wood, named after Athelstan, Bishop of Hereford (died 1056), became a royal wood along with Aconbury Wood and Harewood. Aconbury Priory was established by King John, who gave priory nuns felling and selling rights to Athelstans Wood. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, the woods became the property of the Scudamore family, who until at least the 18th century coppiced the wood to make charcoal for fueling forges, while oak bark was used in the leather tanning process. The extent and characteristics of the wood remained the same from this time until after the Second World War, witnessed by aerial photographic evidence of 1946. Before felling from the 1950s, making room for the wide commercial coniferisation of the 1970s approved by the Forestry Commission, the woods were of lime and ash, with "oak and sweet chestnut trees and the sheets of bluebells and wood anemones under the coppice".
caption: Athelstans Wood
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