Richard Williamson Nature Trails October 21

Where have all the fairies gone? Those Sylvans, Dryads and Naiads that flicker on the edge of men's minds, in the gloaming and the shadows of half sleep... well, I have just found out.

Apparently they were driven out of the weald woods by the iron industry during Tudor times.

That had never occurred to me. But when you think about it, you can see how such sensitive and delicate creatures would be unable to exist with vast destructive forces.

One hundred and thirteen furnaces each requiring three square miles of trees to fuel them destroyed Anderida, their ancestral home.

Even the navy were troubled, as the oaks for Britain’s ‘wooden walls’ went as ‘maidens’ (half-grown) into the blast furnaces.

This week’s walk passes one of the best remaining relics of these momentous times in our history.

I also went to the open day of the Fernhurst Furnace Trust who with Lottery Funding and donations are desperately trying to maintain the dam to the hammer pond and all the network of sluices which channelled water to drive the gigantic bellows and hammers.