That may be about to end. Seven Wents is part of Oaken Wood, 40 hectares (100 acres) of which is all but condemned to be razed. Developers want the stone beneath. Kent county council, led by Reform, this month voted to include it in their mineral sites plan. That makes it a potential site of expansion for the quarry next door.<\/p>\n
The council said its decision does not yet amount to planning permission<\/a> \u2013 the plan needs government approval before that can happen. However, it does mean that they have identified the ground beneath the forest as an essential source of stone for building and restoration projects. Now, campaigners are on the march.<\/p>\n Rachel Rodwell, Allison Sweetman, Julie Read and Brontie Ansell walk through Oaken Wood. Photograph: Graeme Robertson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Continuously wooded since at least 1600, Oaken Wood is a plantation on ancient woodland site (paws), which means it is the site of an ancient forest that has been replanted. For centuries it has been worked as a sweet chestnut coppice, with whole sections felled in rotation, allowing the stumps to regrow.<\/p>\n The sun shone almost directly overhead, but the air was cool beneath the forest canopy. Sweetman, who knows the wood intimately and is a Green party councillor for the local area, led the way through green corridors flanked by almost impenetrable stands of plantation forest to another recently coppiced site.<\/p>\n With her were Rachel Rodwell, also a Green councillor; Julie Read, a campaigner; and Brontie Ansell, the managing director of Lawyers for Nature, who has been supporting their campaign to save the woods.<\/p>\n \u201cIt takes about seven years before they\u2019re ready to be coppiced again,\u201d Sweetman said. \u201cAnd in the time they grow they\u2019re actually absorbing more carbon from the atmosphere than a fully grown tree \u2026 Likewise their roots continue to grow, and that absorbs the surface water from rain.\u201d<\/p>\n Whole sections of the wood are felled in rotation allowing stumps to regrow and as they do so absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than a fully grown tree. Photograph: Graeme Robertson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The wood is also a critical ecological site, supporting wildlife including dormice, nightjars and owls. Alongside the sweet chestnut coppices stand veteran trees, including old oaks. Bluebells and other wildflowers bloom here. The soil itself, bound by a mycorrhizal network that has built up over aeons, is a seed bank and a carbon sink, says Kent Wildlife Trust<\/a>.<\/p>\n It is what is beneath the soil that developers want. Kentish ragstone has been quarried since at least the time of the Romans and was the building block of Roman London. Kent county council says it is crucial for the conservation of ancient buildings, including the Tower of London and Canterbury cathedral. Their opponents say it is wrong to place the conservation of the built environment over the conservation of nature. The council declined to comment.<\/p>\n Opponents of the plan to raze the area say it is wrong to place the conservation of the built environment over the conservation of nature. Photograph: Graeme Robertson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n There is little to distinguish Oaken Wood from any other ancient woodland site, said Ansell. \u201cIt\u2019s protected in exactly the same way, legally, because it\u2019s not just about the fact that there\u2019s newish growth of trees,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got all the soils, you\u2019ve got the fungi, you\u2019ve got all of the wildlife.\u201d But, she added: \u201cIt is still irreplaceable. You couldn\u2019t just create this somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n But that is precisely the plan, should development go ahead. Gallagher Group, which runs the Hermitage quarry, said the soil beneath the wood would be \u201ctranslocated and retained\u201d \u2013 dug up and moved elsewhere. The \u201cnon-native\u201d chestnut trees, which have been in the UK since the time of the Roman empire, would be removed and they would \u201cput back more than double the tree planting in restored, native woodland\u201d.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Down to Earth<\/p>\n The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Campaigners are sceptical. \u201cEssentially they lift a lot of the topsoil \u2026 and then they chuck the topsoil down somewhere and go: \u2018There you go, it\u2019s been replaced,\u2019\u201d Ansell said. Rodwell added: \u201cIt\u2019s just treated like garden topsoil. And they forget the interconnectivity. It\u2019s not [just] the soil, it\u2019s a living system.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782402554_536_500.jpg\")
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