Frith Wood

Frith Wood runs along the ridge between the Painswick and Slad valleys, south-east of Painswick and above Stroud, in the Five Valleys. Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust looks after its 24 hectares as a nature reserve; it is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and the ridge has been recorded as beech woodland for more than a thousand years.

History

Frith Wood is ancient woodland, and the Trust says it has been beech wood for over a millennium. The great trees standing now are younger: they are thought to have grown from Belgian seed planted in the early 1800s. The Trust leased the wood from 1966 and bought it outright in 1987.

How the wood is managed

To keep trees of every age, and so the light and the plants that need it, the Trust and its volunteers coppice parts of the wood, and they are opening out and widening the glades. There are no grazing animals.

What to see

Spring is the time: bluebells and wild garlic carpet the floor in April and May, with woodruff, one of the plants that marks ancient woodland.

• Rarer woodland plants: wood barley, white helleborine and yellow bird's-nest, a plant with no green leaves that lives off fungi in the leaf litter.
• Butterflies and moths in the glades: silver-washed fritillary, holly blue, comma and the scarlet tiger moth.
• The bulin snail, Ena montana, a rare woodland snail recorded here.
• Great spotted woodpeckers and jackdaws in the canopy, and many fungi, common inkcap among them, in autumn.
• The tall beeches themselves, two centuries old, on the steep slopes of the ridge.

Visiting

Frith Wood is open all year and free. The slopes are steep and the paths run across them on a diagonal, uneven and up to 10% in gradient, so wear boots. Dogs must be kept on a lead. There are no facilities in the wood; the nearest cafés and toilets are in Painswick, about a mile away by road. Come in late April and early May for the bluebells, or in October for the beech leaves and the fungi.

Getting there

Frith Wood is about 5km north-east of Stroud on the B4070 through Slad. Park free at Bulls Cross, where the B4070 meets Yokehouse Lane, or in the large layby beside it; the Trust gives GL6 7QT for the south entrance and GL6 7QS for the north. From Painswick, follow Tibbiwell Lane and Greenhouse Lane up to Yokehouse Lane. On foot, the Laurie Lee Wildlife Way starts at the Bulls Cross layby and comes back through the wood at the end.

Nearby

The other Trust reserves on the same walk are Snows Farm at the head of the Slad valley and Swift's Hill above Slad, each about a mile away by the Trust’s reckoning, and Laurie Lee is buried at Holy Trinity, Slad. In Painswick are St Mary's Church, the Falcon Inn and The Painswick hotel, with Painswick Beacon above the town. For another bluebell wood, try Standish Wood on the scarp.