Ancient Woodland (England)

The inventory identifies over 52,000 ancient woodland sites in England. Ancient woodland is identified using presence or absence of woods from old maps, information about the wood's name, shape, internal boundaries, location relative to other features, ground survey, and aerial photography. The information recorded about each wood and stored on the Inventory Database includes its grid reference, its area in hectares and how much is semi-natural or replanted. Prior to the digitisation of the boundaries, only paper maps depicting each ancient wood at 1:50 000 scale were available. Attribution statement: © Natural England copyright. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right [year].

Data and Resources

Ancient Woodland England - Spatial Metadata.pdfPDF

Ancient Woodland England - Spatial Metadata.pdf download on Defra Data...
Ancient_Woodland.gdb.zipZIP

Ancient_Woodland.gdb.zip download on Defra Data Services Platform
Ancient_Woodland.lyr

Ancient_Woodland.lyr download on Defra Data Services Platform
Ancient_Woodland_Inventory_Handbook.url

Ancient_Woodland_Inventory_Handbook.url download on Defra Data Services Platform
Open_Government_Licence.url

Open_Government_Licence.url download on Defra Data Services Platform
AncientWoodlandEngland_WMS

Ancient Woodland (England) WMS
AncientWoodlandEngland_Download

Download data by area of interest
AncientWoodlandEngland_WFS

Ancient Woodland (England) WFS
ArcGIS Open Dataset record page

ArcGIS Open Dataset record page
Guidance documentsZIP

Guidance documents
Ancient_Woodland_(England)_ESRI_REST_Feature_Server_Endpoint

Ancient Woodland (England) ESRI REST Feature Server Endpoint
OGC API - Features service

OGC API - Features service

Additional Info

Field	Value
Last Updated	July 3, 2025, 13:44 (UTC)
Created	December 19, 2016, 15:43 (UTC)