A place in the country: meet the new woodlanders

If you go down to the woods today... you might find a school, a photographer's studio, or a carpenter's workshop. Britain's forests are getting a new lease of life

In the stillness of autumn, the only sound on the old Saxon road is the gentle tapping of beech nuts falling on a carpet of terracotta-coloured leaves. "You must meet Robert Cunningham - he's tremendous," says Kathy Harris, pausing to touch the huge trunk of a venerable beech tree. Harris knows all the ancient trees in this 25-acre wood as individuals. There is also a decaying ash called Cecelia and a beech with two trunks: one has thrown out a limb to fuse with the other, like twins holding hands. There are badgers, rare bats, otters and water rails. A bonfire crackles with burning holly and, as dusk falls, a tawny owl hoots.

Harris is one of a growing number of small woodland owners in Britain - a market for resellers, who buy big forests and subdivide them into "affordable" four- or five-acre plots. One, woodlands.co.uk, has sold more than 625 plots in the past four years. Prices range from 39,000 for six acres in Wales to 95,000 for a similar plot in Hampshire. The reasons for becoming a woodlander are varied and often idealistic, but the Mark Twain quote "Buy land - they're not making it any more" usually lurks somewhere in the background. Large forests may be the preserve of tax-dodging multimillionaires (if a wood is managed commercially, harvesting timber, it is exempt from inheritance tax), but most woodlanders are a long way from being able to run a commercial operation.