Condé Nast Traveller

Norfolk Bog Oak

After reading The Lost Rainforests of Britain, jeweller Natasha Wightman felt compelled to explore the British Isles. “I discovered the story of incredible giant neolithic oaks that fell when the great floods came,” she says. “Their wood is one of the rarest and densest native materials that we have in Britain. I was captivated by these 7,000-year-old trees, older than Stonehenge and the pyramids, and I wanted to create a collection that drew attention to Britain’s vanished and vanishing landscapes.” These prehistoric, semi-fossilised bog oaks, measuring up to 180 feet long, were part of vast temperate rainforests that once covered parts of East Anglia. Known collectively as the Hemplands Haul, the specimens were discovered in the Norfolk fens in the 1970s by a farmer who recognised their importance. As the technology needed to protect these fragile specimens didn’t yet exist, the trees were reburied and eventually rediscovered, then excavated, dehydrated and preserved in 2022. It’s from here that Wightman sourced the wood for her Lost Forests collection, which was carved by West Sussex-based Graham Heeley. Intricately detailed dioramas depict the wilds of Britain, including ancient Scottish forests, Mount Snowdon and the Netherbeck waterfalls beneath Scafell Pike. The hardness of the bog oak presented its own challenges, requiring specially made tools and “quite some force”, says Heeley, who sculpted low and high reliefs of landscapes long forgotten. Framed by diamonds, emeralds and sapphires, the ebony wood is highlighted with powdered malachite, shell gold and palladium to evoke woodlands, sea and snow, and set into voluminous cuffs, earrings and pendants that can be worn as brooches. “The carvings had to represent something that was as old as the material itself. And because these oaks were giants, the pieces had to reflect something substantial,” says Wightman, who has also directed a short ballet, with music played on rare bog oak instruments, along with a film that draws attention to the conservation of the last one per cent of Britain’s rainforest. “We’re looking at what’s been lost, what still remains, and what we’re doing to protect it. The bog oak is a bridge between past and present.”