Landscape and environment 1300 up to 1350

Glassworks for manufacturing profitable forest glass from indigenous quartz sand required very high temperatures for the melting process, and these could only be achieved using hard wood. Large numbers of oaks and beech trees were chopped down and used as fuel.

Due to the high profits it generated, the “right to wood” in the forests was a privilege of landlords – the dukes and landed gentry. The theft of wood from fallen branches and trees that had toppled down was heavily punished as “wood crime.”