5lab

Few photos of the site below

thanks all. I went back to the woods today armed with some videos on identifying ash dieback and it seems its in full swing - there's young growth coming out of the trunks on maybe half the trees, and a significant proportion have almost no discernable "crown" - just a tall trunk with a few large branches at the top. Given all that, and the advice on here, we've decided not to go ahead with it for now

no access inside. To the northern edge is a field and within that field (not close to the land) is a bridleway, but not within the distance a tree could fall Its an ancient woodland so the trees are all sorts of ages. I imagine a whole bunch of them grew after the '87 storm, but its all a mix of sizes. I'm not knowledgeable enough to identify what all the trees are in winter, but have access to the forest management plan which shows the various ratios per sector of the woods - most of them ash is way above 80%, there's a whole load of other things (Sycamore, beech, etc) mixed in in small proportions the SSSI is mostly (90%) grassland - the woods were designated because they helped provide a breeding area for birds. So the fact its Ash is (I don't think) particularly relevent. That said, SSSI will make it really hard to figure out what's allowed/necessary. We weren't really looking to buy a woods (I always kinda wanted one, but wasn't seriously looking) - the reason we took this seriously is that its within walking distance of our house. The real value is somewhere for our 2 (currently small) boys to grow up playing in, and if its mostly going to be ash and falling branches, it doesn't feel like this meets that need. Appreciate all the help

Thanks for the replies. My thoughts around replanting were more - if the site is covered in large fallen trees on a sketchy slope, physically getting to where you want to plant things would be a nightmare? Extracting the dead wood would be difficult - my understanding is that natural england don't like the use of heavy machinery on SSSI woodland floor (fair enough) and I'm not carrying it all out by hand There's lots of scrub locally along the south downs, so if it will go like that for a decade or so then grow into a young woods, I can picture that in my mind - assuming 1-in-5 trees survives (as some aren't ash and some ash will make it) I guess it won't be completely empty anyway. I was trying to figure out if the differing resistance on a tree-by-tree basis means that some will last, say, 3 years before being dead and others will last 20, meaning the area never looks very "un-woods-y", but it doesn't seem like that would be the case. I appreciate there will always be some plants there, but (in my opinion) 20 acres of scrubland isn't as nice as 20 acres of woodland to hang out in, so it might not be for me

I'm considering purchasing a wood near here (south downs). It's on a steep slope and in an SSSI so there's no commercial value, it was going to be just to enjoy. Today I realised the trees are 90% ash. Being in the south east there's loads of dieback around, and it's safe to say this wood probably has loads. Reading reports it seems like it's going to kill 90+% of the ash at some point but I can't figure out what that will look like. Due to the steepness of the site (I'd guess it averages a 20% slope), both felling and manually replanting the majority of it would be fairly unfeasible - but will it die slowly enough that new natural growth will take over (there's a few sycamores in a corner), or will it just be a barren wasteland for 30 years? Ta for any help