History of the Childhood Wood
The Childhood Wood was created in Sherwood Forest in 1993, when the Society for Mucopolysaccharide Diseases (the MPS Society) was granted a licence to plant a wood of oak saplings cloned from the forest’s Great Oak as part of the Forestry Commission’s Sherwood Initiative.
The idea behind the project came from members of the Society, when we asked them how they would like to commemorate the lives of the children they had lost to MPS and related diseases.
In the first year, nearly 150 saplings were planted at a ceremony attended by the Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, representatives of Nottinghamshire County Council and the Forestry Commission, the local MP and several TV celebrities. The first sapling was planted by the Rt Hon Michael Howard, who was then Secretary of State for the Environment.
In recent years, the MPS Society has received grants to develop and enhance the Wood including the erection of memory and information boards, picnic areas and wooden animals.
The Legacy
‘We are acutely aware of how little time we spend on this planet. What we do now is left as a legacy to our children and their children. We have a responsibility to leave the earth a better place then when we found it. If the Childhood Wood helps a little, then all those children who have been born with MPS will have helped in their own way.’
Annual events
Working together
Further information and directions
