Hatfield Forest is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Essex, three miles east of Bishop's Stortford. It is also a National Nature Reserve and a Nature Conservation Review site. It is owned and managed by the National Trust. A medieval warren in the forest is a Scheduled Monument. Hatfield is the only remaining intact Royal Hunting Forest and dates from the time of the Norman kings. Other parts of the once extensive Forest of Essex include Epping Forest to the southwest, Hainault Forest to the south and Writtle Forest to the east. Hatfield Forest was established as a Royal hunting forest in the late eleventh century, following the introduction of fallow deer and Forest Laws were imposed on areas by the king. Deer hunting and chasing was a popular sport for Norman kings and lords and the word ‘forest’ strictly means place of deer rather than of trees. In the case of Hatfield the area under Forest Law consisted of woodlands with plains. Oliver Rackham, the botanist and rural historian, wrote in his book about the site, entitled The Last Forest argued that: "Hatfield is of supreme interest in that all the elements of a medieval Forest survive: deer, cattle, coppice woods, pollards, scrub, timber trees, grassland and fen .... As such it is almost certainly unique in England and possibly in the world …….The Forest owes very little to the last 250 years ….. Hatfield is the only place where one can step back into the Middle Ages to see, with only a small effort of the imagination, what a Forest looked like in use." History There is no written record of exactly when Hatfield was established as a Royal Forest, but records suggest it was sometime between 1086 and 1225. In 1238 Henry III (while retaining hunting rights) gave the land and trees to Isobel of Huntingdon, daughter of the Earl of Chester. She married into the Bruce family and the Forest remained in their hands until Robert the Bruce had his English lands confiscated by Edward I in 1306. On his death it was given by Edward II to the de Bohun family. The right to venison stayed with the King, but the rights to the wood and soil belonged to the de Bohuns, until 1446 when the family was given the right to the deer as well, shortly after they had been awarded the