HEREFORDSHIRE business manager Mark Sherwood is investing his mineral firm's cash in a bid to recreate a piece of medieval England.

He backed the Forestry Commission project with £12,000 after hearing about some 500-year-old living relics near his office at Leinthall Quarry. Now he is hoping Johnston Roadstone's support will give a new lease of life to the mighty oaks that woodsmen first tended in the 1500s. The Commission's county team plans to clear hundreds of conifers from around 70 ancient trees in Croft Wood, ten miles from Leominster.

Eventually, they hope to recreate the type of flower-rich open forest pasture which existed there when Henry V11 was king. Mr Sherwood from Ludlow said: "The story of the wonderful trees is amazing. Local estate workers were pollarding them around the time Henry V11 was proposing to Anne Boleyn.

Area forester Breandan Mulholland said that as well as the living trees, there were another 120,500 century-old oaks still standing which had died. They were as important as the living ones and their gradually-decaying carcasses provided homes and food.