OT for a moment.

Kendall,

The two things that mostly felled the forests of Southern England were iron smelting (which strictly speaking was pre-industrial revolution) and shipbuilding. The heritage centre at Buckler's Hard on the west side of Southampton Water has some data on the number of trees that were felled to build ships for the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars. I can't remember the figures but it was many thousands. The development of coke fired blast furnaces for iron smelting was driven, at least in part, by the growing shortage of timber for making charcoal.