Humans have been walking the forests of the Bükk Region since the Old Stone Age: at the beginning humans were just collecting and hunting in them, but since the Neolithic the forests have been transformed via a more complex use.In the interior areas of the Carpathian Basin there were so-called „visited forests”, which were created as a result of the relatively harmonious „coexisting” of human and nature – the primary purpose of which until the modern period was not to meet the need for wood (firewood, building wood, etc.), but to obtain food, various benefits, livestock farming, grazing.
The ownership and use of forests in the Bükk show a very diverse picture.Around 1000, King St.Stephen appointed the Diocese of Eger and ensured the protection of ecclesiastical property, such as forests.The Cistercian Abbey at Bélháromkút and the Benedictine Abbey of Tapolca founded in the 13th century received property from the above ecclesiastical estate.The Archdiocese of Eger, for example, had 13,401 acres of forest in the vicinity of Felsőtárkány and Felnémet, from the 19th century, but the Main Chapter of Eger also owned a significant forest estate.Article I of 1514 declared the nearly 100,000-acre lordship of Diósgyőr as one of the Crown Estate, which our kings repeatedly pawned and rented out.From its last beneficiary, the Chapter of Eger, it was finally redeemed by the Szepes Chamber in 1755, thus leaving nearly 50,000 acres of forest land in treasury property up to this day.
The end of free forest use can first be inferred from Werbőczy’s laws: bondsmen are forbidden to cut the forest and can only receive building and firewood according to their needs based on the right for woods, for which service had to be made.Furthermore, forest owners took a tenth of the acorned pigs and people had to pay for grazing, burning lime and coal.
The beginnings of the so-called regular forestry for timber production dates back to the mid-18th century, when the approach to farming of the chamber changed fundamentally, as the development of an industry based on the use of wood became increasingly important.Due to the increasing demand for timber, the examination of the chamber forests and the regulation of logging were ordered in 1766.According to the specifications of Article XXXI of 1879, the operation plans of the treasury forests were renewed and the first operation plan of the church forests and the entail was composed, which specified the maintenance of the forests as well.
Until the 18th century, only shepherds, pigmen, hunters, loggers, lime kilners and forest product gatherers were who trailed the interior of the mountains.In the early 1700s, however, the industrial exploitation of the mineral resources and forests of the region began.The wood demand of forest glasshouses (the first lordship glasshouse started operation between 1712 and 1720 in the forest estate of the Crown Lordship of Diósgyőr, Répáshuta – 1766, Gyertyán Valley – 1834), iron smelters and hammer mills, the paper mill of Szinva Valley (1782) was covered by the huge forests.
The renaissance of the iron industry in the region began in the second half of the 18th century.Henrik Fazola explored the Bükk and Mátra regions at his own expense between 1768 and 1769.He found high-quality iron ore in the vicinity of Uppony in 1769 and, based on the raw material extracted from the opened Péter mine, he built the blast furnace at Ómassa and hammer mills No 1 and 2 at Hámor from September 1771 to the end of 1772, where iron smelting began in the same year.
