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THE NEW FOREST

Described by Elizabeth Godfrey

Pictured by E. W. Haslehust

BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY 1912

Beautiful England

OXFORD THE HEART OF WESSEX THE ENGLISH LAKES THE PEAK DISTRICT CANTERBURY THE CORNISH RIVIERA SHAKESPEARE-LAND DICKENS-LAND THE THAMES WINCHESTER WINDSOR CASTLE THE ISLE OF WIGHT CAMBRIDGE CHESTER AND THE DEE NORWICH AND THE BROADS YORK

Beautiful Ireland

LEINSTER MUNSTER ULSTER CONNAUGHT

Page

In Brockenhurst Village 12

Squatter's Cottage 16

Boldre Bridge 20

The Mill Pond, Beaulieu 26

Buckler's Hard 30

Lepe 34

"The Cathedral" 40

In Mallard Wood 44

Minstead Church 48

Burley Moor 58

In these modern days, when towns are increasing on every side, and the new idea of garden cities threatens to swallow up what little is left us of the true country, it is good to remember that in one quiet corner of Hampshire lies a sanctuary, a little region set apart with its own laws and customs for over eight centuries for the preservation of wild life.

In our childhood we were taught to look upon the deed of Norman William with horror, as an iniquity perpetrated by an inhuman conqueror, and we spouted in the words of good Miss Smedley:

"Oh Forest! green New Forest! Home of the bird and breeze, With all thy soft and sweeping glades, and long, dim aisles of trees, Like some ancestral palace thou standest proud and fair; Yet is each tree a monument to death and wild despair."

Probably Canute, who had his capital at Winchester, and was much at Southampton, had a chase here, for he, like Norman William, was a mighty hunter, as the stringency of his forest laws testifies. Regarding the size and nature of the district, neither churches nor villages could have been much more numerous than at the present day, and as some of the former, still standing, are mentioned in "Domesday Book", the wholesale destruction of the old Chronicles must have been grossly exaggerated. When William annexed the district to the Crown, he most likely chose it because the greater part was wild already, and the afforestation simply meant that he placed it under forest law with a separate administration. Cases of hardship there doubtless were; though there is record of compensation being paid to some dispossessed owners, the smaller men may have suffered, and these being Saxons, bitter feeling against the Conqueror was engendered, and as time went on tales of cruelty grew to legends, especially after the violent deaths of William's sons in the forest, held by the common people to be the judgment of God.

The whole tract taken by the king was about the size of the Isle of Wight, a triangle, roughly speaking, lying between Southampton Water on the east and the River Avon on the west, its base being the Solent shore, and its apex running up into Wiltshire at Nomansland. Since then its boundaries have been narrowed, passing a mile or two within Southampton Water, from Cadnam through Dibden Purlieu, touching the Solent at Stone Point and leaving it again at Pitt's Deep, cutting the Lymington Road at Passford, and going by Meadend Bridge round by the Avon Valley, along the rampart of high down to Breamore, where it joins the old northern border. It has been further diminished by the grant of manors to private owners and to Beaulieu Abbey, and by encroachments of various sorts.

The two prime interests of the forest were "venison and vert"--deer for the chase and wood for the dockyard--and for the due administration of these a Lord Warden was appointed, usually a nobleman, sometimes a royal prince, and under him two Rangers, one for each branch of Forest Law. The fifteen Walks into which the Forest was, and is still, divided were placed under fifteen Keepers, men of position who inhabited the forest lodges--"elegant mansions", according to Mr. Gilpin. Under them again were the Groom-keepers, whose duty it was to browse the deer, to harbour a fat buck for the chase, to impound and mark the cattle and ponies, and to present offenders at the Swainmote, whether deer-stealers or encroachers on forest land. They had an old distich for their guidance in the former case:

"Stable stand; dog draw; Back bear and bloody hand".

This meant that a man found lurking in a suspicious position, or one with a dog pursuing a stricken deer, one carrying a carcass or with blood on his hands, was liable to be haled before the Swainmote, charged with deer-stealing.

A Woodward, with ten Regarders under him, saw to the planting, cutting, and preservation of the timber, and also assigned wood and peat to those who enjoyed chimney rights. It is interesting to find these rights extended to the forests of northern France by Henry of Lancaster after those victories which caused him to arrogate to himself and his successors the title of "Rex Angliae et Franciae". Some of these wood rights were limited to the dead wood a man could reach with a crooked stick: hence the expression, "by hook or by crook". A Purveyor was also appointed on behalf of Portsmouth Dockyard to claim the timber needed for His Majesty's ships. Besides these officials, six Verderers were chosen by the freeholders and one by the king to sit in the Swainmote and uphold Forest rights.

Now, since it has become the property of the Crown instead of the king--quite a different thing--the administration has been altered and the officials are much fewer: it has been placed under the Department of Woods and Forests, represented by a Deputy Surveyor, but the Verderers still meet six times a year at the King's House to maintain the rights of the commoners.

And now the two main objects of the afforestation have nearly come to an end: neither venison nor vert are of their old importance. The deer had encroached so much on the foresters' rights, that their extinction was decreed; a few yet linger in the north and west, but the Forest is no longer for them. Moreover, since we have ceased to trust in the "wooden walls of Old England", the demand for sound oak timber is shrinking, and once in the utilitarian days of the last century it was seriously proposed to throw the whole district open for cultivation. Happily there were enough lovers of nature to save it, and it is still preserved as a bit of the wild country our forefathers enjoyed.

For the Forest has a peculiar charm which I would fain convey. Where does it lie? Just where it is least sought; where the cheap tripper complains there is nothing to see. Not by Rufus' Stone; not in the drear formality of the Ornamental Drive; hardly under the big trees where picnic parties leave their sandwich papers and banana skins: rather where the brown rivulet winds its hidden way between the rushes; beside the dark pool lying in the hollow of the moor with deep, shadowy reflections of its fringe of trees and just a glint of blue sky between; or along the green rides where the wood seems endless; or on the high shoulder of the wide, lonely moor, sloping away, fold beyond fold, to the distant sea, with all its wondrous changeful hues, bronze and russet with bracken, purple with heather, with sweeps of ling tenderly grey--yet most beautiful, perhaps, when the amethyst dusk has swallowed up all shades, and the dark crest lies against the fading glow of sunset. The palpitating song of the lark, that all day filled the sky with music, is hushed, and the tawny owls, with their soft flight like huge moths, swoop across, calling to each other with their long tu-whoo.

BROCKENHURST AND THE MOORLAND

As we go up the village we note, with a sigh, how fast new shops are ousting old thatched cottages, and new names replacing the old, though still one, Purkess, said to be the lineal descendant of the charcoal burner who conveyed the body of the slain king to Winchester, carries on a long-established grocery business.

Brockenhurst is hardly so much one village as a bundle of hamlets loosely tied together, rejoicing in such names as Shark's Island, Gulliver's Town, or the Weirs. Even the parish church is not in the village, but stands alone on a knoll at the edge of the park, nearly a mile away; but then it has only of late years been made a parish church, having existed anciently as a chantry chapel, probably a timber or wattled structure. Portions of the present building, the nave and the beautiful south door, date from the twelfth century. The Early English chancel is a later addition, and very much later is the north aisle with its prim Georgian windows. It is thought the dedication to St. Peter was made either when it was rebuilt in stone or when the chancel was added. About the end of the eleventh century it was placed under the charge of the vicar of Boldre, and after the Reformation it remained attached to Boldre as a chapel-of-ease, served by the same vicar until 1866, when it was made into a separate ecclesiastical parish, the advowson being sold by John Peyto Shrubb to John Morant of Brockenhurst Park.

The road follows the park paling, and at one point a double avenue gives a fine view of the house, much of which was rebuilt in Georgian style in the early part of the last century. Though stately, the front is far less picturesque than the older portion facing the gardens. These are a marvel of topiary art, with pleached alleys, arches, and columns, not of yew merely, but of the far less tractable hornbeam.

That Brockenhurst Manor, or the nucleus of it, existed before the afforestation is attested by an entry in "Domesday Book": "The same Alvic holds a hide in Broceste. His father and uncle held it in parage. It was then assessed at one hide, now at half a hide. There is land for one plough.... There is a church and wood worth twenty swine."

Shorn of much of its beauty by the disastrous burning of 1908, the great moor has still the charm of space, of long lines of distance only hemmed in by the blue hills above the Needles, and of an infinite play of colour. The average lover of the picturesque fancies a moor is brown all over alike. Let him stand here on the height and try to count the hues. The glory of the furze will take some time yet to recover, but already the ground gorse creeps about with trickles of pale gold, and the heather spreads a rich crimson mantle over the blackness, the true purple of kings. Later comes the silvery bloom of the ling. The grass alone, poor and sparse as it is, has a gamut of tints, through dull green and hay colour to ash grey, and in the wet places are streaks of vivid emerald. The short growth of bracken that clothes every rise is amber and bronze and russet, and in the rain quite red. In the hollows spring bog-myrtle and sun-dew, sheets of cotton-grass lie like shining pools, and in certain favoured spots lurk the buckbean and shy blue gentian.

No fear of losing the way on this stretch of forest, for from every side may be seen the lofty, slender shaft of Arnewood Tower, looking like a watch tower, and known in the country round as "Petersen's Folly". Popular legend connects it with the Swedenborgian tenets held by Mr. Petersen, and various tales are told to account for its building. It is said he intended it to bear an ever-burning light, but the Board of Trade forbade this lest it might throw ships out in their reckoning, so it stands forlorn and purposeless, useful only as a beacon to wayfarers by land.

Leaving the high moor on the eastern side, a rough forest track descends through dense pinewoods, haunt of squirrel and woodpecker. In winter, sheltered from the wind that sweeps above, there is a hushed stillness; but so soon as the spring sunshine has called the little red, furry folk from their beds, one hears a continual light patter of pine cones dropped between the needles, and earlier than the cuckoo's call echoes the strident laughter of the yaffle. There is a singular feature about this wood: composed for the most part of young, ugly, and too thickly planted trees in rows painfully straight, in the midst occur rings of fine old pines irregularly planted and surrounded by a bank, their lofty wide-spreading tops rising above the rest of the wood and forming what is locally known as a "hat". About them the bracken rises breast high, its tender green catching blue lights in summer, no less lovely when winter rains have reddened its rust colour to match with the red tree trunks.

Along the stream lie fields lush with meadowsweet and purple loose-strife, and the upper reaches are the haunt of the otter. Another small, wild animal may sometimes be met with on the uplands between Roydon and the moor. Not long ago I spied, scudding away at a rapid trot, what looked like a queer little grey dog with almost no ears and a bald head, by which last I recognized the shy badger.

Of his Charity School in the little cottage where the daffodils grow, between Boldre Bridge and Pilley Street, nothing survives but the name--Gilpin's Cottage--to keep his memory green. Not long before his death he indited a quaint little pamphlet, recording his wishes for its management. It deserves to be preserved for its sound good sense, though, to be sure, its provisions seem a little out-of-date to-day. Only the three R's are contemplated, and of arithmetic the first four rules alone were to be taught to the boys, while for the girls neither sums nor writing were held needful; reading, with needlework and housewifery, were enough for a woman. Clothes as well as learning were supplied. To our modern notions one pair of stockings a year for each child seems a meagre allowance, till we recollect that shoes and stockings would only be worn on Sunday.

In his time the Foresters seem to have been a lawless race, and their lives rough and hard; but nowadays one happy feature of life in the Forest is the comparative prosperity of its poor. Many own their cottages, being descended from squatters, and to most of the older dwellings are attached Forest rights, comprising from one to ten loads of fuel, either peat or firewood, liberty to turn out cattle or ponies for a nominal fee, geese or donkeys free, and "pannage" for pigs--that is, leave to browse in the enclosures in the season of acorn and beechmast. These advantages are known as "chimney rights", and are closely connected with the hearthstone. In old days, when lawless or landless men often sought refuge in the Forest, a custom grew up that an encroacher who already had a roof on and a fire burning on his hearth could no longer be dispossessed; so often a hovel of sods, heather-thatched, was put up in a night and the claim established. Straggling hamlets of this kind sprang up usually on the border of a manor, as at the Weirs, at Beaulieu Rails , and at Hilltop. Now solid cottages in most cases replace the hovels, and some have got into the hands of the jerrybuilder, with lamentable results. The almost complete disappearance of the heather thatch is much to be regretted: it makes a splendid roofing, as impervious to heat and cold as straw, and its rich brown colour tones in wonderfully with the moorland landscape, especially when wet with winter fog and rain.

I have heard the Forester criticized as "independent". Why should he not be? He works when he needs, often for himself, and there is a dignity about him, and a determination to stand upon his ancient rights; he would rather give than take, and he would be affronted if you offered payment for his little gifts of sloes, of honey, or of "musharoons". The special forest industries are disappearing; the last charcoal burner's hut is really only preserved as a curiosity. You rarely see the gipsies platting mats or baskets, though there is an old man who still goes round, and sits by the roadside, reseating your old chairs with cane or rushes.

It is generally the vanners who come to this spot, vagrants rather than true gipsies , and untidy in their leavings, which the genuine gipsy seldom is. These prefer to set up their snug little tents in the thicket of the Brake just across the plain. Here I have found a young mother with an infant of days in a tent on hoops, not much larger than a gig-umbrella, a fire hard by in a bell tent with a hole at the top. Going to pay a call with a pink flannel to wrap the baby in, I found mother and child warm, happy, and content, the former rejoicing in the permission accorded, under these circumstances, of a stay of two weeks. Once I ventured to condole with a gipsy woman on wild wintry weather in such a tent. She tossed back her jet-black plaits: "Oh, I likes it, my dear; I'm used to it, ye see".

If by nothing else, the gipsy may be distinguished from the ordinary tramp by his cheerful insouciant outlook on life, as well as a sense of humour not yet quenched by the Missioner, the Board School, and the perpetual harass of having to move on. These three factors, especially the second, tend to stamp out the gipsy as a race apart, or to make of him a very unsatisfactory low-class vagrant--a poor exchange. Unhappily the Missioner is rarely content to bring religion to the gipsy and leave him a gipsy still. He must needs try and induce him to abandon his way of life, to forsake his wholesome tent for an insanitary slum, and to send his children to school. If the Board School system is turning out a failure for our little peasants, what can we say for it when it claims the gipsy? The gipsy child simply cannot assimilate book-learning. He goes in sharp as a needle, cunning as a fox, sagacious with ancient woodland lore, long-sighted, keen of ear and scent; he comes out stupid, blear-eyed, often slightly deaf. The new knowledge drops away from him in a month; the old has been stamped out. You have made of him a lazy good-for-nothing, liable to colds and ailments hitherto unknown.

One rainy winter day I met a gipsy friend of mine and stopped to buy a brush. A little girl of eleven was helping to carry the basket; the wet and mud were squishing out of the poor child's boots, from the burst sides of which a sopped rag of stocking was exuding. I suggested that bare feet would be safer. "True it is, my lady, and full well I know it, but what can I do? 'Tis the schoolalities, you see; to school she must go, and I don't like for folks to pass remarks on my children."

The name Bergery, near Park, denotes a sheepcote, and Bouvery, spelt in the maps Beaufr?, is, of course, the ox farm; there is also a Swinesley not far off, so the industries of the monks were many and various. But this busy, peaceful life was all too prosperous, rousing the cupidity of the king in the troubled times of the Reformation. To justify the spoliation, exaggerated tales of the scandal of sanctuary rights were told, and commissioners came down with their minds made up beforehand. Doubtless it was a matter liable to abuse, but in the rude days of blood feud and swift vengeance it was no bad thing that the Church should be able to stretch a sheltering arm over the criminal. But into all these questions this is no place to enter. Suffice it that the last abbot appointed was a creature of Cromwell's who, with thirty of his monks, was induced to sign a deed of surrender in consideration of a pension. The riches of the stately abbey went into the king's coffers, the domain was conferred on Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, grandfather to that Henry Wriothesley who was the friend of Shakespeare. Through marriage it passed to the Dukedom of Montague, then to that of Buccleuch, in which family it still remains in the person of Lord Montague of Beaulieu.

The good days of Buckler's Hard are over, and no regular ferry plies now between the once busy dockyard and the farther shore; but the chances are the traveller will find an old boatman to put him across and land him under a dense wood, where a group of tall pines rises above a thick growth of oak and beech, and, following the road to the beach, he will come upon a scene typical of the strip of coast that borders the Forest, "betwixt the woods and the sea".

Here is no glory of headland, no fierceness of breaker on the reef, but a wide water, infinitely blue, lapping on the grassy margin where the trees lean over, or lying far out in long, shining lines between the flats--golden, purple, olive brown--where the white gulls stalk and feed--ungainly birds on land--and beyond again, sapphire and amethyst, rise the softly rounded chalk hills of the Island, ending in the milk-white Needles. Far to the left may possibly be discerned a dreadnought or two, just below where the escarpment on Portsdown Hill shows like a white smudge above the harbour.

The stones of the little beach are not worn smooth with the tide, but are loose and rough, held together by sea-holly and yellow horned-poppy and the coarse tawny grass that disputes the land with the seaweed. It is a place to dream in; not this time of the building of ships nor yet of the "White Company", but of long-past days when the Greek merchants used to come across Gaul from Massilia and trade with Lepe for tin. A Roman road then crossed the Forest from the port to convey merchandise to the settlements of the Roman Provincials, and William the Norman and his Forest Laws were not yet looming on the horizon.

In Gilpin's day Lepe was "one of the port towns of the Forest, and, as it lies opposite Cowes, the common place of embarkation to the island". He also records the tradition that it was from this remote port that the Dauphin took ship, on the death of John, after his fruitless attempt on the English Crown. And here, also, the unfortunate Charles was brought from Titchfield House on his way to Carisbrooke under the ill-starred guidance of Ashburnham. "Here he was seated in an open boat, and from these shores he bade a last farewell to all his hopes in England."

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