Illustration: LEPELEPE
LEPE
Adjoining it, but with a separate entrance to the street, is the old Court House, in which for centuries the Swainmote has been held. Still six times a year the Verderers meet the Deputy Surveyor for the adjustment of any differences that may arise between the rights of the Commoners and those of the Crown. It is a fine old hall, though not large, panelled in oak and adorned with antlers. One very curious double pair are interlocked, the two stags having fought and become so entangled that both died of starvation before they were found. There is also an old stirrup iron, assigned traditionally to Rufus, but declared by experts to be not earlier than the time of Henry VIII.There is an oaken judge’s seat and a table round which the Verderers sit like a board meeting, and a very ancient dock, worn shiny with the elbows and shoulders of delinquents—deer-stealers or encroachers.
The church occupies an eminence that should have made for beauty and impressiveness, but fritters away its advantage by a trivial little spire, further diminished in effect by an unmeaning pattern in coloured tiles upon the slate like the trimming on a woman’s petticoat.
Lyndhurst stands in the very midst of the greenwood. All around it lies, deep in shade and silence, and, turning aside from the dusty highway, it is still possible to forget the existence of blaring motor or hilarious chars-à-bancs. Through the long green glades one may ramble for a whole summer day without meeting so much as a keeper to ask one’s way. As to maps, the highway once left, they are a delusion and a snare, giving paths that lead nowhither, or worse, land the traveller in an impassable morass. The safest rule is, follow the widest; it is sure to bring you out somewhere, if not in the direction you want to go, for the Forest is well intersected with roads. The only other risk is from vipers—especially now “Brusher Mills”, the snake-catcher, is no more.
The wanderer, if not a first-rate walker, will do well to mount a pony—a forest pony, be it said; forthey know a bog when they see it, and will not set foot upon its promising but treacherous surface. Moreover, they are immune from the attacks of the maddening forest fly, and if they do not know the way, are at least likely to make a better guess at it than a bicycle. Taking cover just beyond Millyford Bridge from off the hot highroad, and turning through Puckpits to Withybed Bottom, I have sighed for a four-footed beast, especially when presently the only way goes up a steep hill between paltry plantations of young firs, giving not the least modicum of shade, by a track that had been bog in winter, and has become a mass of sun-baked clods. A pony would have picked his way and carried his rider; at least he would not have required to be shoved up the hill by main force, like my unfortunate Lee Francis. Compensation is in store: at the top of the hill a lovely upland opens out, shaded by detached groups of splendid beeches in their prime, with no underwood to obscure the modelling of their grey-green columns. It is unusual to see the ground beneath beech trees a vivid green, since grass will not grow at their roots, but all about was a close-growing bed of bog-myrtle, softer and brighter than bracken in its hue. Beneath the slope, radiant in sunshine, lies a wide misty valley, and beyond it the eye travels to blue heights of down above Winchester.The track across the upland would lead to Stonycross, but of this more anon; we must return to the woodland.
The better-known enclosures are those of Mark Ash, Knightwood, and Rhinefield. These are all crossed by practicable roads, and, though full of fine trees and great beauty, seem to have lost something of the indefinable wild-wood charm that haunts the lonelier spots. The excursionist who likes to see something definite will visit the “King of the Forest” and the noted Knightwood Oak, which has had to be fenced round to preserve it from the attentions of its admirers. Across Rhinefield runs the much-visited Ornamental Drive. Heavy Wellingtonias and dark evergreens stand in stiff rows, gloomy without impressiveness, utterly out of keeping with the surroundings. To me the only pleasure connected with it is the sense of escape with which one emerges and finds oneself beneath the beeches at Vinny Ridge, after two miles of drear and dusty formality. For the roadway, instead of being left, like the grassy and well-trodden bridle-paths of the forest, to Nature’s keeping, has been ploughed up and cleared of the binding roots and turf without being made into a proper road. Pony-cart or bicycle has to plod its weary way through a foot or two of loose sand in summer, thick mud in winter.
One happy way of exploring these woods is to choose some stream and follow its course as far as may be. Bolderford Bridge over Highland Water is a good starting-point, and begins with Queen’s Bower, a very favourite spot. Fine old oaks stand about a lawn round which the brook meanders. In late autumn or early spring I have seen it look very beautiful, but in a parched August, the brook low, the grass worn and burnt, adorned, moreover, with the debris of many a picnic party, it has rather a jaded air. The actual Bower, which the country folk call Queen Anne’s, is an almost island formed by a loop of the stream, where a grove of slender ash trees surrounds a sturdy oak. I have not been able to discover what Queen it was connected with, but make no doubt it must have been the golden-haired Danish princess of the nursery game—
“Queen Anne, Queen Anne, she sits in the sunAs fair as a lily, as white as a swan”—
rather than the homely daughter of Anne Hyde. Moreover, Anne of Denmark and her spouse, James I, both passionately loved sport and pageants, and may well have had some little masque arranged there for their entertainment while staying at the King’s House for hunting.
Keeping as close as may be to the stream, theway leads by a lovely beechen avenue through Briken Wood to issue on the road to Bank, prettiest of suburbs, where the houses stand in an irregular row on the top of a tableland, looking northwards to more woods. But if we cross the road and continue to follow Highland Water, climbing through the woods again, we reach a curious and interesting little bridge, the rough foundations of which, showing at the sides, are said to be Roman work. Leaving the brook at this point, a seductive track will presently emerge in a grove fitly named “The Cathedral”. The exceeding loftiness of the beech trees, their noble grouping, and the clear space beneath, have the solemn impressiveness of the aisle of some great sanctuary.
Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL“THE CATHEDRAL”
“THE CATHEDRAL”
Even to name all the woods that stand round about Lyndhurst, reaching to Burley and Hinchelsey on the one side, to Denny and Ladycross on the other, and northward to Malwood, would exceed the measure of this little book; to describe one-half the beauty would outrun all bounds. For you cannot say that when you have seen one wood you have seen all; each has its own special character, its own individual claim on our affections. Were you dropped out of the skies into the midst of one, you could never confuse Mark Ash with Burley Old Wood, Setthorns with Queen’s Bower, nor any one of themwith Wood Fidley. This last had always been to me a kind of mythical land—the place where they brewed the rain—for in these parts when a cold torrent lashes our eastern windows, we remark, as we throw a fresh peat on the fire, “It is a Wood Fidley rain; it will last all to-day and all to-morrow”. So one day I resolved to go and find it. Being the arid summer of 1911, I need hardly say they were not brewing any that day. Golden sunshine bathed the slopes, planted with Scotch fir, all irregular in chance groups or singly, mingled with silver birch, and it made a harmony in gold and silver and bronze, for the bracken was turning already.
It seems a pity that most of those who come from afar should see the New Forest under its least gracious aspect. Unluckily the holiday time is late summer, just when the full, heavy leafage takes on its most monotonous green, dim and jaded after a dry season, gloomy in a wet one; when flowers are few and birds are silent. In October the early frosts will light up the woods with a rich medley of hues, ending in the exquisite tracery of bare boughs. November has its special beauty when the blue mists lurk in the depth of woodland ways, when the wet bracken glows like a peat fire, and toadstools of weird and wondrous colours adorn the damp wayside. And lovely are the rare days when the moorlies sheeted with snow, and every spray is set with diamonds. Presently in February comes a moment when a purple flush, like the bloom on a ripe plum, steals over the massed woodland, though yet no green leaf shows, and we know that life begins to stir. On the sheltered banks snowdrops are piercing the dark mould, and soon the early primroses peep out under last year’s dead leaves, and daffodils toss their golden heads in the pasture. So the unfolding goes on till the “brief twenty days” of Faber’s poem, when every tree is clad in its own fresh raiment, no two alike, and scattered snow of bird cherry or sloe and rosy flush of crab-apple lights up the dark thickets. Now the primroses are poured out with a lavish hand, and the green glades are turned into rivers of blue where the tall wild hyacinths stand massed together in a sheet of amethyst and sapphire mingled; for their changeful hue has the blue of mountains rather than of sky. But the glory of spring flowers belongs to the coppices about Brockenhurst and Beaulieu; Lyndhurst’s proud woods have none.
To learn the Forest in its true inwardness we have left the king’s highway, we have crossed wide moors and marshy bottoms, we have plunged through the greenwood and followed brooks by tangled, muddy tracks. Now for a little we must accompany the ordinary tourist as from his motor or his seat of vantage on a Bournemouth brake he surveys the fringe of the Forest at his ease.
Fine roads cross it in almost every direction, and about them cluster the well-known spots which are the usual goal of the visitor, and may be called the playgrounds. One of the principal routes, which arrogates the title of the Forest Road, leads transversely by some of the most notable points, from Southampton to Bournemouth. Entering the Forest at Colbury near Eling, it crosses the line at Lyndhurst Road railway station, and thousands who think they know the Forest have only dipped into it at this point. For here lies the favourite ground for school treats. Quite close to the station is a wide grassy lawn with great beech trees and shady oaks, whereI can remember seeing the wild pigs nosing about for acorns and beechmast. Now through July and August the lawns are dotted with childish cricketers, and crowds of little folk trot about with mugs slung round their necks. The strong oak branches lend themselves to swings, and the thickets farther down suggest “I spy!” One does not grudge it them; for what a comfort it must be for the teachers to collect and count their little flock so close to the station without risk of losing some adventurous spirit in the enticement of long Forest rides!
Early in December the purlieus of the station are piled with scarlet-berried holly in stacks, awaiting transport to London. This is one of the recognized Forest industries. Licences to cut are issued to certain gipsies and foresters, happily under limitations; they are not permitted to cut at discretion, or the holms would soon be cleared for the insatiable London market.
Illustration: IN MALLARD WOODIN MALLARD WOOD
IN MALLARD WOOD
At Lyndhurst the road divides, the main portion going by Bank, high raised above the road, looking down through the shade of spreading oaks, not too thickly planted. Having paid his duty to the Knightwood oak, the tourist will probably visit the Ornamental Drive, unless he prefer to go through Mark Ash and Bolderwood to the more northerly road to Ringwood. The Bournemouth road, passing betweenthe beautiful beeches of Vinny Ridge and Burley Old Wood, crosses Longslade Bottom by Markway Bridge over the Black Water and climbs the hill to Wilverley Post, whence descending by Holmsley and Hinton, at the “Cat and Fiddle”, it issues from the Forest.
The other branch goes due south to Lymington, and from the top of Clay Hill becomes exceedingly beautiful, wide lawns on each side separating it from the greenwood, dense on the east and sufficiently sparse on the west to let the setting sun filter through. Dim with motor dust the summer through, it is lovely in May in its fresh green, the great hawthorns by the wayside clad like brides. At Holland Wood and Balmer Lawn more school feasts and choir outings dot the ground. The wide shady spaces afford room for games, and are near enough to Brockenhurst station to be easy of access.
The time to see Balmer Lawn at its fairest is on a winter morning when the foxhounds meet at Brockenhurst Bridge. On the slope above the river the men in pink on their fine mounts, not a few women, some riding in the new fashion in topboots, breeches, and frockcoats, the hounds crowding round the whip with their tails carried like scimitars, all grouped against a background of frosted trees and pale-blue sky, make up an oldfashioned hunting picture.
Straight on goes the road by the level crossing, avoiding Brockenhurst village, up Tilebarn hill, coming out on Setley Plain. Here on the height, where the Burley Road branches off, is an interesting spot long called Cobbler’s Corner. In old days it was Hobler’s Corner, for here dwelt the Hobler, the man whose duty it was to scan the distant line of the Isle of Wight for the flare of the Beacon, and, catching sight of it, to mount and ride posthaste to Burley Beacon, whence the news—whether of approach of Armada or of a French invasion—should be flashed to Bramshaw, thence to the Old Telegraph above Winchester, and so to London.
From Battramsley Cross the road descends by shady trees, and at the bottom of Passford Hill, where the brook forms the Forest boundary, there is an avenue of oaks and beeches, raised on a bank, worthy to rank with the “Gate of the Forest” at the northern border on the Salisbury Road.
The next important road leads from Romsey to Ringwood, entering the Forest at Cadnam. A little to the south Minstead straggles along a by-road in as yet unspoilt picturesqueness, though the inn has been rebuilt to meet the needs of the many visitors to the neighbouring Rufus’ Stone. It still displays its ancient sign of the “Trusty Servant”, copied from the wall of the kitchen at Winchester College.
The delightful little church is the most perfect survival of those in which our forefathers worshipped from the eighteenth century down to the time of the Oxford Movement. It would be nothing short of deplorable were the hand of the restorer to be laid upon it. It abounds in galleries, one double-tiered, and has a regular three-decker, with the clerk’s seat at the bottom. Its prime glory, however, is the squire’s pew, with a fireplace and easy chairs, railed round with curtains, and possessing a separate entrance, so that these high persons can go to church without mixing with the common herd. Long may it be preserved in its integrity that we may not quite forget one phase of our religious history.
Returning to the main road, we find the Compton Arms at Stony Cross, where the coaches stop and set down their trippers, who descend the steep hill afoot to the spot where Rufus fell. Here again the scientific historian has been busy; but far be it from me to throw any doubt upon the tale. Standing beside the stone in the hideous iron casing rendered necessary by the pocket knives of its admirers, one cannot but feel some indignation against those who would explain it all away. They are as bad as the visitors who would have whittled the stone to nothing—and with less excuse. Walter Tyrell has already been whitewashed; soon the share of Rufus himselfwill be eliminated, and we shall be told there was no corpse to be carried bleeding to Winchester on the charcoal burner’s cart. For my own part, whether it were plot of churchmen, private vengeance, or the deed of Saxon churls dispossessed of their rights, I doubt not that Wat Tyrell’s hand sped the fatal shaft, whether by design or misadventure, while the king stood shading his eyes from the westering sun.
Then, seeing what he had done, the slayer mounted and, urging his breathless horse up that steep hill, rode for Ringwood for all he was worth. Else why did he terrorize the blacksmith at the ford, since known as Tyrell’s, and make him shoe his horse backward to confuse the traces of his flight, and then kill the man? Dead men tell no tales, but there must have been tales to be told. And if he did none of these things, why does that forge pay a yearly fine to the Crown to this day for compounding a felony? A matter which is recorded in Wise’sHistory.
All the summer through the cheap tripper in hordes is deposited beside the historic stone. He gazes at it, and finding he can neither carve his name nor chip off a corner, he turns away, buys a postcard view in colours, and seeks more congenial amusement in the cocoanut shies hard by.
Illustration: MINSTEAD CHURCHMINSTEAD CHURCH
MINSTEAD CHURCH
Leaving Stony Cross, the road runs by Bushy Bratley along the lofty ridge that forms the backboneof the Forest to Picked Post and down to the Avon valley. The northernmost road follows the Wiltshire border, running from Bramshaw to Fordingbridge, lonesome exceedingly and bleak, but commanding a magnificent outlook to Beacon Hill and Salisbury spire on the one hand, and over the slopes of Ashley Walk on the other. The spot where the Salisbury road enters the Forest at Nomansland is marked by an archway of fine old oaks known as “the Gate of the Forest”.
Of all the many crossroads, with all their separate charms, which connect these main arteries with each other, I have no space to tell. Those who have time to linger will find they must make many a day’s journey to learn them all. We must leave them now and dive once more into wood and moorland.
The wildest and loneliest, if not the most beautiful part of the Forest is to be found in the north-west, where a hilly tract lies between the road from Cadnam to Picked Post and that from Nomansland to Fordingbridge, and stretches westward from Bramshawto the rampart of high down which parts the Forest from the Avon valley. Here there are no crossroads to break it up; only bridle-paths or rough cart tracks, often impassable in winter by reason of bogs, connect the lonely Forest lodges with each other.
And what variety is here! From dense woods, hushed in noonday stillness, the wayfarer emerges on some unexpected crest, looking clear away over the Wiltshire Downs. By some sudden slope from a long, bleak, drear ridge he comes upon a still, dark pool with swans sailing on it. A little lonely hamlet has sprung up at the edge of the pond, and a modern gunpowder factory, put here to be well out of the way of the public—as indeed it is.
Transversely run two valleys with their streams, Latchmore Brook to make its way between the downs under Gorley Hill, and Docken Water, widening as it flows through the marshy bottom, till it joins the Avon at Moyles Court. Coming down the broken upland through Broomy by winding ways and chalky ledges, at dusk one may see a little troop of deer stooping their branchy heads to drink at the brook by Holly Hatch, here called Broomy Water. Here one may well fancy the colt-pixy the old tales tell of, light-stepping with waving mane and tail, “in the likeness of a filly foal”, luring the horses intothe bog that spreads from the stream up to the slopes of Ibsley Common.
From Brook, lying in a wooded hollow on the Forest border, the road goes steeply up to Bramshaw, an unspoilt village, not grouped about its church as an orderly village should be, but squandered all along a mile or more of road between that and the post office. The little sanctuary stands, as all the Forest churches do, raised upon a mound, and is approached by a flight of steps so long and steep as to make the tired wayfarer think of the ascent to some shrine in a Catholic country, and wonder how much indulgence is due to him for his climb. The quaint building has lost much of the charm that makes Minstead so gracious. It has been to some extent brought up to date, and further penance is imposed on the worshipper by new open sittings, hideous to the eye, cruel to the back. Once, before a readjustment of boundaries, it had the fascinating peculiarity of its nave being in Wiltshire and its chancel in Hampshire.
The church passed, the road leads on through the loveliest of beechwoods on Bramble Hill. He would be a strange traveller who would not forsake the dusty highway and plunge into the cool tangled glades till all sense of direction is lost. For the special and peculiar beauty of this, unlike most Forest enclosures,is that there are no straight rides cutting it transversely, but the winding alleys seem of Nature’s own planting, and these make it easy to stray, one fair group of noble trees after another beckoning along the wide green ways into the heart of the wood. One may fancy one is following the direction of the road, but it is far out of sight in a few minutes. Never mind! Every path must lead somewhither, and, sticking faithfully to one, we presently emerge upon a high, wide plateau, whence the eye may travel to Salisbury spire on the one hand and to the downs above Winchester on the other, though its low-lying cathedral is lost in their folds. From here one can see the Beacon on Dean Hill and the Old Telegraph on Longwood Warren, whence Bramshaw Telegraph close by would take its signal and hand it on to Burley Beacon.
Illustration: BY BROOMY WATERBY BROOMY WATER
BY BROOMY WATER
On the edge of the level stands a little inn, and nearer the wood cocoanut shies and Aunt Sallies are set up for the delectation of the Salisbury and Southampton trippers. But we are soon away from such disturbing elements. A desperate clamber up the stoniest of hills leads to the ridge that divides the two counties. It is curious to observe that here the moorland seems to be laid on quite different lines to those in the south part of the Forest, partaking more of the nature of the Wiltshire Downs. Thisroad must be desolate and drear enough in winter, but it commands even finer views than the vaunted ones at Picked Post. Following it over Deadman’s Hill, the sweeps of Ashley Walk slope steeply down to Amberwood and Island Thorns.
Southward of these lies Sloden, which possesses special points of interest. Along its fence, beds of nettles interrupt the bracken, and where these occur a little grubbing may unearth some shards of Roman pottery. This is said by experts to denote a regular factory of earthenware, since the bits are too numerous and too invariably broken to be the ordinary debris of a household, but must be the waste product of the potter’s wheel. Once, also, there existed here a grove of noble yews, and of these some yet remain. One remarkable ring of eleven together hint at what they were in their glory, and just outside the enclosure a striking semicircle of half a dozen, standing round some oaks, are better seen in the open. Density and solitude are the chief characteristics of Sloden Wood. Here in its depth the ponies can find a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, more impervious than many a stable. Here, too, the hind may bring forth her young and discover the thick bushes. For this is the special haunt of the fallow deer, and, resting quiet in the shade, one may chance to see a little company of the graceful, stately creaturespass slowly, with dainty footsteps, across a glade at no great distance—provided, that is, one has taken up a position to leeward, for if the breeze bore a taint of human breath, the shy, wild things would be gone like a flash. Less stately and less fierce than the red deer, they are hardly less beautiful in their dun coats, palely spotted, and the little fawns are exquisite. Legally the stag no longer exists, but some may yet be found in these wilder coverts, either they have lingered on or have wandered down from Cranbourne Chace, and they afford a finer day’s sport.
People talk rather loosely of the “wild” creatures of the Forest, including in the phrase the ponies and the pigs; but in truth nothing larger than a fox or a badger is really wild in the sense that lions and tigers in the jungle are—that is, masterless. The deer are the property of the Crown, and as to the rough, shaggy, hammer-headed ponies, though they roam at large day in, day out, winter and summer, and find their own subsistence, their notched tails mark them as belonging to some forester with grazing rights. At one time stallions were turned loose in the Forest to improve the breed, but these were Crown property, and now neither they nor bulls are allowed at large, and boar have ceased to exist. The pigs certainly all belong to the cottagers, and are now no longer seen in big flocks at pannage, thatis from 22 September till 25 November. There is a charming account in one of Mr. Gilpin’s volumes of the swineherd who used to take charge of all the pigs of a large district during this season, giving them warm food and shelter at night, so that they would collect from their wide wanderings at the sound of his pipe. The breed of pigs which was indigenous to the Forest has now died out—probably the make did not lend itself to good hams. Gilpin thus describes them: “Besides these (the domestic pigs) there are others in the more desolate parts of the Forest, bred wild and left to themselves, descendants of the wild boar imported by Charles I from Germany (probably at the suggestion of his nephew, the Elector Palatine). They had broad shoulders, high crest, bristly mane, the hinder parts light, and they were fiercer than the common breed.” Writing some fifty years later, Wise alludes to their shaggy coats, brindled and rust colour, and I myself can remember them as he describes them.
By Fritham and Sloden are some of the most noteworthy of those mysterious barrows, locally called butts, which have exercised the curiosity of antiquaries. Others are found across the valley, on the heights by Bushy Bratley, and there are several on Setley Plain. Wise in hisHistorygives a very full and interesting account of the opening of some of thesetumuli both by himself and by Warner, who wrote onThe South-western Parts of Hampshire. Invariably there was found burnt earth and charcoal, together with calcined human remains, in some cases contained in urns of “rude forms and large size”, which led him to the conclusion that they are the funeral pyres of the ancient Britons, probably long anterior to the Roman Invasion. The hints they give of life in the Forest in far-past days are indeed scanty, but their presence, standing age-long on remote uplands, suggests strange visions of the long succession of races that have dwelt here.
The western border of the New Forest is a great contrast to the eastern. Towards Southampton Water the boundary is an arbitrary one—the farms and woodlands on the one hand are much the same as on the other—but on the west a natural rampart divides the wild down country from the Avon valley, along which an elm-shaded road connects a chain of pretty villages. From the height of Godshill and Windmill Hill on the north the ridge runs southward by Hydes Commonthrough the two Gorleys, by Ibsley, sloping away to Latchmoor Bottom, till it reaches Mockbeggar, an oddly named hamlet nestling in the downs. On the one side are rugged uplands, on the other smiling villages, elm trees, and orchards of red apples—for this is a fine cider country.
At Moyles Court the downs break off to let Docken Water through to meet the Avon. It is a fine old house, interesting as having been the home of Lady Alice Lisle, the innocent victim of her charity to Monmouth’s defeated soldiers, though she, unlike Mrs. Knapton of Lymington, was in no way implicated in the rebellion. Hard by stands an oak which should have been the prime glory of the Forest; for it is finer than any within its present precincts.
After the ford the hills rise again steeply to Picked Post, a high point which looks across the intervening forest, over wood beyond wood, to Bramshaw Telegraph, a hundred feet higher still. From here by Bushy Bratley extends a lofty plateau right away to Stony Cross, over which roam multitudes of Forest ponies, and on a hot noonday it is a curious sight to see a drove of them gathered together on an open spot, locally called a “shade”—apparently from the absence of anything of the sort—standing close in a circle, heads inward, waving tails outward, to defendthem from the Forest fly. The cows do the same thing, but they keep to themselves.
A little to the south Burley lies in a dip between the hills, sheltered yet high. Its fine position has been the destruction of its charm, for it has attracted too many residents, who have cut up the surrounding oak groves with up-to-date “artistic” houses, and brought the usual train of shops, motor garages, and civilization generally to mar the village street. Unfortunately some years ago the owner of Burley Manor found himself obliged to part with much of the land, which was developed for building, with disastrous effect, especially at Burley Lawn, which might really pass for a suburb of Clapham Common. The church does nothing to redeem it. It is a mean little structure, belonging to the worst period of ecclesiastical architecture, when three lancet windows at the east end were considered the acme of good taste.
Illustration: BURLEY MOORBURLEY MOOR
BURLEY MOOR
An interesting feature is the annual pony fair. There is one also at Swan Green, by Lyndhurst, and another at Brockenhurst, but that at Burley is the best, affording more space. The one at Brockenhurst, where the ponies are penned into a dirty yard by the station, has little charm for a looker on. At Burley one can see their paces tried over the open lawn, and great and smart is the concourse of horsemen, carriages, and motors. A still more interestingbusiness, but one not so easily seen, is the gathering them in from the Forest. Men on clever, well-trained ponies go out, armed with long stock whips, driving the startled creatures together, often into bogs to secure them.
Westward and southward towards Holmsley the moor is broken into heights and hollows, giving a magnificently varied outline, and diversified with wooded enclosures on the lower slopes. Here the fallow deer may often be met with, though the red hardly come so far south. Wilverley Post, at the crossroad, is a favourite spot for deerhound meets as well as foxhound, and the coverts to the north-west are seldom drawn in vain. Eastward slopes of broken ground, lightly wooded and dotted with clumps of thorn, tangled in honeysuckle and bramble, lead down to the chain of woods towards Lyndhurst. One of the most beautiful of these is Burley Old Wood. This still keeps many of its fine old oaks, besides magnificent beeches, and there is more variety than in most of the enclosures, for besides these there are ash, chestnut, and hornbeam, mingled with the dainty elegance of the silver birch; some yews, too, as large and old as any at Sloden. So fine is the grouping, that even on a grey day of drizzling rain, with none of the dappling sun and shadow that lend such a charm to woodland ways, it lost nothing of its magic.To pass through the gate into Burley New Enclosure is like a sudden step from a mediæval city into a modern industrial suburb. The trees are in straight, ruled lines, too thick-set to admit of fair growth, and gladly we extricate ourselves and, returning by the raised causeway that crosses the stretch of bog at Longslade Bottom by Markway Bridge, we regain the highroad at Wilverley Post.
Opposite Wilverley stands the blasted tree known as the Naked Man, holding up its bleached, appealing arms to heaven, now welcomed as a signpost rather than shunned as a bogy. A little beyond is Setthorns, with a small, lonely keeper’s lodge at the edge of it. This wood must have been very lovely before the intrusion of the railway that now cuts across it, and indeed still has great charm. In Mr. Gilpin’s day it had been recently cleared of its fine oaks, and bitter are his lamentations over their disappearance and that of the grove of yews that flourished below. But he wrote more than a century ago, and since then the wood has been replanted—happily before the new fashion of straight rows of young trees, like a cabbage garden, had come in. One of the most entrancing of bridle-paths enters the road just below the railway bridge and, passing down by a steep descent, emerges on the Avon Water—not to be confounded with theriver Avon—which here broadens into a pool. The stream passes under Meadend Bridge, which forms the Forest boundary at this point, and flows on to join the sea at Keyhaven.
Sway, once the most picturesque of villages, perched on its high common, is now nearly overwhelmed with red brick and vulgarity, probably consequent on its possession of a railway station. It is only partly within the Forest bounds. From here a road running by a ridge of down leads to Shirley Holms, one of those primeval patches of oak and holly, clear of undergrowth, that are specially beloved of the gipsies for close overhead shelter and clear space beneath for tent and fire. This road comes out on the main highway at Battramsley Cross; but if the objective be Brockenhurst, a better way is to turn at Marlpit Oak and go down by Latchmoor (or -mere), the pool of corpses. This ill-omened name belongs to some great battle of long ago, but a dark tradition of last century still hangs about the spot.
By Marlpit Oak, a lofty landmark on the bare heath, beloved of deer-stealers in the old poaching days, with a dense thicket round about its knees, good to hide in, there lurked one night three men of the outlaw type who used to haunt the Forest. They were lying in wait for a traveller known to be returning to his home with a large sum of money.Though they were three to one, he showed fight; so they murdered him and dragged his body down to Latchmoor, where they threw it into the pool. Across the moor at Setley stood a little inn of evil repute, called the “Three Feathers” or the “Three Pigeons”, or some such name. Here they called for drinks, threw their money about freely, and bragged in their cups; so they were taken and hanged at Marlpit Oak. The bodies, hanging in chains, have mouldered into dust, the gallows tree no longer adorns the spot where now the cheery foxhounds meet on many a winter morning; but it was some time before the inn recovered from its evil savour. People would call it the “Three Murderers”; so at last it had to be pulled down, rebuilt, and rechristened as the “Oddfellows Arms”, under which title it has become a respectable wayside hostelry.
And now we find ourselves again at Setley by Brockenhurst, our brief survey done—a few characteristic spots gleaned, yet more, I fear, left out than included. We may be thankful for so much old-world beauty still spared, yet are we not without a haunting sense of menace. Though the Forest has been rescued from the utilitarian destruction that once threatened it, it has more insidious foes. All Forest lovers are dismayed at the advance of the Scotch fir, which encroaches ever more and more,and bids fair to swamp the whole woodland. There are only two valid reasons for planting a tree of such small value. One is the need for shelter for wood better than itself on the windy uplands; but then the firs should be weeded out as the timber grows strong enough to hold its own. Another thing is that, being a thirsty soul, it will quickly reclaim marshy land. But this in itself would be matter of regret to the lovers of wild nature, for the bogs have their special bird and plant life. It is hard to see why so much space should be sacrificed to stiff, straight rows of firs so densely planted that none can reach perfection or attain their one beauty of broad, spreading heads. Perhaps small profits with quick returns appeal to a generation that plants for itself. We no longer plant timber for posterity, as did our forefathers.
The new fashion of excessive game-preserving, which is practised on the manors though not in the Forest itself, is answerable for the destruction of much wild life. The keepers wage war on jay and magpie, owl and hawk, and even the little harmless squirrel has been so diminished in the last year or two, that you may take many a long ramble through the woods and never once hear his chatter or watch his nimble spring from tree to tree. A powerful plea for a sanctuary comes from the pen of E. W., the writer of a series of delightful articles on “Out ofDoors,” in theHampshire Chronicle. After deploring the utter extinction of many bird species and increasing rarity of others, she goes on:
“What we want is a sanctuary, and a sanctuary of great extent near the South Coast; the New Forest is ready to our hand and requires no making—wood and water, sea and moor, all are there. We also need, when we have got our ideal sanctuary, an army of keepers who shall be as anxious to keep alive, as the keepers of the present time are anxious to kill.”
But the worst enemy of the Forest is its admirer. He comes, falls in love with it, craves a house within its borders, praises it to his friends, and invites them down. So the fashion comes, and the fashion creates a demand. Land rises to a fancy value, and when times are so hard for the landowners, what can they do but relinquish their fairest sites to the speculative builder? If this goes on, our descendants may wonder why we cared so much for an endless firwood, diversified with “artistic” villas—or perhaps they will like it. In the country that lies East of the Sun and West of the Moon they would doubtless pass a law that all manors within the Forest, coming into the market, should be resumed by the Crown and enclosed as wood or waste for ever.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAINAt the Villafield Press, Glasgow, Scotland
Transcriber’s NoteWhere illustrations appeared mid-paragraph in the original, they were moved to precede that paragraph.Inconsistent punctuation at the end of quotations was not changed.The name ‘purlieu’ was capitalized: ...‘from Cadnam through Dibden Purlieu’...In some handheld devices, the font for definitions may appear inbold.
Transcriber’s Note
Where illustrations appeared mid-paragraph in the original, they were moved to precede that paragraph.
Inconsistent punctuation at the end of quotations was not changed.
The name ‘purlieu’ was capitalized: ...‘from Cadnam through Dibden Purlieu’...
In some handheld devices, the font for definitions may appear inbold.