THE CENTRAL PART—LYNDHURST.
[Illustration: The Great Huntley Woods.]
As we leave Brockenhurst we find ourselves more and more in the Forest.
The road to Lyndhurst is one long avenue of trees—beeches with their
smooth trunks, oaks growing in groups, with here and there long lawns
stretching far away into distant woods. Most beautiful is this road in
the spring. Stand on the top of Clay Hill, about the beginning or end of
May, and you shall see wood after wood, masses of colour, the birches
hung with the softest green, and the oak boughs breaking into amber and
olive, made doubly bright by the dark gloom of firs, the blackthorn
giving place to the sweeter may, and the marigold on the stream to the
brighter lily.
On our left lies New Park, now turned into a farm, where in 1670 Charles
II. kept a herd of red deer, brought from France, but previously used as
a pound for stray cattle. Passing on by a roadside inn with the strange
sign of the “Crown and Stirrup,” referring to a pseudo-relic of Rufus’s,
preserved at the King’s House, but which is nothing more than a
stirrup-iron of the sixteenth century, we reach Lyndhurst—the lime
wood,[108] the capital of the Forest, the Linhest of _Domesday_.
William the Conqueror at one time held the manor, in his own hands,
dependent on that of Amesbury. Here, after the afforestation, Herbert
the Forester held one yardland, on which only two borderers lived, the
rest of the manor, which was only two hydes, being thrown into the
Forest.[109] Here, also, as at Brockenhurst, was another of the old
feudal tenures; for, in the time of Edward I., William-le-Moyne held
probably these same two hydes of land, which had been disafforested, by
the sergeantry of keeping the door of the King’s larder.[110]
In the village stands the Queen’s House, built in Charles II.’s time,
and adjoining it is the Hall where the Courts of Attachment, or
Woodmote, the last remnant of the terrible Forest Laws, are regularly
held by the verderers, to try all cases of stealing fern and timber.
Close by is the new, half-finished, church, standing in the old
churchyard made famous by Mr. Kingsley’s ballad. It is not fair at
present to pass a final judgment. When the tower is added, and time
shall have touched the walls with a soberer tone, its two great defects
will have disappeared, though nothing can remedy the heavy and
poverty-stricken window of the north transept with its flattened
mullions, and a wretched chimney near the choir utterly spoiling the
effect of the beautiful chancel windows.
Inside, the red brick pillars of the arches of the aisles are clustered
with black slate shafts, and banded with scroll-work of white Caen
stone, the capitals carved with lilies, and primroses, and violets.[111]
And above hangs a Perpendicular timbered roof, resting on the corbel
heads of the martyrs and reformers of the Church—of Melancthon and
Cranmer, and Luther and Latimer,—and the carved emblems of the
Evangelists at the four corners.
In the choir and chancel the wall-colouring is more harmonious than in
the nave, where there is a certain coldness and hardness, whilst the
shafts are here wrought of rich Cornish marble. Over the communion-table
is Mr. Leighton’s fresco, a small piece of it now only completed—an
angel standing with outstretched hands, keeping back those virgins who
have come too late to the bridegroom’s feast, the despair and anguish of
their faces further typified by the rent wall, and the melancholy
dreariness of the owl.[112]
That there are defects in the church its greatest admirers would
admit—the poorness of the roof, the harshness produced by the
introduction of so much white, as also the bad colour of the bricks, and
a heaviness which hangs over the clerestory windows of the nave. But, on
the whole, it stands as a proof of the great advance during the last ten
years of Art, as a cheering sign, too, that, amidst all the failures of
Government, some taste and zeal are to be found amongst private persons.
There is nothing else of interest in the village. Once here busy scenes
must have taken place, when the King came to hunt with his retinue of
nobles; when down the street poured the train of bow-bearers, and
foresters, and keepers, clad in doublets of Lincoln green, holding the
dogs in leash. Then the woods rang with the notes of the bugle, and the
twang of the bow-string sounded as the bolt, or the good English
yard-shaft, brought down the quarry. Here, too, in the Civil War, were
quartered grim Puritan soldiers, and prayers took the place of
feasts.[113] Now, all is quiet. Nothing is to be seen but the Forest
inviting us into its green glades.
The people of Lyndhurst ought, I always think, to be the happiest and
most contented in England, for they possess a wider park and nobler
trees than even Royalty. You cannot leave the place in any direction
without going through the Forest. To the east lie the great woods of
Denny and Ashurst; and to the north rise Cutwalk and Emery Down, looking
across the vale to Minestead, and below them Kitt’s Hill, and the woods
stretching away towards Alum Green. On the extreme west Mark Ash, and
Gibb’s Hill, and Boldrewood, rise towering one after the other; whilst
to the south stretch Gretnam and the Great and Little Huntley Woods,
which the Millaford Brook skirts, here and there flowing out from the
darkness of the trees into the sunshine, the banks scooped into holes,
and held together only by the rope-work of roots.
These woods are always beautiful. Of their loveliness in spring we have
spoken; and if you come to them in summer, then the first purple of the
heather flaunts on every bank, and edges the sides of the gravel-pits
with a crimson fringe; and the streams now idle, suffer themselves to be
stopped up with water-lilies and white crowfoot, whilst the mock-myrtle
dips itself far into the water. Then is it you may know something of the
sweetness and the solitude of the woods, and wandering on, giving the
day up to profitable idleness, can attain to that mood of which
Wordsworth constantly sings, as teaching more than all books or years of
study.
[Illustration: The Woodman’s Path, Bramble Hill.]