THE NORTHERN PART.—STONEY-CROSS, BRAMBLE HILL, FRITHAM, BENTLEY,
EYEWORTH, SLODEN.
[Illustration: View in Studley Wood.]
If any one wishes to know the beauty of the Forest in autumn, let him
see the view from the high ridge at Stoney-Cross. Here the air blows off
the Wiltshire Downs finer and keener than anywhere else. Here, on all
sides, stretch woods and moors. Here, in the latter end of August, the
three heathers, one after another, cover every plain and holt with their
crimson glory, mixed with the flashes of the dwarf furze. And a little
later the maples are dyed, yellow and russet, by the autumn rains, and
the beeches are scorched to a fiery red with the first frost, and the
oaks renew, but deeper and more gloriously, the golden lights of spring,
till the great woods of Prior’s Acre and Daneshill burn with colour;
every gleam of sunshine, and every passing shadow, touching them with
fresher and stranger beauty.
To the east, about two miles along the Southampton Road, lies the
village of Cadenham, famous for its oak, which, like the Glastonbury
thorn, buds on Christmas Eve. The popular tradition in the neighbourhood
runs, that, as the weather is harder, it shows more leaves, and,
refusing the present chronology, only buds on Old Christmas night. As in
most things, there is some little truth in the story. Doubtless, in some
of the mild winters which visit Hampshire, the tree shows a few buds, as
at that time I have seen others do in various parts of the Forest. Of
course, they are all nipped by the first approach of severe weather,
which, however, seldom happens on the warm south-west coast till the new
year.
Down in the valley to the left of Rufus’s Stone rise the woods of the
Long Beeches, and Prior’s Acre, and Daneshill or Dean’s Hell, where the
word Hell (from _helan_, to cover) means nothing more than the dark
place, like the Hellbecks in Yorkshire.[140] Beaten paths and walks
stretch into the woods in every direction. Perhaps one of the prettiest
is over Coalmeer Brook, and then through the thick beeches of Coalmeer
Wood, where the honey buzzard builds, till we come to the King’s Gairn
stream, where the Bracklesham Clays, teeming with fossils, may, by
digging, be reached.[141]
Brook Common now opens before us. At its farther end stands Brook Wood,
with its fine hollies and durmast oaks (_Quercus sessiliflora_). Passing
the High Beeches to our left, we reach Shepherd’s Gutter, a small
stream, where the Bracklesham beds again crop out with their blue and
slate-coloured clays.
Going on through more woods, and then by clumps of old hollies and yews,
we come to Bramble Hill. Perhaps, just above the Lodge, on the top of
the hill, we gain the most extensive view of the Forest. Before us
spreads one vast sea of woods, broken in the front by Malwood Ridge, and
Brochis Hill, and then rolling its flood of green over Minestead Valley,
and rising again wave-like, at Whitley, till lost among the moors,
whilst the Isle of Wight hills seam the blue sky with their dark
outlines.
The village of Bramshaw, just a little way beyond, stands partly in both
Hampshire and Wiltshire, and forms the Forest boundary. From its woods
in former times the shingles for roofing Salisbury Cathedral were cut.
Its church, although prettily situated, is scarcely worth seeing. Only
an Early-English window at the east end, and an arch on the south side,
remain of the old building, now defaced by every variety of modern
ugliness. In the churchyard stands a fine yew; and a buttress on the
north side is completely covered with the lovely common spleenwort.
[Illustration: View in Puckpits.]
Coming back, however, to Stoney-Cross, we will now go westward.
Stoney-Cross itself consists of but a few tumbledown cottages, inhabited
principally by the Forest workmen. Just beyond the last of them let us
stop for a moment. To the south stretch more woods—Stonehard, with its
views across the valley, to the oaks of Wick and the plain of Acres
Down, looking over Rhinefield and the valley of the Osmanby Ford, beyond
Wootton, to the Needle Rocks, mass upon mass of woods. To the right of
it lies Puckpits, where the badger breeds, and the raven used to build,
and where still on a summer morning the honey buzzard comes flying up
from Mark Ash, and, circling for hours round the trees, will again fly
back to its favourite haunt.
All these woods there are for rambles, flushed in the spring with
wood-anemones and wood-sorrel, set in the green moss and the greener
heather of the bilberry. Nowhere, too, in the Forest, than in these
woods, have I seen more lovely sunsets. Through some deep-cut oriel of
the trees have I watched the sun begin to sink, each moment burning
brighter, and then suddenly its great brand of fire would fall,
reddening each tree trunk, and crimson billows of clouds come rolling
eastward.
Instead of following the Ringwood Road, beautiful as that is in many
parts, especially at Woody Bratley, with its old thorn trees, we will
turn off to the right. To the west now rises Ocknell Wood, and its clump
of firs, a well-known landmark, and beyond that lies the new Slufter
Inclosure, and Bratley Plain, with its great graveyard of barrows. In
front of us stretches the East Fritham Plain, with its three barrows,
locally called “butts,” the central known as Reachmore. At the second
mound we will go into North Bentley Wood, following the wood-cutter’s
track. Very wild and unfrequented is this. Here a stray deer will bound
across the road; and sometimes a small herd of as many as six or seven
are browsing on the ivy clinging to some tree just felled, startled at
the slightest sound, and trooping off down the glades. The grey hen
rises up at our feet from the heather; and, as we enter the wood, the
woodpecker shrieks out his shrill laugh, whilst a buzzard is heavily
sailing over the trees.
The road winds on through the valley amongst oaks flecked with silver
flakes of moss, broken here and there by open glades and green spaces of
fern. At last, we reach Queen’s North Lawn, which leads us on the right
to Fritham, standing on the hill top. In the valley below lies Eyeworth
Lodge, with the powder mills lately built; the Ivare of _Domesday_, and
still so called by the peasantry, afterwards _Yvez_, where Roger
Beteston, in the reign of Henry III., held some land by the service of
finding litter for the King’s bed and hay for his horse whenever he came
here to hunt.[142]
Fritham is thoroughly in the Forest; and few spots can equal it in
interest. It may be the very place where Rufus fell:[143] but whether or
no, close round it lie the barrows of the Kelt, and the potteries of the
Roman, covering acres of ground, at Island’s Thorn and Crockle, and
Sloden and Black Bar, with the banks which mark the sites of the
workmen’s houses.[144] Close round it, too, encircling it on all sides,
rise the woods of Studley, with their great beeches, and Eyeworth,
famous for its well. Going along the West Fritham Plain we come to
Sloden, with its thick wood of yews, standing, massive and black, in all
their depth of foliage, mixed, in loveliest contrast, with clumps of
whitebeams. Below runs the brook, flowing under Amberwood, and winding
among dark groups of hollies, lost at last in the deep gorge, shut in by
the hills of Goreley and Charlford.
The best way to reach Fordingbridge is either to go by Ashley Lodge, and
so through Pitt’s Wood, and between the high, bare, half mountainous
hills of Chilly and Blissford, coming out upon the turnpike-road near
Blissford Gate; or to follow the side of the Amberwood stream towards
some scattered houses, called Ogdens.
Here we leave the Forest, and its moors and woods, and, mounting Goreley
Hill, see below us the church of Fordingbridge, and the Avon winding
among its meadows. To the south Hengistbury Head lifts itself up in the
distant horizon; and beyond it again, but more to the west, stretches
the blue line of the Portland Hills. To the north swell the rounded
forms of the Wiltshire downs, and the spire of Salisbury starts out from
the midst, and behind it towers the mound of Old Sarum.
[Illustration: Yews and Whitebeams in Sloden.]