THE FORESTS OF STAFFORDSHIRE
The ancient forest of Needwood was situated in the northern extremity
of the hundred of Offlow, and in the four parishes of Tutbury, Hanbury,
Tatenhill, and Yoxall. It was famed not only for the beauty, extent, and
size of its timber, but more especially for the richness of its pasture
land.
The earliest particulars with regard to Needwood forest, whilst it was
yet under the control of the Ferrers, occur in the minister’s accounts
for 1255-6. The foresters named for Tutbury ward were Robert Coan and
Robert de Wynfleth; among the receipts were 13_s._ 10_d._ for the sale of
dead wood, 3_s._ 4_d._ for the sale of forty customary rent hens, 7_s._
3_d._ for agistment of cattle, 7_s._ 8_d._, and for a charcoal-burner’s
licence for ten and a half weeks, 11_s._ 3_d._ The court fines of this
ward included several penalties of 6_d._ for collecting nuts, and one for
charcoal burning without a licence, but were chiefly for vert offences.
The total ward receipts were £2 18_s._ 6_d._ Barton ward produced £4
9_s._ 8_d._; Marchington ward, £3 16_s._ 11½_d._; and Uttoxeter ward, £2
9_s._ 1_d._ The swine turned out in the forest for pannage amounted to
227, of which twelve went for tithe, six in alms, one to the steward, and
one to the chief forester.
On the attainder of Robert Earl Ferrers in 1266, his confiscated estates
were granted by Henry III. to his son Edmund, afterwards created Earl
of Lancaster. One of the finest portions of these estates, afterwards
known as the Duchy of Lancaster, was the honor of Tutbury, and within its
limits was the splendidly wooded and exceptionally fertile stretch of
Needwood forest. An extent of the lands of Edmund, the king’s brother,
drawn up 1298, gives definite particulars relative to Needwood forest.
It was then divided into the five wards of Yoxall, Barton, Tutbury,
Marchington, and Uttoxeter.
In Yoxall ward the agistment of cattle produced 30_s._, the sale of bark
of lime trees 14_s._ 3_d._ the pannage of swine 30_s._, and court fees
and escapes 6_s._ 8_d._ The sum of 7_s._ 7_d._ was also realised by the
sale of eighty-eight hens, the customary payment of the tenants. In this
ward was Rowley Park, the profits of which in herbage, mast, and wood was
£1 6_s._ 8_d._ The whole profits of the ward came to £13 15_s._
The profits of the ward of Barton from the like sources were £5 6_s._
9_d._ Barton Park was in this ward, together with a hay called High
Lindes.
Tutbury ward, including the parks of Rolleston, Hanbury, and Stockley,
and Castlehay, produced £12 10_s._ 8_d._
The hens, agistment, pannage, woodmote fees, etc., of Marchington ward,
with the park of Agardsley, made receipts to the amount of £6 1_s._ 8_d._
The like sources in Uttoxeter ward, together with the herbage and mast of
a hay called the More, produced £3 18_s._ 4_d._
The annual value of the whole forest, etc. (apart from all demesne lands
and manorial rights, which were ten times the value of the forest),
amounted at this date to £41 11_s._ 5_d._
There is also a full record extant of the forest accounts for 1313-14.
Robert de Cruce was the receiver of Tutbury ward. The receipts included
5_s._ 3_d._ for the sale of forty-two hens; 2_s._ 8_d._ for wood; 2_s._
for passage of carts and pack-horses; 26_s._ 1_d._ for agistment of
cattle; 103_s._ for agistment in Castlehay; 25_s._ 4_d._ for the like in
Stokeley Park, and 12_s._ in Hanbury Park; 71_s._ 2_d._ for windstrewn
boughs for deer in winter; 9_s._ for shingles; £8 for all underwood
in the ward and Castlehay sold for deer in winter; £8 for the like in
Rolleston Park, and £2 in Hanbury Park; 9_d._ for honey and wax; 2_s._
4_d._ for sale of a stray bullock; £5 15_s._ 6_d._ in woodmote fees;
3_s._ 5½_d._ for sale of 167 old pales of Stokeley Park, and 23¼_d._ for
the old pales of Hanbury Park; yielding a total of £51 10_s._ 4_d._ The
expenses came to £43 18_s._ 4½_d._; the wages of the men getting the
deer-browse in the ward and Castlehay amounted to 16_s._ 4_d._; making
167 new pales for Stokeley Park, 10_s._ 4¾_d._; and 3_s._ for lock and
door for the forest lodge at Birkley. The wages of the parkers of
Hanbury and Rolleston were each 15_s._ 2_d._, whilst that of the parker
of Castlehay was 30_s._ 4_d._
The receipts of Barton ward, Ralph Laying receiver, were £13 12_s._
7_d._, and the expenses £13 5_s._ 2_d._ John Don was the receiver of
Marchington; receipts £27 2_s._ 7½_d._, expenses £28 2_s._ 7¼_d._ Robert
de Tuppeleye was receiver of Uttoxeter; receipts £50 15_s._ 0½_d._,
expenses £22 12_s._ 6½_d._ The receipts of Yoxall ward, Richard Coking
receiver, were £34 17_s._ 8½_d._, whilst the expenses were £29 19_s._
7_d._
In the accounts of 1321-2, the expenses include 4_d._ a day to a
carpenter engaged for three days in mending the gates of the Castlehay
Park, 1½_d._ a day for three days for fourteen men engaged in ditching,
and 3_d._ for an iron for branding the cattle.
Woodmote courts were held for each ward. A forest roll of 1336-7 (in
bad condition) gives 2_s._ 6_d._ as the receipts of the woodmote of
Tutbury ward, held on February 11th, in vert fines, chiefly for taking
whitethorn. The taking of a cartload of greenwood out of Hanbury Park
incurred a fine of 6_d._ The fines for vert trespasses in Castlehay
amounted to 4_s._ 4_d._, including 15_d._ for taking a horseload of old
wood. The fines about this date at the court of Marchington ward amounted
to 2_s._ 10_d._, and included the straying of foals in the wood.
The woodmote courts of the five wards, held about Martinmas, 1370,
brought in a larger amount of fines: Tutbury, 9_s._ 1_d._; Marchington,
9_s._ 4_d._; Yoxall, 3_s._ 10_d._; Barton, 3_s._; and Uttoxeter, 2_s._
10_d._ The penalties were chiefly for removing horse, cart, or wagon
loads of wood.
A full woodmote roll of 1-2 Richard II. gives £7 6_s._ 7_d._ as the
total of the fines of all the courts of that year. A sledge-load of
wood, called _drag_, or _draw_, is of frequent occurrence in this roll.
The vert fines varied from 2_d._ to 8_d._ a case. At a Marchington ward
woodmote, there were four cases of removing cartloads of old wood, four
of green wood, and two of a mixture of old and green; the horseloads were
thirteen in number, and the sledgeloads sixteen.
The pannage fees of the whole forest, termed “tak,” realised in 1400 £5
9_s._ 5½_d._ The total forest receipts of that year amounted to £43 1_s._
1½_d._
At an unusually heavy Marchington woodmote in 1403, when the fines
amounted to 11_s._ 4_d._, the penalty in each case for a cartload of
wood was 8_d._, and for a horseload 6_d._ An inquisition held that year
in Tutbury ward convicted Robert Amond, John Roberg, John Fuklyn, and
Giles Fuklyn, monks of the Cluniac priory of Tutbury, of breaking into
the castle park, on Thursday, after the feast of St. Margaret, and there
killing a doe and a fawn. This is one of the very few cases of conviction
of monks for venison trespass. Woodmotes of this year were held at
Birkley, or Byrkley, the site of the chief lodge.
A few years later the Benedictine monks of Burton were in trouble, but
only for wood trespass.
Rolls relative to the minor forest courts of Needwood for the fifteenth
and first half of the sixteenth centuries are exceptionally numerous.
At the forest woodmote held at Birkley on 15th May, 1450, various
venison trespasses were presented, such as making snares (_retia_) and
buckstalls, breaking into parks, hunting with greyhounds, and killing
several fallow deer. There were seventeen separate charges, some of which
involved several persons.
Various other records of woodmotes held in the last half of the fifteenth
century are well worth consulting.
At the woodmote held on 3rd June, 1524, at Birkley Lodge, thirty-one
trespassers in Tutbury ward were fined in small sums for ordinary lopping
offences—one for breaking park pales, another 2_s._ for cutting eight
oaks, and two men 3_s._ 4_d._ each for carrying off two cartloads of
wood. The fines for this ward amounted to 18_s._ 6_d._ At the same court
the fines in Barton ward were 3_s._ 7_d._, in Yoxall 9_s._ 8_d._, in
Uttoxeter 2_s._ 10_d._, and in Marchington 13_s._ 9_d._
In Sir Oswald Mosley’s _History of Tamworth_ (1832) various interesting
particulars of the forest customs of Needwood and Duffield are set forth
at length.
[Illustration: _PLATE XVII_
DOG LEECHING (FIFTEENTH CENTURY)
REWARDING THE HOUNDS (FIFTEENTH CENTURY)]
The abbot of Burton-on-Trent and the prior of Tutbury held special
privileges and peculiar rights in the forest of Needwood. One of the many
unforeseen unhappy results of the wholesale suppression of the religious
houses was the throwing into confusion of a variety of forest customs.
Those on whom the monastic estates were conferred not unnaturally
endeavoured to sustain claims that had not been resisted when made by the
public almoners of a district. Considerable conflict arose with regard to
such matters at Needwood, and the absence of the checks exercised by the
woodwards, appointed by various religious houses in most English forests,
was one of the chief causes that led in this district to much wrong-doing
on the part of the officials.
The detection of a particular keeper in a grave case of peculation in
1540 brought about a careful inquiry into the general conduct of the
officials. It was then ascertained that in a single year the keeper of
Tutbury Wood had cut down and sold 45 loads of timber, the keeper of
Marchingdon, 111 loads; the keeper of Barton, 170 loads; the keeper of
Yoxall, 124; and the keeper of Uttoxeter, 64. No forest could possibly
stand the drain of an annual sale of 841 loads. The fraudulent keepers
were discharged, and a certain amount of reformation achieved.
A survey of the parks of Needwood was taken in the reign of Philip and
Mary, when the jury found that the deer of the castle park numbered 137,
that those in Rolleston Park numbered 105; those of Stokeley Park, 160;
those of Barton Park, 104; those of Shireholt Park, 144; those of High
Lynns Park, 127; and that Castlehay Park had been disparked in favour
of the king’s “race of great horses,” and Hanbury Park reserved for the
king’s stud mares. A great waste of trees was in progress, and it was
known that many had been cut down without any warrant, as the stools
still standing showed no sign of the mark of the king’s axe. Among the
claims then made by the tenants or commoners was that of “hoar lynt.”
This term signified the white wood of the lime or linden tree after the
basters had stripped such timber of the bast or inner bark for cordage or
mats.
The survey of the first of Elizabeth, cited at length in Shaw’s
_Staffordshire_, says:—
“The forest or chase of Needwood is in compasse by estimation
twenty-three miles and a half, and the nearest part thereof
is distant from the Castle of Tutbury but one mile. In it are
7,869 acres and an halfe, and very forest-like ground, thinly
sett with old oakes and timber trees, well replenished with
coverts of underwood and thornes, which might be copiced in
divers parts thereof for increase of wood and timber, lately
sore decayed and spoyled.”
After giving the bounds and acreage of the four wards then extant, and
naming the former fifth ward of Uttoxeter, the survey enumerates the ten
parks within the forest, but Rowley Park had been granted by Henry VIII.
to Justice Fitzherbert and his heirs.
The size of the nine parks of Castle, Castlehay, Rolleston, Stokeley,
Hanbury, Barton, Shireholt, Highlands, and Agardsley, with the number of
deer and condition of timber in each, are also duly set forth.
Elizabethan records of Needwood woodmotes are numerous. A woodmote was
held at Birkley on 17th August, 1581, before George, Earl of Shrewsbury,
high steward of the whole honor of Tutbury, in person. The jury were
William Rolleston, Esquire; Humphrey Minors, William Agard, and Arthur
Whittington, gentlemen, and eleven yeomen. The convictions for various
forms of vert offences were unusually numerous at this court, as well
as a few cases of pasturing sheep and cart-horses in the forest. The
penalties exacted amounted to £9 15_s._ 4_d._
The next woodmote was held at Tutbury on 16th July, 1582, when the fines
reached the exceptionally high total of £22 1_s._ 5_d._ Two or three
persons were fined on this occasion for not taking their pigs out of the
forest wards during “le fence monethe.”
At the pannage court held at Newborough in November of this year, the
fees for the pigs amounted to 48_s._ 1½_d._
There are several rolls extant of woodmote courts of the reigns of James
I. and Charles I., but they contain nothing of particular moment.
In 1654 the forest of Needwood was offered for sale “for the satisfaction
of the soldiery.” The knights, gentlemen, and other inhabitants of
twenty-one of the adjoining villages and townships thereupon petitioned
Oliver Cromwell, pointing out the injustice of enclosing the forest
area—then reduced to 5,600 acres, and only worth about 5_s._ an
acre—whereby the old charter rights of many would be lost, and a great
number of ancient cottagers deprived of the relief afforded by the
commons. It was also pointed out that the county of Stafford had
already paid near £8,000 towards the soldiery on their disbanding. The
last reason offered against the sale was, “That the forest of Needwood
is mearly formed by nature for pleasure, no forest in England being
comparable thereunto.”
This petition caused the project of the sale to be abandoned; but in 1656
a compromise was arrived at, whereby commissioners were appointed to
consider all claims, and in 1658 it was agreed that half the open forest
and one-tenth of the timber should be allotted to the freeholders, and
the remainder be continued as the property of the State. The project went
so far as to have the respective divisions for the different townships
staked out and allotted. But the Restoration intervened ere the work
was accomplished, and Charles II. decided to preserve the forest in its
original state.
It was difficult to suppress the licence engendered during the time of
civil strife. Eventually the duchy authorities overreached themselves by
attempting to impose a new code of by-laws of great severity and doubtful
legality.
About the year 1680, “the gentlemen, freeholders and others who have
right of Common in the Forest or Chace of Needwood” drew up a petition
(printed as a broadsheet) to the House of Commons, protesting against the
arbitrary orders of Earl Stamford, as chancellor of the duchy, recently
published, and asking relief, as their ancient rights and liberties
were being invaded. The chief of these orders were—a fine of 10_s._ and
forfeiture of cattle bearing a counterfeit mark; a fine of £10 apiece
to the informer and forfeiture of cattle privately removed out of the
forest after notice of a public drift; a fine of 5_s._, or 6_s._ 8_d._
in the case of a keeper, for conveying grist to any other mill than the
Wood Mill; a month’s imprisonment for taking any crabtree, whitethorn,
holly, or hazel out of the forest or parks; 6_s._ 8_d._ fine for each
beast on any commoner or other person foddering cattle in the forest
between the Feast of St. Andrew and the end of March; the forfeiture of
all swine in the forest save in crab-time, and a like forfeiture and
fine of 3_s._ 4_d._ on every swine insufficiently rung; sheep pasturing
in forest to be forfeited, and 12_s._ a day fine for each sheep. These
orders and others of a like nature had appeared under the great seal
of the duchy, and had been read in all the parish churches within or
about the forest to the great disturbance of the people. The petitioners
protested against the exorbitant character of the fines and forfeitures,
the setting up of informers by great rewards, and the imprisonment of
their persons, claiming that such penalties could not be imposed save by
Act of Parliament.
Notwithstanding, however, the damage done to the forest in the Civil War,
and the little check put upon depredations in the earlier part of the
reign of Charles II., the timber of Needwood was at this period by far
the finest in any English forest. A careful survey made in 1684 showed
that the number of good trees in the four wards was 38,218, valued at
£25,744 19_s._ 6_d._; whilst those in the parks brought up the total to
47,150, with a complete value of £28,637 11_s._ 6_d._ The hollies and
underwood were valued at an additional £2,000.
“Many of the treese are of soe large dimensions and length,
that there may be picked out such great quantityes of excellent
plank and other tymber, fitt for shipping, as is not to be
found in any of your majestie’s other forests in England; most
parts of this where the best tymber growes, lyeing within 12 or
14 miles of the navigable parte of the river Trent.”
The abundance of the deer proved an irresistible temptation to the poorer
of the commoners, and though the gentlemen and yeomen did not exactly
turn deer-stealers themselves, as in some of the southern forests, there
was much sympathy with the poachers, who checked the depredations of
the deer, and kept the country houses illicitly supplied with venison.
The parks leased by the Crown to private individuals were rigorously
protected; but the open stretches of the forest in the eighteenth
century, though nominally well supplied with high-born officials and
underkeepers or foresters, were, to a great extent, a prey to marauders.
An undated account of the duchy forests, _temp._ George I., at the
Public Record Office, states that Needwood forest had been granted to
William Duke of Devonshire, William Marquis of Hartington, and Henry
Lord Cavendish, with the offices of steward of the honor, constable of
the Castle of Tutbury, lieutenant of the forest, master of the game, and
bailiff of the new liberties. Castlehay Park had been granted in 1677 for
ninety-nine years to Henry Seymour. The parks of Hanbury and Tutbury,
for a like period, in 1698, to Edward Vernon; and two of the other parks
at the same, and also for ninety-nine years, to Sir John Turton.
Mr. Mundy, the poet of Needwood, left it on record that he had known and
conversed with a gentleman of the district, who had been high-sheriff of
Staffordshire in the reign of George II., who used to boast how many deer
poachers he had got off when arrested by the keepers, and how well they
used to keep his table supplied with venison.
After considerable opposition, Needwood was at last disafforested by
special Act of Parliament in 1804. The damage done to cultivation by
the straying deer was no doubt excessive, and there were other distinct
drawbacks to its continuance as a forest. Nevertheless, the general
scheme of enclosure naturally aroused keen resentment among the lovers of
its picturesque beauties and historic associations. Mr. F. N. C. Mundy,
who had printed a stilted poem in 1776, called _Needwood Forest_, after
the classical descriptive style then in vogue, produced, in 1808, a wild
screed termed _The Fall of Needwood_, which, by its very extravagance,
caused the utilitarian view to be the more appreciated. The following
passage is a fair example of the character and style of its forty-five
pages:—
’Twas Avarice with his harpy claws,
Great Victim! rent thy guardian laws;
Loos’d Uproar with his ruffian bands;
Bade Havoc show his crimson’d hands;
Grinn’d a coarse smile, as thy last deer
Dropp’d in thy lap a dying tear;
Exulted in his schemes accurst,
When thy pierc’d heart, abandon’d, burst;
And glozing on the public good,
Insidious demon! suck’d thy blood.
Detested ever be that day,
Which left thee a defenceless prey!
May never sun its presence cheer!
O be it blotted from the year!
CANNOCK CHASE
There were two other Staffordshire forests besides Needwood—Cannock Chase
and Kinver, both of which require investigating. The exigencies of space
prohibit more than very brief references to them in these pages.
Cannock Chase, notwithstanding its name, was an extensive royal forest.
It seems to have taken its title from the Bishop of Lichfield’s Chase,
fifteen miles in circuit, which was within the forest limits, and
proved a constant source of grievance to the king’s foresters. General
Wrottesley has printed the pleas of the forest of Cannock for 1262,
1271, and 1286, in Vol. V. of _Historical Collections for a History of
Staffordshire_ (1884); they abound in interest as to the venison and vert
presentments, and the assarts and wastes of woods that came before the
justices at these eyres. A venison offender in 1271 was pardoned, for
the soul of the king, because he was poor and a minstrel, and two others
were respited and forgiven non-attendance because they were in the Holy
Land. One Thomas de Bromley, a very frequent malefactor of venison, and
often indicted for trespasses in the king’s forests in Staffordshire and
Salop, was caught with bow and arrows in the bailiwick of Teddesley,
on Tuesday after the Feast of St. Gregory, 1267, by Walter de Elmedon,
forester-of-fee of that bailiwick, and Roger de Pecham, riding forester
for the whole forest. The foresters challenged him, whereupon Thomas
climbed up an oak tree and shot arrows at them, until they took him by
force and delivered him to the warden of the castle of Bridgnorth. There
were many presentments at this eyre for the killing of roe deer.
Hugh de Evesham, a former riding forester, with other ex-foresters,
were presented for stopping all carts passing through their bailiwicks
with salt and other merchandise on the high roads, taking 4_d._ at
least in the name of cheminage, and for other carts, 1_s._, and in some
cases 2_s._ And this was done when the carts were not laden with timber
or brushwood or anything from the forest, and when the carters were
committing no forest trespass.
In 1276 when the king’s huntsmen were hunting in Cannock Chase, they put
up a hart with their dogs and followed it to Brewood Park. There John de
la Wytemore came up with bow and arrow and shot at it; the hart fled out
of the forest to the fishpond of the nuns of Brewood. John followed it
and dragged it out dead from the pond. Then John Gyffard, of Chyllynton,
came up, said he had pursued the hart, and claimed the whole of it. They
skinned it; John Gyffard took half of it, and the nuns had the other
half. This case was brought before the justices at the eyre of 1286. The
nuns were pardoned for the good of the king’s soul, as they were poor.
Although the hart was taken outside the forest, it was the king’s chase
and put up by his dogs within the forest, and taken in front of them
against the assize. The sheriff was therefore ordered to arrest the two
Johns; they were taken and committed to prison, but released on paying
the respective fines of a mark and 20s. The case of the wolf killing a
buck in this forest in 1281 has been already cited.
The Close Rolls of Edward I. give evidence, from the various royal gifts,
of a good supply of fallow deer, with a smaller number of red deer on
the forest or chase of Cannock. In August, 1277, the king ordered the
keeper of Cannock Forest to permit William de Middleton, Archdeacon of
Canterbury, to take by his men all the fat harts and bucks that were
fit to kill that season, and to aid and counsel the men in so doing.
In the same month, 1279, the king granted Roger Mortimer ten bucks and
two harts from Cannock. In 1280 Anthony Bek had four bucks, Richard de
Tybetot the same number, and Philip Marmyon three. In 1282, Ralph de
Hengham had six bucks, Henry de Shaventon, Reginald de Legh, and Otto
de Grandi Sono four each, and the Prior of Stone one, all out of this
forest as gifts from the king. Ralph Basset, of Drayton, had six bucks in
1283. Roger Lestrange, justice of the forest, was instructed, in July,
1284, to cause the Bishop of Worcester to have twelve bucks of the king’s
gift out of the forest of Cannock; and in the same year Reginald de Legh
received two bucks. On December 28th, 1284, the king sent word to Roger
Lestrange that if the order given in the summer for the bucks for the
Bishop of Worcester had not been executed, it was to be changed to six
live bucks and six live does from Cannock, to stock that prelate’s park
at Alvechurch.
The king was also generous with timber gifts, oaks from Cannock for
building purposes being bestowed on the priory of St. Thomas, Stafford,
the priory of Cokehill, and the Franciscan friars of Lichfield. When the
king was at Brewood in 1278, near Wolverhampton, a fire broke out; the
justice of the forest was ordered to supply from Cannock four oaks to
Henry le Mercer, of Brewood, Dean of Lichfield, four oaks to Philip le
Clerk, and two oaks to Widow Amice, to aid in the rebuilding of their
lately burnt houses.
KINVER FOREST
The presentments at the Staffordshire eyres in Edward I.’s reign for the
smaller forest of Kinver have also been printed by General Wrottesley.
The Close Rolls of the same reign contain many references to the forest
of Kinver. In August, 1278, the king instructed Henry de Ribbeford
to cause thirty bucks to be taken for him in the forests of Kinver
and Cannock, as should be agreed upon between the respective keepers.
Grimbald Pauncefote obtained three Kinver bucks in the same year. In 1281
four live hinds were granted to Ralph Basset from Kinver to help to stock
his park of Drayton. A further proof that red as well as fallow roamed
over Kinver is the grant of six harts to Edmund Mortimer in 1286. Two
years later John, the son of Philip, the keeper of Kinver Forest, was
ordered to deliver all eyries of falcons found that year in the forest to
John Corbet, the king’s falconer, to be kept for the king’s use.
In 1282 the king ordered the release from prison of Richard Saladyn, who
was in gaol at Bridgnorth for venison trespass. Bridgnorth was the prison
for this forest, as well as for Cannock; the official calendar of these
Close Rolls has made the amusing mistake of putting Saladyn in prison at
Bruges, in Belgium! _Bruges_ was the usual Latinised form for the town of
Bridgnorth.
Among Edward I.’s timber grants from Kinver were six oaks to Margery
de Wigornia, a nun of St. Wystan, Worcester; six oaks to the master of
St. Wolfstan’s, Worcester; ten oaks for fuel to Contisse Loretti, wife
of Roger de Clifford, a forest justice; and twenty oaks for shingles to
Anthony Bek.
The perambulation roll of 1299-1300 shows the considerable extent of
Kinver Forest at that date. Part of Arley, with Ashwood and Pensnet
Chase, in addition to the parish of Kinver, were included in the forest,
as well as part of Morfe in Shropshire; but the greater part of Kinver
Forest then lay in Worcestershire, for it embraced Pechmore, Hagley, Old
Swinford, Chaddesley, Kidderminster, Wolverley, Churchill, and part of
Feckenham, in addition to Tordebig, in Warwickshire.
Nevertheless, although most of its area was in Worcestershire, and its
prison in Shropshire, Kinver Forest, taking its title from the small
Staffordshire town of that name, was always reckoned as a forest of the
last of these three shires.