[Illustration: GIPSIES AT COLDHARBOUR]
THE
NEW FOREST
Described by Elizabeth Godfrey
Pictured by E. W. Haslehust
[Illustration: Sketch of a castle tower]
BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY
1912
Beautiful England
_Volumes Ready_
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
_Uniform with this Series_
Beautiful Ireland
LEINSTER MUNSTER
ULSTER CONNAUGHT
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Gipsies at Coldharbour _Frontispiece_
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
By Broomy Water 52
Burley Moor 58
[Illustration: The NEW FOREST]
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."
Now we have come to bless his name as one of the greatest of our
benefactors. Moreover, the scientific historian has been at work, and
has completely demolished the legend. The serious student may be
referred to Wise's _History of the New Forest_, where he will find the
evidence thoroughly sifted; for this slight story it will be enough to
gather up the results. To begin with, the Saxon name of Ytene, by
which the district was known before it became the New Forest, denotes
a furzy waste, as much of it is to this day--"hungry uplands and
marshy valleys"--and the fact that, although traces of Roman
occupation are found on the borders, and Roman roads seem to have
crossed it, no Roman villa has been unearthed within its precincts,
goes far to prove that this could have been no smiling land of plenty,
or the invaders would surely have settled in a spot lying so handy to
the seacoast. Buckland Camp, on its southern confines near Lymington,
shows that they had it in possession, and to this stronghold the
British general, Natan Leod, fell back when driven from Calshot Castle
by the Saxons. His Roman name of Ambrosius is found in Ampress Farm
hard by.
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.
To the town-dweller forest usually bears the prime signification of
trees; he thinks of a forest as a wood of large extent, interrupted
possibly by an occasional clearing: to the forester it means a great
tract of moorland, holding in its bosom many wooded enclosures, many
"lawns", as he calls the lightly wooded slopes, many long, marshy
"bottoms" or valleys dividing the heaths. The dictionary meaning is
just open ground reserved for the chase, and the derivation is given
as _foras_: out of doors.
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 Angliæ et Franciæ". 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
Instead of beginning with Lyndhurst in the middle of the Forest, as
most Forest books do, and branching out thence like a starfish, it has
seemed good to me to take first Brockenhurst, not only because at its
big junction many travellers arrive, but because in its infinite
variety it shows more of the characteristic features of the land.
There is the open Forest stretching away, with its wide views and its
silver border of sea, with its marshy hollows and crested heights;
there is the Boldre--_Byldwr_, or full stream--gliding through meadow
and thicket till it becomes the broad Lymington River and meets the
tide between the marshes; there are the deep green woods of the manor
climbing up from the riverside to meet other woods at Ladycross, or
opening out on the uplands at Heathy Dilton; and, lastly, the village
is still full of interest and old-world corners, though, alas!
threatened with development into villadom at the Rise and beyond.
[Illustration: IN BROCKENHURST VILLAGE]
Hard by the station, on a bare plot of ground, once a small village
green, stands the smithy at the meeting of the ways. It bears date
1540, and from the reign of Henry VIII till that of Edward VII a
Masters shod the horses of travellers at this spot; now it has passed
into other hands. Just beyond the forge a low-browed workshop and
thatched cottage used to stand a little back from the road, where Mr.
Pope and his forebears for many generations--one may say for many
centuries--practised a unique industry, the making of hobby horses,
for which the district has been famed time out of mind. The little old
premises with precious store of wood were burnt in a disastrous fire
one Christmas night; but the old business is still carried on, though
in new quarters, and still the traveller may see in the station yard
piles upon piles of these conventional steeds of exactly the same
pattern, beloved of our ancestors in their childhood, straight-bodied,
straight-legged, standing on four little wheels, so as to be dragged
along by a string, each adorned with a narrow strip of fur nailed
along his neck to represent a mane, and brightened with daubs of red
or blue paint, laid on with just the traditional touch. They go forth
in their hundreds--north, south, east, and west--to find a market; so
the children must love them still, and have not grown too
sophisticated to find joy in their crude suggestion.
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.
Though regrettable modern patchwork has marred the simple beauty of
its lines as approached from the village, yet, seen from the shady
lane on the other side, the little church is still delightful, seeming
to crouch down into its crowded graveyard with its high-shouldered
gables and its quaint steeple, surmounted by the traditional
weathercock. By the gate stands an historic yew, and another hollow
trunk is carefully shored up, showing scarce a sign of life amidst its
shrouding ivy. Big trees stand round, and about the grassy margins of
the lane the little rabbits nibble, scurrying away at the approach of
the early worshipper.
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."
This mention of the church raises an interesting point. Recent writers
have referred it to Brockenhurst church, but since Boldre, of equal
antiquity, stands contiguous to the Manor of Brockenhurst--the
Broceste of "Domesday"--and was for centuries the parish church of
Brockenhurst as well as of Boldre Bridge, Pilley Street and Pilley
Bailey, East End, East Boldre, Lymington, and Sway, it is more likely
this is the one specified, whereas that at Brockenhurst was merely a
chantry attached to Boldre. In Dugdale's _Monasticon_, vi. 304, is
this entry: "Richard de Redvers, who died in 1107, confirmed to the
Priory of Christchurch, Twyneham, the church of Boldre with the chapel
of Brockenhurst. This confirmation was repeated by his son, Baldwin,
Earl of Devon, and by Henry (de Blois) Bishop of Winchester." In 1291,
by which time a vicarage had been ordained, the church of Boldre with
a chapel was assessed at £21, 6_s._ 8_d._, a pension to the Priory
being chargeable as compensation for tithes. The extent of the parish
is suggested by the saying that the blue lungwort with red buds,
called by the country folk "Joseph and Mary", is found only in Boldre
parish. Rare elsewhere, it grows freely in the south of the Forest,
most of which was comprised in that parish.
[Illustration: SQUATTER'S COTTAGE]
Beyond Brockenhurst Park the wide moor stretches southward to Shirley
Holms, westward till it merges in the high plateau of Sway Common
and meets the crest of Setthorns. North and east, Hinchelsey Moor
slopes down to the bogs that fringe the Weirs. The name of this
straggling line of squatters' dwellings has caused much speculation,
since of weir there is no trace, nor any water beyond ditch and
bogland. Some have been driven to the supposition of a wire fence
dividing manor and forest, but the name is old, and wire fencing is
not. Possibly the derivation from _Wer_, A.S., shelter or defence
(German, _Wehr_), may apply to refuge sought by outlaw squatters. The
_New Century Dictionary_ gives also "dikes", and as ditches abound on
both sides, this seems the most likely. Old inhabitants say that
before the digging of these ditches the district was so marshy, so
haunted, not by fever and ague only, but by will-o'-the-wisp and
colt-pixy, that it got called "the Weird", subsequently corrupted into
Weirs (pronounced "wires").
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.
At the foot of the hill by the river stands a gabled house, a short
alley of cypress and Irish yew leading to its deep porch. This is
Roydon, by some spelt "Royden", and interpreted as "the rough ground";
but seeing that its green pastures by the river are less rough than
most parts, the sense _Roi don_, "the king's gift", is to be
preferred. For it was granted by Henry III to Netley Abbey, and,
reverting to the Crown at the Dissolution, was bestowed upon John
Cook, a "friend" of Cromwell, probably as compensation for some
subservient act of surrender. At his death, in 1587, it was acquired
by the Knapton family, who held the Manor of Broceste from 1582 to
1700. In 1771 it was bought by Mr. Edward Morant, and re-united to the
Brockenhurst property. In one of the older rooms a stone is let into
the wall bearing the initials W. H., G. N., and E. D., and the date
1692. A piece of embroidery is still preserved in the family signed
"Anna Knapton, Roydon Manor, 1685". For a quarter of a century the
house was in the occupation of Mr. Hooker, appropriately named
Sylvester, and in his time its pleasant rooms received many guests,
notably that delightful writer, Mr. W. H. Hudson, who immortalized it
in his _Hampshire Days_. Since then the alley, not pleasing modern
taste, has been reduced to six decapitated stumps.
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.
[Illustration: BOLDRE BRIDGE]
The other side the river Boldre church stands on a hill, wrapped about
in woodland solitude, far from all its many villages. About a mile
beyond, on Vicar's Hill, lies the pleasant vicarage, in which a
century ago Mr. Gilpin passed his placid days and wrote his
_Picturesque Scenery of the New Forest_. He was something of a
dilettante, and modern readers may now and then smile at his rigid
canons of Taste--as it was understood in the eighteenth century. He is
very severe upon the beech tree, and one cannot help suspecting that
it annoyed him by refusing to blend with his style of sylvan
landscape. But he loved the often-unappreciated country along the
shore, and for this may be forgiven much. In the garden still stands
the mighty plane tree which he reckoned the oldest in England.
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 (properly Royal, being Crown
land), 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.
One of the favourite camping grounds of the gipsies is a crest of
moor, fringed with Scotch firs, called Coldharbour, a name accounted
for by some as _Col d'arbres_, "the ridge or neck of trees". It may
well be, for the pines are a striking feature, very old and in their
grouping very lovely, shorn by the prevailing winds into harmonious
curves, bending away from the sea; for over Setley Plain the sea
winds sweep, and often the sea mists too. Lifting my eyes from my
writing, I can see as many as three caravans drawn up in the shade,
for it is fair-time, and the spot, but just aside from the high road,
affords a night's shelter to these nomads who travel from fair to
fair, pasture too for their horses, and water from a pond formed at
the bottom of an old gravel pit just below.
It is generally the vanners who come to this spot, vagrants rather
than true gipsies ("Diddyki", the Romany calls them), 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."
BEAULIEU, BETWIXT THE WOOD AND THE SEA
Beyond Ladycross, anciently the boundary of the Abbey right of
Sanctuary, opens another wide heath stretching every way--high,
wind-swept, looking southward to Tennyson's monolith on Beacon Down,
eastward to Portsdown Hill. At Hatchett Gate, where a pond with a bit
of white paling and some wind-bent pines breaks the monotony, a truly
modern note is struck, for close by Mr. Drexel has set up his hangars
and his School of Aviation, and on the rare occasions when the wind
drops a monoplane may be seen hovering over the waste. Thence the road
goes steeply down to the valley through which the Exe finds its way to
the sea, and over a jumble of red roofs gleams a broad water, and
beyond, on green lawns, rises the old grey Palace House, once the
residence of the abbot. This was the fair spot, the _Bellus Locus_,
which John, though he loved not monks, chose for the Cistercian Abbey
which, in a fit of compunction, he founded in 1204.
[Illustration: THE MILL POND, BEAULIEU]
It was no life of idle contemplation that the brethren led. On the
slopes above they had their vineyards, terraced towards the sun, with
a raised causeway to wheel the grapes down to the wine-press, where
the crumbling grey walls are still standing. Masons, too, must have
been busy building and beautifying the great church, now level with
the ground, though the foundations have been carefully traced and
marked out. As cultivated land increased, granges were built, of which
several remain: St. Leonard's, with its huge barn and portions of its
chapel yet standing, Herford, and Sowley Grange over against Sowley
pond, once called Colgrim Mere, where there were ironworks. The map in
Gilpin's _Picturesque Scenery_ shows an opening to the sea at Pitt's
Deep where the iron used to be shipped. The rival north soon carried
off the trade, but Sowley firebacks may still be picked up in the
neighbourhood.
The name Bergery, near Park, denotes a sheepcote, and Bouvery, spelt
in the maps Beaufré, 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 whole story may be found in Sir James Fowler's recently published
_History of Beaulieu Abbey_, with remarkable illustrations by Mr. F.
Fissi, reconstructing from old records the abbey as it must have
looked in its living days. The residence has, of course, known many
alterations: the old vaulted room of the great gatehouse is now the
dining-room of the Palace House, and the fine inner hall also belongs
to the original building. On the floor above, what was once the chapel
has been converted into a stately drawing-room, panelled probably in
Tudor times when it was secularized. Much, of course, has been added
at different dates. Not much more than a century ago the last Duke of
Montague erected a castellated wall with a moat, fearing the descent
of French privateers by the river. The old refectory makes a very
lovely little church, the pulpit being the raised desk for the lector,
approached by an arcade in the wall. Close by the church, in the shade
of a row of lime trees fragrant and murmurous with bees, stands the
Domus or Guest House--for hospitality was one of the prime obligations
of the monks--now happily restored by Lord Montague and made a place
of hospitality once more, the veritable centre of the social life of
the village.
About two miles down the river, on the other shore, lies one of the
quaintest, most interesting spots in the whole neighbourhood. Coming
on it from above, it is almost startling in its oddity. It is hardly a
village, just a wide street, grass-grown and asleep, leading down
abruptly to queer and unaccountable remains of docks and stays, for
this--this little desolate hamlet--was once, and not so long ago
either, one of the important dockyards of this great seafaring nation
of ours. From this cradle issued the _Agamemnon_, which carried
Nelson at the battle of the Baltic, the _Euryalus_ and the
_Swiftsure_, which both took part in the fight at Trafalgar. The last
Duke of Montague proposed to build a town here and make it a port for
the sugar trade with the West Indies, as he owned the island of St.
Lucia; but by the Peace of 1748 this was ceded, and his scheme lapsed.
The possibilities of the place, and especially the nearness to the
Forest for the supply of oak timber, were seized upon by Henry Adams,
who set up his shipbuilding yards, and turned out several fine
frigates. In 1794 Gilpin writes: "The great number of workmen whom
this business brought together, have given birth by degrees to a
prosperous village". The end was tragic: Henry Adams was succeeded by
his two sons, who carried on the business on the same lines; they were
commissioned to build four ships by the Admiralty, and being unable to
deliver them at the time agreed, were ruined by fines and litigation.
Had this not happened, the business could not long have held its own;
as wood was superseded by iron, the advantage of the Forest would have
been lost; moreover, there is little doubt that the Exe is gradually
silting up as the Lymington river has done.
[Illustration: BUCKLER'S HARD]
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
(Marseilles) 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."
Well may old Gilpin have averred that this southeast corner holds some
of the loveliest bits of forest scenery, for within sight of the sea
lies an enchanted wood, hard to find, impossible of access by motor, a
place from which the cheap tripper will turn aside with the remark
that there is nothing to see. It is true; yet the initiated may not
impossibly find that the way through the wood is the way through the
ivory gates. For him it holds a charm of restful silence, a beauty of
gleam and gloom, of blue shadow sprinkled with the fairy whiteness of
the enchanter's nightshade, of spaces of sunlight lying on the golden
bracken, broad ways that must surely lead to the magician's castle,
and narrow winding paths that can but have their goal in Elfland.
It is what in these parts we call a holm, a grove of oaks with a thick
underwood of hollies grown into weird shapes with frequent cutting.
Here and there is an aged thorn which has attained almost the size and
girth of a forest tree, and in places Scotch firs lift their stately
heads. In their tops the sea-sound murmurs, and about them is the hot
fragrance the sun draws out of their resinous branches mingling with
the tanny odour of the bracken. An alley through hollies meeting
overhead is like a tunnel; it issues on a broad sunny level where four
roads meet, each beckoning so enticingly, one is fain to sit down
awhile to weigh their claims. One source of the peculiar loveliness of
such a holm is that all the ways are green. The grass will flourish
under oaks and hollies while it perishes under the beech, and where
the fir trees stand, their roots are shrouded in bracken which in
summer takes up the tale of greenness, and when October frosts come
lights up the ways with gold.
It is a long coppice, and so strangely shaped that it is possible to
make endless wanderings, and even to achieve the losing of one's way,
till dusk falls and the owls are hooting to each other from upland to
covert, and along the moonlit border of the wood the nightjar is
churring with tumbling flight.
One thing only mars the harmony: over against a tumbledown thatched
cottage a pert, shallow erection in reddest of red brick and shiniest
of slate hideously obtrudes itself on the greenness. Yet the story of
it is not without pathos. An old labourer, who had never earned more
than fifteen shillings a week, saved and saved till he could buy the
old cottage and build the new one in the pride of his heart.
LYNDHURST, THE GREENWOOD
Big village or little country town, as it may be regarded, Lyndhurst
is not only the centre but the veritable capital of the district; for
here, at the top of the steep street, stands the King's House, still
the seat of government, and now inhabited by the Deputy Surveyor, who
succeeded to the position of the Lord Warden. There is little of the
palace of kings about the house, a solid and dignified yet homely
structure standing close upon the pavement. It was built by Charles II
on the site of an earlier one where his father often stayed for a few
days' sport. It was from here, no doubt, that Charles Louis, the young
exiled Elector Palatine, wrote to his mother of accompanying his uncle
on a hunting excursion, and dated his letter "Lindust". Of late it has
rarely been the residence of royalty. When George III on his way to
his beloved Weymouth broke his journey, he was wont to stay at
Cuffnells, with its wide park and its glory of rhododendrons, as the
guest of Mr. George Rose, the friend of Pitt. But he seems to have
honoured the King's House on one occasion.
[Illustration: 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; for they 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 sun
As 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, the way 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"]
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 them with 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.