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.