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.
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 It deserves to be preserved for its sound good sense, though, to be sure, its provisions seem a little out-of-date to-day.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.