Mr. Thomas Blunt, the deputy-surveyor, also reports, in allusion to this period, that, “having formerly pulled down and destroyed many cottages, fences, and enclosures, he had latterly been obliged to desist, fearing his life and property were endangered by the repeated threats and insults of the encroachers and their party.” He adds that “about 1000 loads of oak timber were annually being felled for the use of the miners, of which at least one-fifth part was fit for naval purposes; and that the great waste, spoil, and destruction of timber and wood on the Forest is and hath been occasioned by an improper application of the timber delivered to the miners for the use of their works, one-half of which would have been more than sufficient, for that he had frequently seized large quantities of offal timber, and such other timber as the miners could not use in their works; and in particular that on or about the 28th of January, 1783, he seized and took 586 feet of oak-timber, and more than 200 cleft pieces of oak, called kibbles, from one George Martin, who acknowledged
that they had been stolen. He had also seized at the Fire-Engine in the Forest between two and three waggonloads of timber, hewn up and converted by the colliers into cooper’s wares for market, as the neighbourhood, being a great cinder country, would require.” Joseph Pyrke, Esq., a verderer and deputy-constable, further stated that “numberless encroachments, enclosing one, two, or three acres, were taken in for gardens by the idle poor, and also by people in good circumstances,” and that “nothing short of a capital offence would ever preserve the remaining timber.”
We obtain information on the subject of pit-timber from Mr. Hartland’s evidence before the Parliamentary Commissioners. He says that “the sorts of wood or timber delivered to the miners were oak and beech, and none other; chiefly oak in the summer, more pits being sunk in the summer than in the winter, and the keepers having the bark; more beech is allowed in the winter than oak. But oak timber is necessary, and is always allowed, for sinking the pits, and for making what the miners call the gateway, or gangway, from the body of coal to the pit, and also for the gutters in the levels, for draining off the water; but beech, birch, orle, holly, or any other kind of wood, would serve for the purpose of getting coal, and supporting the earth after the coal is taken away, but none is ever delivered to them but oak and beech.” He goes on to say that “the evil of the colliers misapplying the timber served to them by the keepers could only be remedied by refusing it for the future to such parties as had been detected therein. Fining them was found impracticable, owing to the difficulty of proving the timber to have been the King’s, without which proof the justices could hardly act.”
Rewards of £20, and in gross cases of £50, were offered to any persons making a discovery whereby any of the offenders should be convicted; but without much effect, for the sufficient reason, as stated in the official report of 1788, that the resident officers derived advantages from the continuance of the abuse. Thus the
Deputy-Surveyor took as perquisites the tops of all timber rejected by the navy, as well as of all stolen timber; all trees found felled by wood-stealers; one moiety of the cord-wood made from the offal-wood of timber delivered to the miners, and of stolen timber, besides from four pence to six pence for every tree felled for the use of the miners; whereby his salary was raised from £50 to £500 a year. It was much the same with the six keepers, who received one shilling on every order for delivery of timber to the miners or colliers; the moiety of all offal-wood of timber cut for the miners; the moiety of all cord-wood of stolen timber; all lengths or pieces of trespass, and the bark of timber delivered to the miners, stolen timber called kibbles, and of all stolen timber found within their respective walks, by means of which their stipends were increased £100 a year each.
Mr. Miles Hartland, the assistant-deputy-surveyor, in his examination, on the 15th of May, 1788, before the Dean Forest Commissioners, also stated that “he believed the cottages and encroachments in the Forest have nearly doubled within the last forty years. The persons who inhabit the cottages are chiefly poor labouring people who are induced to seek habitations in the Forest for the advantages of living rent free, and having the benefit of pasturage for a cow or a few sheep, and of keeping pigs in the woods; but many encroachments have been made by people of substance. The cattle of the cottagers are impounded when the Forest is driven by the keepers, as all other cattle are; and when the owners take them from the pound, paying the usual fees to the keepers, they turn them again into the Forest, having no other means of maintaining them. The greater number of the cottagers are from the neighbouring parishes; but there are also a great many from Wales, and from various parts of England, remote from the Forest. They are detrimental to the Forest by cutting wood for fuel, and for building huts, and making fences to the patches which they enclose from the Forest; by keeping pigs,
sheep, &c., in the Forest all the year, and by stealing timber.”
Speaking of the Forest roads, on which £11,631 3s. 10d. had been expended within the preceding twenty-five years, Mr. Hartland stated that “the principal were the road from Mitcheldean to Monmouth, and from Little Dean to Coleford. These two are public high roads, not necessary or useful to the Forest, but rather detrimental to it by affording the readier means to convey away the coal in waggons and carts, in which timber has sometimes been found concealed. Besides the above, there are several roads leading from the Forest to Newland, Coleford, and St. Briavel’s, which have been kept in repair at the charge of the Forest, but are of no use to it—rather the contrary. The only road now used for conveying the navy timber is the Purton Road, which is the most convenient for carriage to the water side from all parts of the Forest except the Chesnuts in Edge Hills, and the Lea Bailey; but there is no navy timber now in either of these places except the Lea Bailey. If the repairing of the public roads at the charge of the Forest were to be discontinued, the public would be obliged to put up turnpike gates on the roads, and collect tolls for repairing them, as in other parts of the country.”
The parts of the Forest which Mr. Hartland described as being “bare of timber and yet fittest to be enclosed as being of a very proper soil, were Hazle Hill and Edge Hills, including Tanner’s Hill, Green Bottom and Greenhill, Badcock’s Bailey and Chesnuts, East and West Haywood, part of Great Staple Edge, Meezeyhurst, Howbeach and Putmage, Buckhall, Moor and Bradley Hill, Bircham Dingles and Mason’s Tump, Blakevellet, Breames Eves and Howell Hill, the Perch and Coverham, Great and Little Bourts, the Lea Bailey, Bailey Hill and Lining Wood, Great and Little Berry, Pluds and Smithers Tump, Blackthorn Turf and Serridge, Kensley’s Ridge, Daniel Moor and Beechenhurst, ‘forming in short twenty plantations,’ which might, he thinks, be enclosed by a ditch about
3 feet deep and 3½ wide, with a quick hedge planted upon the bank.”