The New Forest: Its History and Its Scenery

by John R. Wise

So greatly has the Forest been reduced in size, that Brockenhurst, once nearly its centre, is now only a border village. Its Old-English name (the badger’s wood), like that of Everton, the wild-boar place, on the southern side of the Forest, tells its own story. It consists of one long straggling street, and a few scattered houses, with one or two village inns. Much of its wildness has been spoilt by the railroad; and in consequence, too, of the adjoining manor of Brockenhurst, it appears even less than it really is in the Forest. Still, however, if the reader wishes to see the Forest woods and heaths towards the south, let him come here, and the village accommodation will only give an additional charm to the scenery. I, for my part, do not know that a clean English village inn, with its sanded floor, and its best parlour kept for state occasions, makes such bad quarters. It is a real pleasure to find some spots on the earth not yet disfigured by fashionable hotels.

At Brockenhurst existed one of those tenures of knight-service once so common throughout England. Here Peter Spelman, an ancestor of the antiquary, held a carucate of land by the service of finding for Edward II. an esquire clad in coat of mail for forty days in the year, and whenever the King came to the village to hunt, litter for his bed, and hay for his horse, which last clause will give us some insight into the often rough living and habits of the fourteenth century.[102] Here, too, not many years ago, droves of deer would at night, when all was still, race up the village street, and the village dogs leap out and kill them, or chase them back to the Forest.

The church, one of the only two in the Forest mentioned in Domesday,[103] is built on an artificial mound on the top of a hill, a little way out of the village, so that it might serve as a landmark in the Forest.[104] The church has been sadly mutilated. A wretched brick tower has been patched on at the west end; and on the north side a new staring red brick aisle, which surpasses even the usual standard of ugliness of a dissenting chapel. On the south side stands the Norman doorway, with plain escalloped capitals, and an outside arch ornamented with the indented and chevron mouldings. The chancel is Early-English, whilst the plain chancel arch which springs without even an impost from the wall, is very early Norman. Under one of the chancel windows rises the arch of an Easter sepulchre, whilst a square Norman font, of black Purbeck marble, stands at the south-west end of the nave.

If the church, however, has been disfigured, the approach to it fortunately remains in all its beauty. For a piece of quiet English scenery nothing can exceed this. A deep lane, its banks a garden of ferns, its hedge matted with honeysuckle, and woven together with bryony, runs, winding along a side space of green, to the latch-gate, guarded by an enormous oak, its limbs now fast decaying, its rough bark grey with the perpetual snow of lichens, and here and there burnished with soft streaks of russet-coloured moss; whilst behind it, in the churchyard, spreads the gloom of a yew, which, from the Conqueror’s day, to this hour, has darkened the graves of generations.[105]

But the charm of Brockenhurst, as of all the Forest villages, consists in the Forest itself. To the north runs the small Forest stream, blossomed over in the summer with water-lilies. On the left lies Black Knoll, with its waste of heath and gorse, running up to the young plantations of New Park. On the right, Balmor Lawn, with its short, sweet turf, where herds of cattle are pasturing, stretches away to Holland’s Wood, with old thorns scattered here and there, in the spring lighting up the Forest with their white may.

Just now though, it is the southern part of the Forest we must see. So going back again for a little way upon the Beaulieu Road, and leaving it just above the foot-bridge for Whitley Lodge, let the reader go on to Lady Cross. Suddenly he will come out upon the northern edge of Beaulieu Heath, and see again the Island Hills. To the people in the Forest, the Island is their weather-glass. If its hills look dark blue and purple, then the weather will be fine; but if they can see the houses and the chalk quarries on the hill sides, the rain is sure to come.

Keeping straight on, with Lady Cross Lodge to our left, we enter Frame Wood, with its turf and its bridle roads winding under the Forest boughs. Down in the bottom runs the railroad bending away to the north. On the other side, the thick woods of Denny rise; and the clump of solitary beeches on the top of the knoll shows the last remains of Wood Fidley, so well known as having given rise to the Forest proverb of “Wood Fidley rain,” that is, rain which lasts all the day.

Here you can wander on for miles, as far as the manor of Bishop’s Ditch, belonging to Winchester College, which the Forest peasant will tell you was a grant of land as much as the Bishop of Winchester could in a day crawl round on his hands and knees. As to losing yourself, never mind. The real plan to enjoy the Forest is to wander on, careless whether you lose yourself or not. In fact, I believe the real method is to try and lose yourself, finding your greatest pleasure in the unexpected scenes of beauty into which you are led.

There are plenty of other Forest rambles round Brockenhurst which must not be forgotten. Just at the western edge of Beaulieu Heath, about three miles off, stands Boldre Church, with its solitary churchyard surrounded by trees. On one side, it looks out upon the bare Forest; and on the other, down into the cultivated valley. Most suggestful, most peaceful is this twofold prospect, telling us alike both of work and companionship, as, too, of solitude—all of them, in religion, so needful for man. Its tower stands boldly out, almost away from the church, just between the nave and the chancel, serving formerly, like Brockenhurst steeple, as a landmark to the Forest; whilst the long outline of the nave is broken only by the south porch, and its three dormer windows. Here Southey married his second wife, Catharine Bowles. And close to the north side, under the shadow of a maple, lies one of the truest lovers of Nature—Gilpin, the author of the Scenery of the New Forest, with a quaint, simple inscription on his gravestone written by himself. In the church are tablets both to him and Bromfield, the botanist, a man like him in many ways, but who, dying abroad, was not allowed to rest beside him in this quiet graveyard.

The south aisle is the oldest part, with its three Norman arches rising from square piers, whilst the north aisle is divided from the nave by a row of Early-English arches springing from plain black Purbeck marble shafts. In the east window of this aisle were once painted the arms of the Dauphin of France—the fleurs de lis—blazoned, as they were formerly, over the whole field, telling us the story of Lewis having been invited to England and crowned king by John’s barons, and whose traditional flight at Leap has been mentioned.