The New Forest: Its History and Its Scenery

by John R. Wise

Down in the valley to the left of Rufus’s Stone rise the woods of the Long Beeches, and Prior’s Acre, and Daneshill or Dean’s Hell, where the word Hell (from helan, to cover) means nothing more than the dark place, like the Hellbecks in Yorkshire.[140] Beaten paths and walks stretch into the woods in every direction. Perhaps one of the prettiest is over Coalmeer Brook, and then through the thick beeches of Coalmeer Wood, where the honey buzzard builds, till we come to the King’s Gairn stream, where the Bracklesham Clays, teeming with fossils, may, by digging, be reached.[141]

Brook Common now opens before us. At its farther end stands Brook Wood, with its fine hollies and durmast oaks (Quercus sessiliflora). Passing the High Beeches to our left, we reach Shepherd’s Gutter, a small stream, where the Bracklesham beds again crop out with their blue and slate-coloured clays.

Going on through more woods, and then by clumps of old hollies and yews, we come to Bramble Hill. Perhaps, just above the Lodge, on the top of the hill, we gain the most extensive view of the Forest. Before us spreads one vast sea of woods, broken in the front by Malwood Ridge, and Brochis Hill, and then rolling its flood of green over Minestead Valley, and rising again wave-like, at Whitley, till lost among the moors, whilst the Isle of Wight hills seam the blue sky with their dark outlines.

The village of Bramshaw, just a little way beyond, stands partly in both Hampshire and Wiltshire, and forms the Forest boundary. From its woods in former times the shingles for roofing Salisbury Cathedral were cut. Its church, although prettily situated, is scarcely worth seeing. Only an Early-English window at the east end, and an arch on the south side, remain of the old building, now defaced by every variety of modern ugliness. In the churchyard stands a fine yew; and a buttress on the north side is completely covered with the lovely common spleenwort.

View in Puckpits.

Coming back, however, to Stoney-Cross, we will now go westward. Stoney-Cross itself consists of but a few tumbledown cottages, inhabited principally by the Forest workmen. Just beyond the last of them let us stop for a moment. To the south stretch more woods—Stonehard, with its views across the valley, to the oaks of Wick and the plain of Acres Down, looking over Rhinefield and the valley of the Osmanby Ford, beyond Wootton, to the Needle Rocks, mass upon mass of woods. To the right of it lies Puckpits, where the badger breeds, and the raven used to build, and where still on a summer morning the honey buzzard comes flying up from Mark Ash, and, circling for hours round the trees, will again fly back to its favourite haunt.

All these woods there are for rambles, flushed in the spring with wood-anemones and wood-sorrel, set in the green moss and the greener heather of the bilberry. Nowhere, too, in the Forest, than in these woods, have I seen more lovely sunsets. Through some deep-cut oriel of the trees have I watched the sun begin to sink, each moment burning brighter, and then suddenly its great brand of fire would fall, reddening each tree trunk, and crimson billows of clouds come rolling eastward.

Instead of following the Ringwood Road, beautiful as that is in many parts, especially at Woody Bratley, with its old thorn trees, we will turn off to the right. To the west now rises Ocknell Wood, and its clump of firs, a well-known landmark, and beyond that lies the new Slufter Inclosure, and Bratley Plain, with its great graveyard of barrows. In front of us stretches the East Fritham Plain, with its three barrows, locally called “butts,” the central known as Reachmore. At the second mound we will go into North Bentley Wood, following the wood-cutter’s track. Very wild and unfrequented is this. Here a stray deer will bound across the road; and sometimes a small herd of as many as six or seven are browsing on the ivy clinging to some tree just felled, startled at the slightest sound, and trooping off down the glades. The grey hen rises up at our feet from the heather; and, as we enter the wood, the woodpecker shrieks out his shrill laugh, whilst a buzzard is heavily sailing over the trees.

The road winds on through the valley amongst oaks flecked with silver flakes of moss, broken here and there by open glades and green spaces of fern. At last, we reach Queen’s North Lawn, which leads us on the right to Fritham, standing on the hill top. In the valley below lies Eyeworth Lodge, with the powder mills lately built; the Ivare of Domesday, and still so called by the peasantry, afterwards Yvez, where Roger Beteston, in the reign of Henry III., held some land by the service of finding litter for the King’s bed and hay for his horse whenever he came here to hunt.[142]