The New Forest: Its History and Its Scenery

by John R. Wise

Fritham is thoroughly in the Forest; and few spots can equal it in interest. It may be the very place where Rufus fell:[143] but whether or no, close round it lie the barrows of the Kelt, and the potteries of the Roman, covering acres of ground, at Island’s Thorn and Crockle, and Sloden and Black Bar, with the banks which mark the sites of the workmen’s houses.[144] Close round it, too, encircling it on all sides, rise the woods of Studley, with their great beeches, and Eyeworth, famous for its well. Going along the West Fritham Plain we come to Sloden, with its thick wood of yews, standing, massive and black, in all their depth of foliage, mixed, in loveliest contrast, with clumps of whitebeams. Below runs the brook, flowing under Amberwood, and winding among dark groups of hollies, lost at last in the deep gorge, shut in by the hills of Goreley and Charlford.

The best way to reach Fordingbridge is either to go by Ashley Lodge, and so through Pitt’s Wood, and between the high, bare, half mountainous hills of Chilly and Blissford, coming out upon the turnpike-road near Blissford Gate; or to follow the side of the Amberwood stream towards some scattered houses, called Ogdens.

Here we leave the Forest, and its moors and woods, and, mounting Goreley Hill, see below us the church of Fordingbridge, and the Avon winding among its meadows. To the south Hengistbury Head lifts itself up in the distant horizon; and beyond it again, but more to the west, stretches the blue line of the Portland Hills. To the north swell the rounded forms of the Wiltshire downs, and the spire of Salisbury starts out from the midst, and behind it towers the mound of Old Sarum.

Yews and Whitebeams in Sloden.

CHAPTER XI.
THE VALLEY OF THE AVON.—FORDINGBRIDGE, CHARFORD, BREAMORE, IBBESLEY, ELLINGHAM, RINGWOOD, SOPLEY.

The Valley of the Avon from Castle Hill.

The Valley of the Avon should certainly be seen, both because large parts of its manors and villages once stood in the Forest, as also for the contrast which it now affords to the neighbouring Forest scenery. Nothing can be so different to the moors we have just left as the Valley. Though close to them, you might imagine you were suddenly transported into one of the Midland Counties, and were walking by the side of the Warwickshire, instead of the Wiltshire Avon. In the place of wild heathery commons and furzy holts, deep lanes wind along by comfortable homesteads, thatched with Dorsetshire reed. Instead, too, of dark oak and beech woods, thick hedges are white in the spring with the scattered spray of the blackthorn, and orchards glow with their crimson wreaths of flowers.

Fordingbridge, formerly nothing else but Forde, now known to all fishermen for its pike and trout, in former days held the high-road into the Forest. On the bridge the lord of the manor, during the fence months, was obliged to mount guard, and stop all suspected persons, who could only on the north-west leave the Forest this way.[145]