The New Forest: its history and its scenery/Chapter 10

by John Richard de Capel Wise

 

CHAPTER X.

THE NORTHERN PART.—STONEY-CROSS, BRAMBLE HILL, FRITHAM, BENTLEY, EYEWORTH, SLODEN.

If any one wishes to know the beauty of the Forest in autumn, let him see the view from the high ridge at Stoney-Cross. Here the air blows off the Wiltshire Downs finer and keener than anywhere else. Here, on all sides, stretch woods and moors. Here, in the latter end of August, the three heathers, one after another, cover every plain and holt with their crimson glory, mixed with the flashes of the dwarf furze. And a little later the maples are dyed, yellow and russet, by the autumn rains, and the beeches are scorched to a fiery red with the first frost, and the oaks renew, but deeper and more gloriously, the golden lights of spring, till the great woods of Prior's Acre and Daneshill burn with colour; every gleam of sunshine, and every passing shadow, touching them with fresher and stranger beauty.^[1]

To the east, about two miles along the Southampton Road, lies the village of Cadenham, famous for its oak, which, like the Glastonbury thorn, buds on Christmas Eve. The popular tradition in the neighbourhood runs, that, as the weather is harder, it shows more leaves, and, refusing the present chronology, only buds on Old Christmas night. As in most things, there is some little truth in the story. Doubtless, in some of the mild winters which visit Hampshire, the tree shows a few buds, as at that time I have seen others do in various parts of the Forest. Of course, they are all nipped by the first approach of severe weather, which, however, seldom happens on the warm south-west coast till the new year.

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.^[2] 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.^[3]

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.

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.^[4]

Fritham is thoroughly in the Forest; and few spots can equal it in interest. It may be the very place where Rufus fell:^[5] 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.^[6] 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 crag of Old Sarum.

Footnotes

1. The best way to know this part of the Forest, is to go to Stoney-Cross itself, and stay at the inn, once a well-known house in the old posting days, and lately fitted up for visitors.
2. The word, however, is going out of use, and is more generally now softened into hill. We meet with it in the perambulation of the Forest made in the twenty-second year of Charles II.—"The same hedge reaches Barnfarn from the right hand, right by Helclose, as far as to a certain corner called Hell Corner."
3. For the geology of this part of the Forest see chapter xx.
4. Testa de Nevill, p. 237 b. 130. See, also, p. 235 b. (118). As in other parts of England, throughout the Forest, as we have seen at Lyndhurst and Brockenhurst, were similar feudal tenures. Some held their lands, as the heirs of Cobbe, at Eling, by finding 50; and others, again, as Richard de Baudet, at Redbridge, 100 arrows. Testa de Nevill, as in the first reference; and p. 238 a. (132.)
5. See previous chapter, p. 96, foot-note.
6. For some account of the contents of these barrows and potteries, see chapters xvii. and xviii.