54 



THE ROYAL FOREST OF HAYWOOD. 



BY THE REV. THOS. PHILLIPPS, M.A. 



It has been remarked by early writers that many of the English nobles 

 selected marshy situations whereon to found their future homes and estates, 

 and, with every allowance for modern draining, it is surp rising in how many 

 instances this remark still holds good. Earl Malmsbury accounts for this by the 

 fact that the larger varieties of game, Deer, Boars, &c, are much more abundant 

 in marshy situations ; and for this same reason we can easily understand why 

 the Forest of Haywood should have been the noted resort of game we know it to 

 have been in early times, since the original forest included Allensmore, Coedmore, 

 and other portions which are still wet localities. Hunting was the half -business 

 of life with the barons or nobles in ancient times, and thus we account also for 

 Hereford, from its convenient situation to one of the best hunting forests in 

 the kingdom, having been so much frequented by our Saxon and Norman Kings. 



Hereford itself in very early times was little else than an encamped station, 

 chosen and maintained by our original British ancestors to guard a much 

 frequented ford or passage of the Wye, as in those times, when nearly the whole 

 country was over-run with wood, a passage or way to the ford was of much more 

 importance than the ford itself. It is stated in the Archaeologia Cambrensis that 

 this encamped station was called by the Britons Henfford, or the old road, 

 though it seems probable that the present name of Hereford is a mixture of 

 the Saxon " Hare," ancient, venerable, or long used, and the British " fford," a 

 road, pass, or ford. It seems to me, also, that the name of " Haywood Forest " 

 is a mixture also of these two ancient languages, Haer or Hay, which is a 

 proper name, and the British, or still English word "wood." 



I will only observe further, before I begin this little history, that in 

 Roman times Magna Castra, or Kenchester, was certainly the great place or 

 capital of this district ; and so also in Anglo-Saxon times that Sutton, or South- 

 town, and not Hereford, was almost as certainly the chief place or capital of the 

 district. 



A paper in the Archaeologia Cambrensis (vol. 5, 81) gives the following 

 extract from Leland : " There is great likelihood that Sutton, at such time as 

 Kenchester stood, was a mansion or palace of King Offa, while Hereford was a 

 beginning." A sentence which intimates pretty plainly, that when Offa held 

 his Court at Sutton, Hereford was in its earliest infancy. There is an old idea 

 taken from the Welsh Triads — which, by-the-way, are very imperfectly under- 

 stood — that a Bishop of Hereford attended a council at the Metropolitan Bee 



