96 



CURSORY NOTES ON THP: FOREST OF DEAN AND SOME 

 OF THE OBJECTS WITHIN IT. 



BY EDWIN LEES, F.L.S., F.G.S., VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE MALVERN AND 

 WORCESTERSHIRE NATURALISTS' CLUBS. 



What can be shortly said about the ancient Forest of Dean may be almost 

 comprised in what Mr. Pepys puts in his gossiping Diary under date of August, 

 1602, when he says that he had a "good discourse" with Sir John Winter, "a 

 very worthy man, most of which was concerning the Forest of Dean, and the timber 

 there, and iron works, with their great antiquity ; and the vast heaps of cinders 

 which they find, and are now of great value, being necessary for the making of 

 iron at this day ; and without which they cannot work." 



The general idea of a forest is that of ground densely covered by majestic 

 trees, but whatever may have been its aspect in pre-historic times, it has been so 

 despoiled in various ways that in the present day Dean Forest is only a forest in 

 name, but few extensive patches of wood occur to charm the eye, scarcely any old 

 trees of extraordinary size remain, while wastes of bare heathy ground with 

 scattered coal and ironworks are the more apparent features of this tract of 

 country. Where ground has been preserved for plantations they consist only of 

 young trees. 



The woody region appears to most advantage and attractive to a lover of 

 sylvan scenery who, crossing the river Wye from Whitchurch, either ascends 

 Syraond's Yat, and from thence looks down upon the Coldwell Rocks, and the woods 

 that surround them, or proceeds by a lower route through the sylvan coverts that 

 intervene between Symond's Yat and Coleford. Here on a fervid summer day he 

 might be inclined to say with one of our poets (Gay) — 



O lead me, guard me from the sultry hours, 

 Hide me, ye forests, in your closest bowers. 

 Where the tall oak his spreading arms entwines, 

 And with the beech a mutual shade combines. 



Dean Forest had indeed the closest bowers throughout a wide extent when Drayton 

 described it as— 



The queen of Forests all that west of Severn lie ; 



Her broad and bushy top Dean noddeth up so high, 



The lesser are not seen she is so tall and large. 



But this is a picture not now to be realised, and we must be satisfied that we are on 

 forest ground, if the covert is not so dense as it formerly was ; though near the 

 Speech-house, and between that and the Railway-station, real forest scenery exists 

 in pristine grandeur ; and the size and grotesque form of the holly trees cannot be 

 surpassed anywhere in Britain. Many of the hawthorns, too, are evidently of 

 great age, and these as well as the hollies may have stood here in Saxon times. 

 Several beech trees present a magnificent spread of branches, with boles of large 

 girth, but these cannot be near so old as the extraordinary hollies. 



It is clear, however, that in not far distant times a greater extent of real 

 forest scenery might be contemplated than now exists, for it is stated that during 



