72 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



Farther away to the westward lies Sowley Pond, called in 

 the Ahhey Charters Colgrimesmore, and Frieswater, covering 

 some ninety acres, formerly the boundary of the abbey estate, 

 and used by the monks as a preserve for their fish. Here 

 once were iron-works, whose blast-furnaces were heated with 

 wood and charcoal from the Forest. The iron-stone was brought 

 from Hengistbury Head and the Hordle Cliffs, and after being 

 melted was shaped by the tilt-hammers, and finally sent off 

 inland to Eeading, or shipped at Pitt's Deep. But like all the 

 other ferraria of Sussex and Hampshire, these too have long 

 since been stopped, driven out of the field by the Stafford- 

 shire iron- works. Nothing now remains to tell their former 

 importance but a few mounds and the village Forge -Hammer 

 Inn, and a country proverb, " There will be rain when Sowley 

 hammer is heard," whose meaning is fast being lost. 



Returning, however, to Beaulieu, let us once more look at 

 the old abbey and the ruins of the cloisters, and try to imagine 

 for ourselves the time when, secluded from the world, in the 

 midst of the New Forest, the monks from Citeaux jjrayed and 

 worked, clad in their coarse white woollen robes, and slept, 

 according to their vow, on pallets of straw, giving shelter to 

 the fugitive, and food to the hungry.* It is only by seeing 

 some such grey ruins as these, still breathing of a long past 

 religion, placed amongst the solitude of their own green meadows 

 and woods, by the silent lapse of some stream flowing and ebbing 

 with every tide, that we can at all understand the meaning of a 

 life of contemplation, and its true value. Along these cloisters 



* Even Liiyton saAv their kindness, and pleaded for the poor wretches 

 whom they had protected Letter regarding Beaulieu Sanctuary from 

 I^ayton to Cromwell, J'Jl/i.s\s Letters, third series, vol. iii. pp. 72, 73. 



72 



