Fordingbfidge. 



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.* 



In Domesday it possessed a church and two mills, rented 

 at 14s. 2c?. Though all its beech and oak woods, worth, on 

 account of the pannage for swine, 20s. a year, were afforested, 

 only three virgates of land were taken. Yet, notwithstanding 

 this loss, it still paid the same rental as in Edward the Con- 

 fessor's reign. 



The old hospital, dedicated to St. John, was dissolved by 

 Henry VI., and its revenues annexed to St. Cross, near 

 Winchester.! The church stands on the extreme south-west 



* Lewis : Topographical Remarks on the New Forest, p. 80, foot-note. 

 I have not, however, been able to find his authority. A tradition of the 

 sort lingers in the neighbourhood. Blount (Fragmenta Antiquitatis, Ed. 

 Beckwith, p. 115. 1815) says that Richard Carevile held here six librates a 

 year of land in capite of Edward I., by finding a sergeant-at-arms for forty 

 days ever} year in the King's army. See, also, the Testa de Nevill, p. 231 

 (101), No. 3. 



f Dugdale : Monasticon Anglicanum, Ed. 1830, vol. vi., part, ii., p. 761. 

 Leland, however (/#., vol. Hi., f. 72, p. 88, Ed. Hearne), says it was given 

 to King's College, Cambridge. 



117 



