WINDSOR PARK. 101 



then he got some bricks and some sods, and he put up a 

 bit of a place to take shelter in, and at last he got to live 

 in it, and there 'was a deal o' bother made about it one 

 way and the other ; but he was servant to a gentleman as 

 was a magistrate in the neighbourhood, and he was friendly 

 to the poor people, and said the land was of no use to no- 

 body, and so he kep' it, and when I married his daughter 

 I came to live in it.'* 



" To remove such customs as these, as well as to put an 

 end for ever to the frequent disputes, the Commissioners 

 were appointed to make a report on the state of the forest, 

 which they did in 1807, and again, finally, in 1808. Their 

 report was a sweeping condemnation of the laws (which 

 were, in effect, practically useless) under which the Forest 

 was then governed ; in 1813 the Act for the enclosure of 

 the Forest was passed, and in 1817 the awards to the 

 various commoners were made, the Crown obtaining com- 

 plete possession of a large part of land stretching from 

 New Lodge to Sandhurst, containing upwards of 10,000 

 acres. With the exception of that part belonging to the 

 Crown adjacent to the Great Park, known as Cranbourne, 

 scarcely a vestige of the grand old forest now remains. 



- " The allotments to the Crown on the enclosure of Wind- 

 sor Forest, enabled good old George III. to enjoy the 

 luxury of farming his own land ; and upon the same ground 

 the Prince Consort afterwards established the famous 

 model farms which were noticed in the Windsor supple- 

 ment to the Gardeners Chronicle, October 31, 1874, and 



* According to a statement made by John Mitchell Kemble, fond of old Saxon lore, 

 to William Thorns, an old bookworm, cited in The Nineteenth Century, July 1881, 

 p. 75, among other illustrations of ancient tenures, forest rights, &c., which he had 

 picked up at Addlestone when he was there living, and to which the old forest of 

 Windsor had formerly extended, was the custom of deciding how far the rights of the 

 owner of land extended into the stream on which his property was situated, by a man 

 standing on the brink with one foot on the land and the other in the water, aud throw- 

 ing a ten penny hatchet into the water ; where the hatchet fell was the limit. This, he 

 said, he had learned from an old man born and bred in the forest, who remembered 

 having once seen it done. J. C, B. 



