4 The New Forest : its History and its Scenertf. 



— the port for the Roman triremes, and afterwards for the 



galleys of Venice and Bayonne — where our own Henry V. 



built 



" the grete dromons, 



The Trinite, the Grace-Dieu." * 



Within it, once in the very heart, stand the Abbot's house 

 and the cloister walls of Beaulieu, the one abbey, with the 

 exception of Hales-Owen, in Shropshire, founded by John. It 

 can point, too, to the Roman camp at Buckland Rings, to the 

 ruins of the Norman castle at Christchurch, to Henry Vni.'s 

 forts at Hurst and Calshot, built with the stones of the ruined 

 monastery of Beaulieu ; can show, too, bosomed amongst its 

 trees, quiet village churches, most of them Norman and Early 

 English, old manor-houses, as at Ellingham, famous in story, 

 grey roadside crosses, sites of Roman potteries, and Keltic and 

 West- Saxon battlefields and barrows scattered over its plains. 



For the ornithologist its woods, and rivers, and seaboard 

 attract more birds than most counties. For the geologist the 

 Middle -Eocene beds are always open in the Hordle and 

 Barton Cliffs inlaid with shell and bone. For the botanist and 

 entomologist, its marshes, moors, and woodlands, possess equal 

 treasures. 



But in its wild scenery lies its greatest charm. From eveiy 

 hill-top gleam the blue waters of the English Channel, broken 

 in the foreground by the long line of the Isle of Wight downs 

 and the white chalk walls of the Needles. Nowhere, in extent at 

 least, spread such stretches of heath and moor, golden in the 

 spring with the blaze of furze, and in the autumn purple with 



* Political Pieces and Songs relating to English History. Edited by 

 Thomas Wright. Vol. ii., p. 199. 



