150 The Netr Forest: its History and its Scenery. 



crimson of the sky floating on the waves as they break along 

 the shore. 



Still following the path along the top of the cliff, we pass the 

 grave-yard, where stood the old cruciform church of Hordle — 

 once in the middle of the village, but now only a hundred yards 

 from the sea. Nothing of it remains except some blocks of 

 Grey Wethers, used for its foundation, and too large to be 

 removed. Very interesting are these stones, brought up from 

 the shore, where, now and then, one or two may be seen at low 

 tide, tumbled from the drift above — the same stones as those at 

 Stonehenge, left on the top of the chalk. Gone, too, are its 

 mill and its six salterns, mentioned in Domesday, and the village 

 itself removed inland. The sailors, however, dredging for 

 cement-stone or for fish, sometimes draw up great logs of wood, 

 locally known as " mootes," which may perhaps tell of the 

 salterns ; or the time when the Forest stretched to the sea. The 

 salterns of the Normans and the Old-English have suffered very 

 different fates. In Normandy the sea no longer reaches to their 

 sites,* whilst here it has long since rolled over them. 



Beyond this again is Mineway, reminding us, by its name, 

 of the time when the iron-stone was collected on the shore and 

 taken to the Sowley furnaces to be smelted. f Farther on, down 

 in the valley made by the stream, which turns the village mill, 

 mentioned in Domesday, lies Milford. The church spire rises 



* See Lappenberg's England under the Anglo-Norman Kings. Ed. 

 Thorpe, p. 89- 



t Yarranton, in that strange but clever work, England^s Improvement 

 by Land and Sea (Ed. 1677, pp. 43-63), dwells at length on the quantity of 

 iron-stone along the coast, and the advantage of the New Forest for making 

 charcoal to smelt the metal. He proposed to build two forges and two 

 furnaces for casting guns, near Ringwood, where the ore was to be brought 

 up the Avon. 



