646 BEPOUT— 1882. 



pose first to sketch in outline the region of the New Forest and the adjacent com- 

 monable wastes ; and, secondly, to show how these wastes are used, and to give some 

 specimens of the results. 



A great forestal region, co-extensive with the peninsula or irregular parallelogi'am 

 which narrows northwards from a base upon the Channel to the chalk downs of 

 "Wiltshire, forms the south-west section of the county of Southampton. It is bounded 

 by tlie river Avon on the west, by the sea on the south, and on the east by the 

 Southampton Water, and by the Hampshire or lower portion of the valley of the 

 Test, as far as its northern boundary. The New Forest occupies the greater 

 part of this area. Regarded as a whole, this region is an undulating heathy 

 waste, sloping east and south-east from ' plains ' of about 400-250 feet eleva- 

 tion above the sea, and having an axis generally parallel Avith the valley of the 

 Avon. From this axis long level ridges radiate and finally descend, with a more or 

 less rounded outline, into- a broad e.xpanse of flat ' heaths ' which extends to the 

 sea, averaging about 100 feet above sea-level. The surface of the region, a deposit 

 of gravel upon the Jjarton clays, has been denuded until the water-bearing Braclesham 

 beds and hungry Bagshot sands are laid bare, and only gravel-capped ridges and 

 i.solated hills remain to attest its former character and gradual slope. The spurs 

 of these ridges enclose basins of horse-shoe form or elongated, and varying in 

 diameter, each comprising a series of convergent valleys hollowed out by the sur- 

 face-water, and deepened and broadened at about the 100-feet contour by the outflow 

 of the underground water. Thus the soil of the present surface varies from 

 gravel to clays and sand, as the denudation has extended downwards. 



The area of the highest and of the lowest lauds being for the most part un- 

 cultivable, the cultivated or more or less wooded lands are found extended as pro- 

 montories or islanded as hills between the gravelly heaths above or the sandy heaths 

 below. A few low-lying bottoms owe an exceptional fertility to a kind of alluvial 

 deposit from above, and contain the precious 'lawns;' and in particidar, great 

 morasses or lesser bogs fill the hollows of the sandy heaths, and are covered with 

 coarse mai-shy vegetation. Accordinglj^, we find the majority of the ancient farms 

 and demesne lands of the Forest or the adjacent manors situated in elevated locali- 

 ties between the 200 and 100 feet contours of the new Ordnance Map, while the 

 upper and lower heaths surrounding these oases and the woodland between form 

 the wastes, upon which the inhabitants from time immemorial have exercised their 

 rights of turbary, pannage, and of pasture. Here and there, some brown hamlet 

 on high ground, or a stray cottage with its little plot and orchard, nestling in some 

 sheltered hollow or skirting the roadside, varies the uniformity of the heaths. 



It is with the value of these wastes, at first sight so unpromising, that we are 

 now concerned. Comparatively modern encroachments and inclosiires excepted, 

 they are what they were centuries ago while they were yet the favourite lumting- 

 grounds of our kings, or were accumidatlng in the hands of the great religious 

 houses. The kings discouraged all change in the interest of the royal beasts of the 

 Forest — ^the wolf, the red and fallow deer, badgers, &c. ; and abbots and abbesses 

 rather encouraged than otherwise the small copyhold tenants, who paid a timely 

 though insignificant rent in fat capons at Christmas. 



It was probably due to the predominance of the Crown that the general move- 

 ment towards inclosiu'e, with its attendant hardships and disturbances, which cid- 

 minated in the reign of Edward VI., was little felt in this region. This movement, 

 which called forth the denunciation of Bishop Latimer and others, led in many other 

 districts to the destruction of the very class of cottage farmers of whom I am about 

 to speak. But that a newcomer sometimes tried to ' make lus profit ' of the wastes 

 appears from a decree of Elizabeth's reign, declaring and confirming the rights of 

 eleven small copyholders (amongst other customs) to pasture their cattle upon the 

 wastes of two manors adjacent to the New Forest. Their bill of complaint against 

 WiUiam Pawlett, lord of the manors of Wigley and of Cadnam and Winsor, recites 

 graphically that ' the said complaynants were poore coppieholders of the Manor of 

 Cadnam and Winsor, and their whole estates and livynge depended upon the same, 

 800 that yf they should be abrydged of there anncyent customes it would be their 

 utter undoinge.' 



