EXTENT OF ANCIENT FORESTS. 65 



which anciently were all but as one wood, that gave it 

 the name of Woodlands." Leland, about 1536, though 

 he speaks of the woods being then much reduced, con- 

 firms this, and even carries this country of woods farther 

 south. He says : "Of antient tyme all the quarters of 

 the country about Lichefeild were forrest and wild 

 ground." * That would, I believe, bring the Stafford- 

 shire woodlands close up to the purlieus of Charnwood 

 Forest, in Leicestershire. Nor is this all ; only about 

 three miles north-west of Lichfield commences Cannock 

 Chase, with its parks as numerous and extensive as 

 those of Needwood, from which it was separated only 

 by the River Trent. This Chase, even at a quite recent 

 period, was "said to contain 36,000 acres;" f while "in 

 Queen Elizabeth's time Needwood Forest was twenty- 

 four miles in circumference." j They were both cele- 

 brated for their oaks and hollies, those in Needwood 

 alone, in 1658, when it had been much limited in 

 extent and denuded of its timber, being "valued at 

 £30,710." 



The northerly and mountainous moorland district 

 of the county of Stafford was undoubtedly, as many 

 names of places within it still indicate, anciently heavily 

 wooded too, and contains, near its northern extremity, 

 the singular defile of rocks and caverns locally called 

 Ludchurch, and said to have been the scene of Friar 

 Tuck's ministrations to Robin Hood and his merry 

 men. This part of Staffordshire, bounded by the river 

 Dove on its eastern side, and on the west passing 

 close to Congleton, in Cheshire, and another ancient 

 forest quite contiguous, described by old Leland in the 



* " Itinerary," vol. iv., p. 114, Hearne's 2nd edition. 



t Harwood's " Erdeswick," p. 192. % Ibid, p. 279. 



