I04 



DEER AND DEER PARKS. 



Ch. IV. 



HAMPSHIRE. 



Two parks only are mentioned in the 

 Domesday Survey within the county of 

 Southampton, viz. that at Waltham, after- 

 virards called Bishop's Waltham, belong- 

 ing to the Bishop of Winchester ; and at 

 or near Watingewelle, now Watchingwell 

 or Watchingwood, in the Isle of Wight, 

 which was the property of the King. The 

 park at Waltham, in the Survey ' parcus 

 bestiarum,' translated by Warner, ' a 

 pound for cattle ! ' adjoined the forest of 

 East-Bere ; in Leland's time, ' welle re- 

 plenished with deere;' it is reported to 

 have contained a thousand acres, but has 

 been long converted into farms.' It is 

 marked as a park in the surveys of Sax- 

 ton and Speed. 



Watchingwood is in the parish of Shalf- 

 leet, between Colbourn and the Forest 

 of Parkhurst, and to this Royal Forest 

 the park appears to have been attached, 

 being, as I conclude, the park alluded to 

 in the following letter from Sir John Ding- 

 ley to the Earl of Pembroke, written in 

 1642 : ' There is a park alsoe belonging 

 to the Captaine (of Carisbrook Castle), 

 which is 3 miles about ; and there is alsoe 

 a common for the whole country to put in 

 horse and beast without stint, which is 

 called by the name of Parkhurst Chase ; 

 the King, and consequently the Captaine, 



' Warner's Collections for the History of 

 Hampshire, p. 269. 



2 Worsley's Isle of Wight (1781), p. n. 



' ' Where King John much hunted ' (query 

 John of Gaunt?) Warner Collections for 

 Hamp. p. 167. 



< In the 53rd of Henry III., William de 



hath fallow-deere in it, and doth keepe a 

 keeper and a rainger to keep them and to 

 looke unto them, that they do not lie in 

 men's grounds, which hath bin very much 

 abus'd, by suffering the deere to ly out, 

 and soe they are almost quite destroyed ; 

 and in my time the country hath quite 

 destroyed the woods and bushes ; and alsoe 

 some have made encroachment, and have 

 taken in some of the common for private 

 use.' ' The Great Park of Parkhurst was 

 in the parish of St. Nicholas. There were 

 also the New and Little Parks, in Caris- 

 brook parish. The deer have been long 

 destroyed in all of them, as well as in th| 

 Forest of Parkhurst. 



There were other Royal parks in Hamp- 

 shire ; at Lyndhurst, in the New Forest, 

 attached to the King's house there, and 

 marked in Saxton's map; and at Free- 

 mantel^ near Kingsclere,* in the north of 

 the county, the custody of which park was 

 granted to William de la Pole, Earl of 

 Suffolk, by King Henry VI. in the twenty- 

 first year of his reign,* at Odiham, in the 

 north-eastern part of Hampshire, was also 

 a Royal pai-k, in which Richard de Roke- 

 lande was constituted keeper of the young 

 game, ' puUanorum,' in the fourteenth year 

 of Edward III.,' and William Warbleton, 

 keeper, in the thirty-fifth of Henry VI.' 



Wmtreshull had license to impark his wood of 

 FroUebury within the bounds of Hn.^ forest of 

 Fraidmantell (Cal. Pat. Rolls, p. 42). Could 

 this be the origin of this park ? 



' Cal. Pat. Rolls, p. 285. 



' lb. p. 136. 



' lb. p. 297. 



