CHAPTER III 
RED DEER (Cervus elaphus ) 
To trace the history of the wild deer of our islands we must go back to the twelfth century 
and look for a moment at the natural conditions of the country at that time. 
Mr. J. E. Harting tells us in his Extinct British Animals that what may be described as 
one vast forest practically covered the whole of England and Scotland, coming up to the 
very gates of London itself. He refers also to a curious tract written by Fitz-Stephen, a 
monk of Canterbury, in 1174, in which it is stated that there were open meadows of pasture- 
lands on the north of the city, and that beyond these was a great forest, in whose woody 
coverts lurked the stag, the hind, the wild boar, and the bull—white wild cattle. 
From the twelfth century onwards till the time of Queen Elizabeth the kings and 
nobles of the successive reigns gradually monopolised for their private uses of hunting and 
cultivation great portions of this virgin forest, till by 1536 the deer had become restricted in 
their range in the country lying south of a line that might be roughly drawn across England 
from Staffordshire to Yorkshire. Storer tells us that in the great mountain and moorland 
district to the north of Staffordshire lay the scene of Friar Tuck’s ministrations to Robin 
Hood and his merry men. At that time the great forest ran northwards and eastwards to 
the Midland Forest of England and the Peak Forest in Derbyshire, and from there northwards 
the country remained in its primitive condition as a vast wilderness of wood and stream. 
Joining the Peak Forest came that of Chillingham, which extended right over the Border to 
Hamilton in Scotland ; whilst again, north of the Tay and the Clyde, commenced what was 
known as “ the Great Caledonian Wood,” a wood which practically reached the moors of 
Caithness and the shores of the Pentland Firth. 
From the time of Henry VIII. till the present day the wild red deer of England have 
seen one after another of their old fastnesses disappear, and now they owe their existence 
solely to the protection afforded them in a few isolated spots. They are still found in 
Devonshire and Somersetshire, where in 1871 the herd was estimated at 250 head. During 
the last few years, however, the range of the animals has been slightly extended and the 
number increased. When fishing in March on the Barle, near Dulverton in Somersetshire, 
I have twice seen small parties on the move. Martindale Fell in Westmoreland is another 
of the red deer’s last strongholds, a full account of which will be found in the Rev. H. A. 
