Dan Snow's History Hit - Normans, Romans and Victorians: History of England's New Forest 

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Where can you find an Iron Age fort, Roman kilns, trees built for Nelson's navy and the hunting lodge of William the Conqueror? In the place that Dan calls home: the New Forest in the South of England. In this special episode of the podcast sponsored by BMW and National Park's Recharge in Nature project, Dan joins his good friend and local archaeologist Richard Reeves for an afternoon under the canopy and over the heathland to dig into the deep history of this ancient woodland so named at the Norman Conquest.  Among the gently falling rain, crunchy leaves and chirping birds, Dan and Richard retrace the many civilisations who have utilised the forest over the centuries for commoning, building ships, serving armies, hiding out and most of all, relaxing. Right through from the Norman gentry hunting deer to the Victorians who planted giant redwoods for scenic driveways, the New Forest has been a place of play and leisure for rich and poor, old and young.  The Recharge in Nature project is a new 3-year partnership between BMW and National Parks UK with a shared aim and commitment to enhance the electric car charging network and support vital nature restoration, biodiversity and sustainability initiatives across all 15 National Parks. Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Welcome everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I'm in one of my favourite places on earth, a place I return to all the time where I live, where I hang out with my kids, where I recharge my batteries. That is the New Forest in Southern England. You may have heard me mention it a few times in this podcast. It's called the New Forest, folks, because it was set up by William the Conqueror around a thousand years ago.

So it is reasonably new as far as things go here in the UK. I'm here with Team History. I've got Jana, the trusty producer with me. And how do I get here? Well, of course, I use my electric car. Stop me talking about my electric car. That battery needs recharging as well and now there's a partnership between BMW and National Parks UK to enhance electric car charging networks across all 15 national parks making travel by electric

vehicles to these locations much easier which is great because now when I drive across the country I can recharge the National Park not in a motorway services I can have a little hike recharge myself on the journey as well as the car. It's fantastic. They're also supporting local initiatives focused on enabling nature restoration, biodiversity and well-being through the Recharge in Nature Fund. So to discover more about the Recharge in Nature project, go to bmw.co.uk slash nationalp parks. I'm on my way to meet someone I have

enormous respect for he's called Richard Reeves he is an archaeologist he's a naturalist he's an enthusiast he's a storyteller he's a historian as you'll hear there's nothing he does not know about the new forest I sit at his feet and learn takes me, he takes my kids out and we go on massive stomps through the forest, through different time periods from the Stone Age to the 21st century. It's a great opportunity to introduce you to one of my favourite people, Richard Reeves. Let's go say hello to him. Save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. So, Richard, how's it going?

All good. Good to be back out in the forest with you, man. It's always a pleasure. So let's describe where we are. I guess hiding, obviously it started to rain naturally. So there's some big old holly bushes, some having their little lovely red fruit, others, the males without.

And then look out across that valley, tell me what we can see. Well, I mean, this is really very much the landscape you'd expect in the forest, if you knew the forest. A lot of people think of forest as being solid areas of woodland, but actually, historically, a forest is an area of hunting

ground so it's actually a mix of habitats can include villages in fact and so here we've got a valley which is largely lowland heath but there's broken woodland and then down in that more open heathland we've got a little herd of deer walking through yeah so we've got some fallow deer down there and of course that is the beast of the forest, you know, the deer. It's very much core to a forest and it was the Norman Kings who actually set up the New Forest, who actually introduced the fallow potentially back to the forest and they are the dominant species of deer today. So it's the New Forest, a lot of North American spectators say to me, you live in the New Forest, they're like a new subdivision. How old the new forest well the new forest was set up

by William the Conqueror we don't know the date now and there's a traditional date this always bandied about which is 1079 but that's not the case all we know is it was actually made by William the Conqueror or at least designated but it was designated on top of an existing anglo-saxon hunting ground it's just we didn't have forest law the normans imported that forest law so when we talk about forest law yes how is that different to common law is it an extra it's an extra layer of rules you've got to abide by yes so forest law is this extra layer if you like so common law still exists but the forest law if you like you can't kill anyone no you say

i mean you still have the standard things obviously the forest is a good place if you're an outlaw to get away and hide everyone's heard of robin hood and those sort of characters certainly existed within the forest however um the forest law was really there like say to preserve the forest for the king's benefit you know in terms of hunting the animals so you weren't allowed to go around and just cut the wood, you weren't allowed to just go around and take the deer. So if you're in an anglo-saxon setting, basically if a deer wandered onto your ground you could hunt it and kill it and then go and have a nice nice bit of venison. That's all very good. But in the forest

all of the deer belong to the crown and in certain cases there were different levels so if the deer was actually hunted and it actually went outside the bounds of the forest they could make a proclamation and with that proclamation they could say you know this deer has been hunted by the king he's given the king plenty of pleasure and we wish him to be protected and you're not like, so even if a deer went outside the forest in certain cases those deer could be protected. And is it true that sometimes there were sort of periods between kings things were a bit messy or a bit of civil war there would often be a real bout of killing a deer of gathering a firewood of local people taking advantage of that?

Whenever the forest officers were distracted, you bet the locals were in there taking the most advantage from it. But of course, as has always been the case, it's often those in charge who are the worst offenders. So a younger brother of the king or a royal cousin might be put in charge of the new forest and he might exploit it and behave naughtily himself?

There's that potential. I'm usually sort of the lower ranking offices. I mean certainly by the 18th century a lot of the official posts in the forest were very much exploited. It's quite interesting as a lot of the actual people that were appointed to the official positions during the 18th century were actually political people. In fact almost all of them had held some political office, they were MPs of one place or another. So it was part of that old corruption, part of the government insuring their majority in the House of Commons

by handing out nice little plum jobs to people. Absolutely, yeah. It's all about sort of, you know, I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. What about the commoners' rights? Why are we still seeing in the autumn when the acorns fall, pigs get let through the forest? We've seen grazing donkeys, we've seen grazing ponies here. That's not typical if you go around the rest of the British landscape. No, but I mean, you know,

up until fairly recently, it was still an economically viable way of farming. Obviously in southern England and with the cost of land holdings, especially in somewhere as busy as southern England, the cost of land makes it totally especially in somewhere as busy as southern England, the cost of land makes it totally unenviable as an economic sort of way of life. So if you want to have 10 cows, you either have to buy a big old chunk of land and let them graze on your own private land, or you become a commoner here and you can graze your cows on this communal space. Is that right? Yes, you still have to have the land that you can take the animals off if you need to.

But, I mean, if you think about how it operated in the medieval period, and the medieval period at Cobbling was somewhat different. But you could turn your animals out during the summer and set aside all of your ground to grow hay. Okay. That meant you had a load more hay for the winter. So when you brought your animals off the forest, they had a load of hay to support them off the forest.

Now, if you imagine you're just a farmer and you've got to keep your animals on your land all the time, is there any certain amount of land that you can keep your animals on as well as grow hay for them to keep them over winter? So that common land is land that's going to be exploited communally, in common? In common, with common rights and therefore the access to common land you can keep many more stock than you would otherwise be able to keep. And why is that tradition continued here in the New Forest where it's not in you know other parts of the country? Well as I said it was economically it was still viable up until fairly recently and there's the strong traditions involved with that so those strong traditions

still form the core of the common community and there's still people that wish to you know wish to take on that lifestyle. Yeah so here we are we're just now approaching one of these medieval lodge sites now if you look on the northern survey map they're called royal hunting lodges in the whole they are just the lodge sites for the medieval foresters, the people that are in charge of looking after the different areas of the forest and these would have been the foot foresters not the chief foresters, these would have been the foresters living out here being on the site looking out for poachers and doing the maintenance in the woodland that they need to support the deer, maybe pollarding the trees and such like. But if the king had been rampaging across this countryside

he might have overnighted in one? Absolutely and so when you get to the period of Edward III we actually have accounts from where some of these lodges were upgraded to benefit the king so when the king was actually out hunting he'd use some of these lodge sites as a base for hunting. Now, one of those particular was one called Hathborough. And Hathborough Lodge was so well upgraded, it had its own chapel and longhouse, as well as all the other buildings and stables you'd expect within a normal lodging site. So you've also got this sort of raising status that brings it up to this royal hunting lodge status. But on the whole, most of these are just medieval lodges lodges you know these are the local offices on the ground it's their properties a bit like the woodman's cottages and the keeper's cottages you see around the forest

today and that's what these were but yeah the king did come hunting so Edward III was a very regular visitor and Richard II also visited and used some of these lodges had some upgraded for his own benefit and another one was was upgraded river chapel and such like as well so yeah i mean the king certainly came and of course that's really one of the high points in the forest history another point was during the reign of edward i when we had eleanor de castile eleanor of castile she was she was very interested in the first yeah the first wife of edward i she really took an interest she was in the forest. The queen of the forest. Yeah, the first wife of Edward I. She really took an interest. She was granted the forest in Dower,

but then she took advantage of her position to acquire all of the valuable bits and pieces of the forest. So she acquired the manor of Linterst, to which went the forestership of the Linterst bailiwick, but also the stewardship of the forest. And then very soon after, there was a rather unfortunate legal affair whereby a lot of the foresters defeat the hereditary foresters had been around since

the creation of the forest were sort of like turfed out of their offices for misbehaviour and she acquired those offices as well and therefore acquired all of the bailiwicks within the forest under her control and therefore all of the income from those and so she also gained the income from some of the forest heirs that were held and so she really did see the forest as a benefit to her and one piece of evidence of her coming is the place named Queen's Bower. Now Queen's Bower there's a medieval hunting lodge there or medieval lodge site and it's called Queens Bower so everyone thinks oh where the queen that must have been where she hunted from etc etc but that's actually not the case the lodge is called Queens Bower Lodge but it's in a woodland

called Queens Bower it's named after the woodland and the woodland is named after the fact that there was a mill at Boulderford and in Boulderford Mill there was a chamber for the Queen and that belonged to Lintas Manor so when the Queen was staying at Lintas she had her private little getaway down at Boulderford Mill and the woodland next door became known as Queensbower and then when they built a later lodge there the lodge was named after the woodland became Queensbower Lodge so that's a sort of place name Queensb, which exists today and is named after Queen Eleanor of Castile. Amazing. Think of Edward I's wife. This must have been a refuge for her.

Yeah, absolutely. And while he was away fighting the Scots and fighting the Welsh and fighting everyone else, she could get away here. Mind you, she was quite a canny woman. She was quite the businesswoman. She certainly acquired a lot of wealth. And when she died, I was making inquiry over all of the properties she'd actually acquired and she'd actually asked for that she'd actually requested

that that there should be an inquiry over over how all these properties came to her and uh yeah a lot of people were compensated thereafter all right russia where are we off to now well i think now the world is getting a bit adverse we should drop down into the valley and get into the shelter of the woodland. As we look out, the woodland below us, you can see it's largely dominated by oak. Particularly this section over here. This was planted during the Napoleonic Wars. Oh, yeah.

So this is over 200-year-old oak. And it was planted basically because we needed a navy. So the rise of silviculture was really driven by supplying naval interest and so here yes we've still got this old oak and in a commercial sense you know it's well over its sort of felling age usually you'd fell oak at about 120 years old but in the forest because of its history and because of the fighting over it and how it's valued by the local population that has been in the past as well. They're not allowed to actually clear the oak until it's 200 years old.

And so this woodland here was planted in the Napoleonic times for a navy that turned into ironclads. It never needed it, did it? It never needed it. So by the time those trees... It was planted in 1810, 1811, that sort of period, these enclosures. Those woodlands were planted then.

200 years later well... Well we're glad they're there. We're glad we're there but we don't need them anymore, not for our wooden navy. So you have walked like nobody else, you have walked over every inch of this forest. You were born and raised here right? Yeah absolutely, I've always been in the forest so I was pretty much feral as a kid you know I think the parents would prefer me out in the forest charging around rather than getting up the mischief so I think they put up with it so I can't complain about having the forest as my playground and it's continued so. Just give everyone at home a sense of what you were telling me like you're out whether it's

netting birds doing conservation work archaeology in the archives, I mean just tell me about some of the range of forest activities that you do because it's everything. Yeah well I am a forest nerd, that's me. I suppose growing up in the forest and doing stuff even with my mates we'd go out in the forest and make rope swings and stuff like that as you do as a kid but I was also like catching snakes and you know go fishing down the river and well the other thing was the thing that got me in history i suppose just go and collect bullets and and sort of old ordnance and stuff off the old ranges from the second world war because the new forest was obviously full of military encampments and such like and airfields during the second World War because it was on the south coast it was

a really sort of strategic location for sort of the military and so you used to go out and collect the bullets and things I had quite a collection and occasionally got in trouble with taking ordnance back home that was that was a suspect. So we just stumbled into a depression in the ground yeah as you see it's quite old it's very much sort of like worn down, you hardly notice it as a man-made object but it is very much a human intervention, it's a clay pit and this is where they were digging the clay to make pottery during the Roman period. Wow, so there have been Roman villas across this landscape? Not Roman villas as such, probably just potters huts but if we go up there we'll find an area where they were actually doing the industrial processing of the pottery and anything that failed to meet expectations was thrown into a large pile. Oh brilliant. This is an animal hole here

because obviously you can't just go around digging anywhere you like in the forest yeah but there's animal holes and where the animals have been digging I did find this one the other day so you know they dig into it. So obviously the soil builds up over the top and in amongst all this. There you go. A bit of Roman pottery. Yes. Roman pottery.

Down there's another bit there, so that's a completely different place. Oh yeah, that's different, yeah. Very different kind of. So I mean, most of the forest pottery is grey ware, which is, oh, there's a nice big chunk there. Oh, diagonal stuff. Oh, ah yeah, this is a mortaria,

see the actual bits of flint in there. Oh is that deliberate, they're left in there? Yeah, to actually, they're sprinkled in there to make a rough surface. Oh my gosh, look at that, it's beautiful, so it's a? A mortaria, so mortar, mortar and pestle if you like. This is your tableware, but it's quite an important industry they had in the forest,

it's sort of regionally important in southern England. There's another similarly important industrial area in Oxfordshire, and they basically sort of expanded up to halfway in between, pretty much. And if you lived nearer the New Forest, you ended up with New Forest greyware on your table. Yeah. And if you lived near Oxford, you had Oxfordshire greyware on the table. It's grey because it's fired in non-oxidizing conditions,

in reducing conditions, and therefore the actual clay doesn't change colour, it just goes dark. Whereas if it's done in oxidizing conditions, it goes orange. And so hence, if you've got greyware, the pottery, yeah, I mean- So we're talking hundreds of thousands of shards

underneath our feet now. Yeah, you can see how high this mound is compared to the surrounding soil. 1700 years since the actual soil levels have built up over the top and as the animals have moved about sort of mixed up the soil so as the animals go down but down towards the bottom it'll be more or less solid pottery. What is it with the Romans and pottery? Why do we associate, did they make more pottery than the Celts, loosely defined, who came before them? Or is it a Roman thing? Well, I mean, it's just a bit more organized, aren't they?

I mean, you know, you have much more capitalist society, I guess. I mean, if you're living in a sort of fairly woodland environment in the Bronze Age, what would you do? Well, you'd probably just make a bowl out of wood and such like but you know once you start having mass-produced pottery in markets it reduces the cost of those and it can be made much more regularly so and they could be sent off to london culture to france yeah it wasn't that we weren't making pottery we just weren't doing it on a

commercial scale in fact when the romans turned up they wanted pottery supplied to their army and there was a native pottery industry down at pa, and they made what's called black burnished ware. But because the army required pottery, they basically said, right, you can supply us. And so what started off as a small industry became a much larger industry because it was supporting the Roman Empire, if you like. It was supporting the military across the British Isles. So we're into a very different part of the forest now. These trees are what, 150-200 years old?

Yeah these ones were planted 1852-53. There was an interest in the forest that hadn't really been there before and that was the interest of the general public. And the general public started coming to the forest in larger numbers with the interest of the general public and the general public started coming to the forest in larger numbers with the coming of the railway so made the forest accessible by the time there was a select committee held on the future of the new forest in 1875 there was so much public interest in the forest for all sorts of reasons from a sort of landscape point of view from wildlife point of

view from a historical landscape point of view all sorts of things that public interest really swayed things in favor of the commoners and away from the crown so the crown could no longer keep it in fact the new forest was actually described as a national park way before we actually had national parks in this country that's wow, that's very interesting Richard. So in a way, the New Forest, as well as being very ancient, is also the first of this kind of modern kind of recreational landscape. It's like almost the first national park

where people came together as a nation, thought we need to keep this place, it's so special, we like hanging out there, we think it's good for this country. Well yeah, I mean the New Forest was designated a forest for its recreational benefit and of course it was also called a national park back in the 19th century and it continues to fulfill those needs, the recreational needs, not just of one person sat on his throne but the whole populace, the whole nation.

sat on his throne, but the whole populace, the whole nation. This episode is brought to you by the Recharge in Nature project, a new partnership between BMW and National Parks UK. I know that I need to recharge in nature. I often come back here if I've been abroad or been working inside, looking at a screen, been in the big city. I come here and I feel about a thousand times better and now there's a partnership between BMW and National Parks UK to enhance electric car charging networks across all 15 national parks making travel by electric vehicles to these locations

much easier which is great because it means when I'm on big cross-country journeys now going filming and recording for the podcast I can stop in National Park and have a little walk while I'm recharging it's the best news ever. They're also supporting local initiatives focused on enabling nature restoration, biodiversity and well-being through the Recharge in Nature Fund. So to discover more about the Recharge in Nature project, go to bmw.co.uk slash national parks.