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Looking back 150 years to a time of momentous change for the New Forest




The great New Forest inquiry of 1875

This year marks the 150th anniversary of a momentous change in direction for the New Forest, with the inquiry and report of a select committee of the House of Commons in 1875. The committee’s work marked almost the end of a 25-year battle which had threatened to see the New Forest go the same way as almost every other royal forest, through a process known as general inclosure. That meant that the common land would be fenced in and the largest share would be allocated to the freeholder (usually the sovereign) with the remainder being given to the commoners. If that had happened, there would be no New Forest today. Tens of thousands of acres would have been planted up with timber (mostly Scots pine), while the commoners’ share would have been converted into low-grade farmland, with much of it later being sold off for building. By now it would have looked like a cross between Bournemouth and the commercial forestry, gravel digging, refuse dumps and intensive recreation areas of Moors Valley and the rest of Ringwood Forest.

The New Forest Association held an exhibition of New Forest paintings in London in 1875. Its publicity shows an enraged artist watching the felling of an ancient oak, while a top-hatted official directs the work, the commoners’ pigs flee the scene in terror and a picnic party looks on in horror
The New Forest Association held an exhibition of New Forest paintings in London in 1875. Its publicity shows an enraged artist watching the felling of an ancient oak, while a top-hatted official directs the work, the commoners’ pigs flee the scene in terror and a picnic party looks on in horror

The Forest’s history in the 25 years commencing about 1850 is so complex that I don’t suppose there are today more than one or two local historians who really understand it. It is so filled with arguments about ancient forest law, vast acreages of land and the legal interests of the Crown and the commoners, that only those pundits are likely to be interested in the details – however fascinating they are. In summary then, by the 1850s the Crown was already looking towards a general inclosure and was meantime using disputed powers for a slower rate of timber planting, under the New Forest Deer Removal Act and earlier legislation. The great landowners of the Forest and their tenants were determined to frustrate this for their own financial and other reasons. The railway had come to the Forest only a few years earlier and there were virtually no visitors at that time to claim an interest in the matter.

In 1866 the landowners established the New Forest Association to resist the ambitions of the Crown, but at first they looked unlikely to succeed. Two years later a government inquiry recommended just that general inclosure which most commoners were fighting to resist. The future for the Forest looked bleak.

Steadily, over the next seven years things began to change. There had arisen a national movement seeking to protect common land and its qualities of natural beauty and peacefulness. Middle class visitors interested in art and science were beginning to discover for themselves the New Forest and other wild places. The NFA held an exhibition of New Forest paintings in London. Its publicity shows an enraged artist watching the felling of an ancient oak, while a top-hatted official directs the work, the commoners’ pigs flee the scene in terror and a picnic party looks on in horror.

In 1870 the Crown, blocked from achieving its desired further planting and perhaps already sensing a marked change in informed public opinion, promoted a bill for the general inclosure of the Forest, but that failed. A bill aimed at partition of the Forest on their terms was drafted by the commoners, but this too did not proceed. In the following year parliament decreed that piecemeal inclosure should cease and that all felling of ornamental timber should stop pending a fresh enquiry into the Forest.

The enquiry, by a select committee of the House of Commons, took place in the middle of 1875 and was undoubtedly the most detailed investigation of the New Forest and its management ever undertaken. Twenty-one witnesses were examined and there are over 200 foolscap pages of evidence and related papers. The whole is not far short of three million words. Copies of the original ‘blue book’ are very rare and expensive, their market price today probably being several hundred pounds. My own copy, bearing the name of Francis Lovell of Hincheslea – a late 19th century notable figure in Forest history – shows the original price of four shillings and two pence.

The committee’s report was a triumph for the NFA and its allies. It formed the basis for the New Forest Act of 1877 which is still the foundation of the Forest’s management today. That act first of all put a stop to the steady erosion of the Forest through the spread of timber inclosures under earlier legislation, declaring that the surviving parts of the common should remain open and uninclosed. It required (and still does) that the ancient woodland and ornamental trees should be protected. Equally important, it established the Verderers’ Court to manage and guard the interests of the commoners. It gave the court powers to ensure that the special qualities of the area are not damaged. Those powers were later enhanced by Acts of 1949, 1964 and 1970, so that the last of these years saw, perhaps, the high point of the Forest’s guardianship. While the 1877 act had given control of the court to the commoners, that dominance was effectively removed by the 1949 act. That gave the majority voting strength to appointed representatives of local and national government departments and so things remain to this date.

Sadly, the last half century has seen much erosion of the earlier protection, as the exploding demands for recreation have been permitted to degrade the area and as the ancient woods have been allowed to deteriorate to the point of dereliction. The Forest is sorely in need of a new generation to mirror the ambition and determination of the great men of the 1870s, but for all its faults and failures, the Verderers’ Court established in 1877 remains the principal bulwark against the forces of exploitation and neglect with which we are faced after 150 years.

Noreen Riols and some uncertain craters

In a Forestry Commission wood, surveyors recorded what appeared to be three large bomb craters, two of which were dry and the third flooded (above)
In a Forestry Commission wood, surveyors recorded what appeared to be three large bomb craters, two of which were dry and the third flooded (above)

My sister lives just outside Paris, and last month she mentioned to me in passing that she was to attend the funeral of a very elderly English acquaintance who had lived nearby – Noreen Riols (nee Baxter). The name was quite unknown to me, although I am sure it is deeply engraved on the minds of all students of clandestine warfare and probably also of many Beaulieu residents. Madame Riols was an accomplished novelist, broadcaster and public speaker but, most significantly, she was (in her 99th year) one of the very last survivors of Churchill’s secret army – the Special Operations Executive.

This remarkable woman was, as a teenager, recruited into SOE in 1940, apparently because she was a fluent French speaker. As she was too young to be used as an agent in the field, she was employed first of all in London and later at Beaulieu in rather ill-defined roles within the organisation, but evidently always close to the centre of its activities. Her autobiographical book The Secret Ministry of Ag. and Fish, published in 2013, contains gruesome accounts of the appalling tortures inflicted by the Nazis on captured members of the organisation, almost invariably followed by brutal execution in concentration camps or prisons across Europe. In wartime, I suppose, captured spies must expect to be shot, but this was something very different and terrible. The book is far from a comfortable read, but I doubt it was intended to be comfortable. It is more a heartfelt plea for remembrance of what actually happened, rather than the James Bond-style stories.

In 1944, Noreen was moved to the SOE’s establishment at Beaulieu, and her book gives an all too brief account of the staff, the houses used and the work undertaken there. Whereas in London she had been confined to the French section of the organisation, she was now concerned with agents to work across Europe, in final training before their deployment.

At about the time of the book’s publication, a survey of former land use in the Forest around Beaulieu was being undertaken. The main findings of that research are not relevant to this story, but the surveyors were concerned with all physical remains from Bronze Age burial mounds to WW2 fire decoys. In a Forestry Commission wood very close to SOE’s establishment on the Beaulieu estate, they recorded what appeared to be three large bomb craters, two of which were dry and the third flooded (see photo). There was, however, a problem with the interpretation of these features. Although circular and with raised lips like any other bomb crater, the surrounding trees (some of late 19th century date) showed no obvious signs of blast damage, such as that apparent on the bomb-scarred oaks of the Ashley Walk bombing range a few miles away to the north. One of the dry craters also contained a scattering of unusual rubbish including broken fragments of ceramic sanitary ware. Building refuse is, of course, common in the Forest where, prior to the car free zones dating from 1970, a small builder intent on flytipping simply drove his truck up any track and discharged his load as quickly as possible out of sight of the highway. The Beaulieu craters by contrast were deep in the Forest with no easy access tracks, while the refuse too seemed inconsistent with that to be expected from a gypsy encampment. Were these in fact deliberately excavated pits or craters modified for some sort of training exercises involving explosives? There are stories of all sorts of exploding devices – not least dead rats. The surveyors’ questions remained unanswered and now, after the death of Madame Riols, perhaps they never will be resolved, even if aerial bombing still seems the most likely explanation of the craters.

Although not directly relevant to the Forest, among Miss Dexter’s duties at Beaulieu was the final testing of agents before they were sent into occupied Europe. For this she worked in Bournemouth, while another female colleague operated in Southampton. She was, of course, unknown to those she calls her victims. The agent was given her description and instructed to track her down. If he was successful in this, she would then try to encourage him to disclose information which, in enemy country, would put him and others at serious risk. His ability to resist her charms was key to his success when deployed abroad. Perhaps a less likely setting for such activity than the (then) genteel Bournemouth seafront is difficult to imagine. For me these accounts of her work are particularly poignant because while they were going on, I was down the road in a quiet suburban garden sitting in my pram, at just over a year old!



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