page_title: Great Ridge Wood
section_title: Highwaymen
hierarchical_section_title: Great Ridge Wood / Highwaymen
caption_attribution_description: English: A sign from The Great Ridge Wood, in South Wiltshire, with information about a highwayman who was caught and hanged from a tree in the wood. The man, Jack Hag, was a criminal and the tree he was hanged from, blew down in 2005. This sign depicts what happened to him and the tree, as well as a plaque found inside the tree.
context_page_description: Great Ridge Wood, formerly also known as Chicklade Wood, is one of the largest woodlands in southern Wiltshire, England. Mostly within the parishes of Boyton and Sherrington, and entirely within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, it lies on a chalk downland ridge above the River Wylye. To the south are the villages of Chicklade and Fonthill Bishop, while to the north are Boyton, Corton, Sherrington and Stockton. To the east of the wood, on the same ridge, lies another large block of woodland, Grovely Wood.
  A Roman road runs from east to west through the centre of the wood, and it has two ancient monuments within it. In recognition of its nature conservation importance, the wood is designated by Wiltshire Council as a County Wildlife Site.
context_section_description: In the 18th and 19th centuries, there were notorious highwaymen (armed criminals) who preyed upon stagecoaches on the way to London or Exeter, Devonshire. 
  Legend has it that one highwayman, Jack Hag, lived in the Great Ridge and attacked these coaches. One day, local people pursued him into the wood, caught him and executed him by hanging him from an oak tree. The oak became known as 'Hag's Oak' and when the tree was blown down in a storm in 2005, an old "rusty cast iron plaque was revealed deep within the tree" after being cut up for timber. The only still clear letter was the letter 'H'.
caption: Sign in the wood telling the tale of highwayman Jack Hag
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