RoyalForest of Dean Herefordshire Monmouthshire Tourist Information Travel Guide It is an extensive information resource covering accommodation in Hotels , Bed and Breakfasts (B&Bs) , Pubs and Inns and Self Catering Holiday Cottages , Restaurants and Tea Shops , where to shop, and what Gardens to see. It also includes activity details including Walking , Cycling (Biking), Golfing, Motor Sport, Horse Riding, and Camping and Caravanning . The site is an extensive resource for travel information , regional maps , and famous people associated with the Royal Forest of Dean and neighbouring Herefordshire and Monmouthshire. It has been designed to provide all the information a visitor will need or ever want to get the very best out of his visit to the region and who does not want to be confined to county boundaries. Royal Forest of Dean .Info is a visitor information centre for tourist, holiday and vacation travel services in addition to ON-LINE travel assistance and OFF-LINE telephone help. The Events Calendar lets you know what's on and Maps are provided for the whole region. Find holiday and vacation accommodation and lodgings . continue below......

Forest of Dean The Royal Forest of Dean and neighbouring regions consists of four quite different landscape areas: The ancient Forest of Dean lies at the very heart of the district in Gloucestershire and borders the Wye Valley in the west and the Severn Vale in the east. The market towns of Coleford and Cinderford offer an insight into the industrial heritage and history of this fascinating and beautiful region. Forest of Dean: Bounds of the forest | British History Online Forest of Dean: Bounds of the forest Forest of Dean: Bounds of the forest Pages 295-300 This free content was digitised by double rekeying . All rights reserved. Citation: Footnotes BOUNDS OF THE FOREST For much of its history the Forest of Dean, using the term in the particular sense of the area subject to forest law, included two distinct sorts of land: on the one hand there was land held by the Crown in demesne, mainly extraparochial and uninhabited woodland and waste, and on the other manorial and private freehold land, mainly cultivated, settled, and formed into parishes. The extent of the Forest (fn. 1) at the time of the Norman Conquest is uncertain.

Domesday Book refers to it only indirectly, though the disposition of the manors which it records in the area enables a rough idea of the late 11th-century extent to be gained. (fn. 2) The only lands referred to in 1086 as being in 'the king's forest' or 'the king's wood' were a group of manors that had gone out of cultivation before the Conquest, two other manors which had been recently placed in the Forest and had apparently been cleared of population, and some isolated parcels of land, also apparently unpopulated. Domesday Book suggests, therefore, that no settled or manorial land was then within the Forest bounds. If that was so, the late 11th-century Forest was confined to an area not unlike its modern bounds, (fn. 3) except that to the north-west and west it bordered the river Wye for much of the river's course between English Bicknor and Brockweir.

To the south-east it was probably confined to the high land away from the river Severn, for the Severn shore between Highnam, near Gloucester, and the confluence with the Wye in Tidenham, near Chepstow, was occupied in 1066 by a string of 25 manors in the nine later parishes bordering the river. On the west the more rugged lands bordering the Wye were much less heavily populated in 1066 and in some areas cultivation had been abandoned. Staunton, opposite Monmouth, 'Whippington', an estate nearby, and possibly a third manor in the same area had reverted to waste by 1066, as also had two manors at a place called 'Brocote', which almost certainly adjoined the Wye in the Forest area and has speculatively been identified with Redbrook. Those manors (then all part of Herefordshire) remained waste in 1086 and four of them were described as 'still in the king's wood'. (fn.

4) Along the Wye below Ross-on-Wye (Herefs.) the inhabited manors in 1066 were Cleeve (Herefs.), Walford (Herefs.), Ruardean (then Herefs., later Glos.), English Bicknor, Wyegate on the borders of the later parishes of Newland and St. Briavels, St. Briavels, Hewelsfield, Madgett, and part of Tidenham. Of those, Wyegate and Hewelsfield, though acquiring new Norman lords after the Conquest, were placed within the Forest by King William's command before 1086. For neither was owner, tenantry, or current value recorded, only a fishery at Wyegate, (fn. 5) and the implication is that they had been cleared and added to the waste. On the northern edge of the later Forest, from Ross to Highnam, another 10 Herefordshire and Gloucestershire manors existed in 1066, forming a fairly compact wedge of land along and south of the line of the Ross-Gloucester road.

The most southerly manor of that area, then called Dean and evidently comprising land in and around the later Mitcheldean parish, was held by the service of custody of the Forest. (fn. 6) In 1086 a yardland in Taynton, some way north of the Ross-Gloucester road, and land at Cleeve, used to raise sheep and produce honey, were both said to be forest land, while woodland in Ross was stated to be in the 'king's enclosure' (defensu regis). (fn. 7) Those references and a mention of woodland adjoining Churcham as being within the bounds of the Forest of Dean c. 1080 (fn. 8) have led to the suggestion that the Forest included detached parcels of woodland and waste north of the main area. (fn.

9) Between 1086 and 1228 the bounds of the juridical Forest were enlarged to include all the Gloucestershire and Herefordshire manors and villages in an area bounded on the south-east by the Severn from Over bridge, adjoining Gloucester, to the mouth of the Wye, on the west by the Wye from its mouth up to a ford between Goodrich castle and Walford (Herefs.), on the north-west by bounds, mainly trackways, running from the ford by way of Weston under Penyard (Herefs.) and Gorsley to Oxenhall bridge on Ell brook near Newent, and on the north-east by the main road from Newent to Gloucester. (fn. 10) An early stage of that enlargement was evidently the inclusion of the Domesday manors of St. Briavels, English Bicknor, Ruardean, and 'Dean'.

Those manors together with the manors of Flaxley, Newland, Blakeney, and Walmore, at Northwood in Westbury, which were formed from the demesne woodland and waste during the 12th century, and the reconstituted manors of Staunton and Hewelsfield later comprised the hundred or liberty of St. Briavels, (fn. 11) which was regarded later as the core of the Forest. About 1245 three other Gloucestershire hundreds, Bledisloe, Westbury, and Botloe, which by then were wholly or partly included in the Forest, were termed 'the three foreign hundreds' in distinction from St. Briavels hundred, (fn. 12) and certain Forest customs relating to mining and quarrying later applied only within St. Briavels hundred. (fn. 13) Whether the enlargement was the work of one of the early Norman kings or of Miles, earl of Hereford, and his son Roger, who ruled the Forest betweeen 1139 and 1154, is not known.

It almost certainly dated from before 1154: apart from Hewelsfield, which may not have become part of the hundred until the late 13th century, the inclusion of the manors of St. Briavels hundred was not challenged under the terms of the Charter of the Forest of 1217. FOREST OF DEAN : Bounds in the 13th and 14th Centuries The dates of the other extensions are also uncertain, with two perambulations making contradictory statements. A jury stated in 1228 that the wider bounds of the Forest, including all the land between the Severn and Wye and Newent, had been reached before 1154, while in 1300 another maintained that most of the extensions beyond St. Briavels hundred were the work of King John. (fn. 14) There is no definite evidence by which those statements can be judged, but possibly both were incorrect and the extensions were made under Henry II.

In 1167, when heavy fines for forest offences were levied in many English counties by the chief justice of the forests, the 19 Gloucestershire places west of the Severn represented were all within the wider bounds of Dean recorded in 1228. The places fined were not necessarily then within the Forest, for some offences, such as poaching and wood stealing, may have been committed elsewhere than in the offenders' own township, but the coincidence and the absence of places outside the wider bounds is suggestive, as is the inclusion on the Gloucestershire list of Hope Mansell (Herefs.) and Hadnock in the lordship of Monmouth, both also within the wider bounds. (fn. 15) A fine in 1199 for waste in woodland within Aylburton provides more definite evidence for the inclusion of a part of Bledisloe hundred by the start of King John's reign. The same year the inclusion of part of Herefordshire and part of Botloe hundred are suggested by a fine on the reeve of Ross for making large assarts from the Forest and by a mention of Walter of Huntley in the capacity of a Forest official, probably a regarder. (fn.

16) The date of the enlargements later became obscured by the long dispute between the Crown and the barons over forest boundaries and over the implementation of the Charter of the Forest which the barons secured with the reissue of Magna Carta in 1217. By the Forest Charter all land afforested in the years 1154-1216 was to be disafforested unless it was demesne of the Crown at the time of the afforestation. As with other forests, (fn. 17) new perambulations carried out in 1219 appear to have disafforested large areas on those grounds, but in 1227 Henry III, asserting his personal rule and questioning measures taken during his minority, ordered inquiries into those decisions and those who made them. New perambulations to revise the work were ordered, (fn. 18) and in 1228 a jury of knights of Gloucestershire produced a verdict in line with what the Crown expected of them, one that put the wider bounds outside the terms of the Forest Charter. (fn.

19) Although some places effectively became free of the jurisdiction, the wider bounds remained the official bounds of the Forest throughout the 13th century and were confirmed by a perambulation of 1282. (fn. 20) Under baronial pressure, Edward I reissued the Forest Charter in 1297 and ordered new perambulations, one for Dean being made in 1300. In a very different climate from that of 1228 the jury attributed the extensions to King John, though, as suggested above, it is doubtful whether he was responsible; the jurors appear to have produced no documentary evidence for their statement, merely citing local tradition. (fn. 21) The perambulation of 1300 excluded from the Forest 17 Gloucestershire vills, mostly bordering the Severn or in the north-east, besides the whole Herefordshire part, comprising c. 10 vills in the area between the county boundary and Ross. (fn. 22) The Forest was left as the royal demesne and the parishes of St.

Briavels hundred (except for Hewelsfield), together with Minsterworth, the large part of Westbury-on-Severn parish that formed the manor of Rodley, Newnham parish except for Ruddle manor, and Awre parish except for Box manor. (fn. 23) The terms of the Forest Charter appear to have been generally correctly applied, for, of the manors outside St. Briavels hundred that were left within the Forest, Minsterworth, Rodley, Newnham, and Awre were recovered by Henry II from Roger, earl of Hereford, or his brother Walter, in the first years of his reign and remained demesne manors of the Crown until the 13th century. (fn. 24) Edward I confirmed the perambulation of 1300 in 1301. Later, however, he challenged the conclusions of the perambulations made for Dean and other forests and annulled them in 1305. The wider bounds of Dean were reinstated until 1327, when Edward III confirmed the perambulation of 1300. (fn.

25) In the intervening period the return to the wider bounds was more than nominal: Forest officers attempted to restrict the woodland management of the prior of Newent at Yartleton wood, in Newent, (fn. 26) and that of the abbot of Gloucester at Birdwood, in Churcham, and at Hope Mansell. (fn. 27) During the 13th century some areas, though included within the Forest by the perambulations, had managed to assert their freedom or partial freedom from forest law. Three private chases had been created on the fringes of the Forest by 1228. (fn. 28) The largest was Tidenham chase belonging to the Earl Marshal's lordship of Striguil and covering the parishes of Tidenham and Woolaston in the angle of the Severn and Wye. By the 1260s the limits of the chase, including on the north Brockweir brook running into the Wye and on the north-east Cone brook running into the Severn, were recognized as the de facto Forest boundary by the officers of the Forest, who were principally concerned with the chase as the origin of poaching expeditions into Dean. (fn.

29) The vills in the chase were summoned to the Forest regard of 1282 but failed to appear. (fn. 30) In the enclave that later formed a part of Monmouthshire on the east bank of the Wye, comprising the hamlets of Hadnock and Wyesham, King John granted John of Monmouth, lord of Monmouth, licence to impark part of Hadnock woods. By 1282 the later lords of Monmouth and other landowners in the area had effectively freed themselves from the restrictions of forest law. (fn. 31) Penyard park, on a high wooded hill in the north part of the Forest, in Herefordshire, was a chase of the bishops of Hereford by 1228, and in 1286, when the activities of the bishop's huntsman there were challenged by Forest officers, a jury declared it to be outside the Forest. (fn. 32) The inhabitants of Huntsham tithing (Herefs.), in the loop of the Wye between English Bicknor and Symonds Yat, had also effectively excluded themselves by 1282 when they were reported to have ceased attending inquisitions and eyres.

(fn. 33) Exclusion of those four areas had been accepted by 1300 and was confirmed by the new perambulations. After 1327 there was little or no change in the composition of the Forest until 1597 when Minsterworth parish was excluded. Its inhabitants then cited their membership of the Forest in support of a claim to commoning rights in the demesne woodland, but commoners from the other parishes, who were attempting to exclude their animals, manipulated the evidence and secured a judgement that Minsterworth was outside the Forest. The revised bounds of 1300 had, from Newnham, ascended the Severn as far as a meadow called Crolingham at the boundary of Minsterworth and Highnam and then turned inland to Piper's grove, at the parting of the roads from Gloucester to Ross-on-Wye and Chepstow. Witnesses were found, however, to depose that Crolingham was just above Newnham town and Piper's grove inland from there, near the Newnham-Littledean boundary; the difficulty of connecting the supposed landmarks with what followed in the perambulation was left unresolved. (fn.

34) By 1623 Rodley manor had also ceased to be accepted as part of the Forest, (fn. 35) possibly as a result of the same judgement. Both it and Minsterworth were in the duchy of Lancaster (fn. 36) and on that ground they may earlier have ceased to be subject to some aspects of the Forest jurisdiction. In 1634 during a forest eyre, held as part of Charles I's attempt to reassert ancient Crown privileges, the justices and royal officials revived the wider bounds of Dean and secured a judgement that the perambulations of 1228 and 1282 were valid. In view of long usage, however, forest offences in the outlying areas were not proceeded with at the eyre, (fn. 37) and an Act of 1641 restored the bounds of all forests to those in accepted use in 1623. (fn. 38) An Act of 1657 lifted the heaviest burdens of the forest law from the manorial lands of Dean, (fn.

39) and an Act of 1668, while confirming the bounds of 1623 and re-applying the forest law to the royal demesne, confirmed the mitigation of the law in the manorial lands; manorial owners and freeholders were subsequently free to fell and manage their woodlands and inclose and otherwise improve their lands as they wished and also to enjoy hunting rights in them. (fn. 40) During the late 17th century and the 18th the bounds of 1623 continued to define the Forest, with, for example, all the parishes of St. Briavels hundred (except Hewelsfield), the bulk of Newnham and Awre, and Northwood tithing, in Westbury, sending representatives to the swanimote. (fn. 41) For practical purposes, however, the Forest administration was then only concerned with the royal demesne, and the demesne was accepted as constituting the Forest in 1833 when the Dean Forest commissioners cited the bounds of 1300 but perambulated and reported only on the royal demesne. (fn.

42) The royal demesne land of the Forest as it existed in the 19th century was the residue of a much larger area of woodland and waste that had been reduced over the centuries by assarting and by royal grants. The earliest and most significant encroachments upon it occurred largely unrecorded during the 12th century. They included the formation from many individual assarts of the bulk of Newland, which gained the status of a separate manor and parish at the start of the 13th century, the creation of Flaxley by a gift of Roger, earl of Hereford, to his foundation Flaxley abbey c. 1150, the reconstitution of Staunton and Hewelsfield, and on the south-eastern fringes of the demesne the emergence of the small manors of Blakeney, added to Awre parish, (fn. 43) Walmore at Northwood, added to Westbury parish, (fn. 44) and probably Blythes Court in Newnham (fn. 45) and Soilwell in Lydney. (fn.

46) The continuing pressure on land in the 13th century is reflected, among other examples, by encroachments on the demesne on the east side of St. Briavels parish, (fn. 47) considerable assarts made by the lords of Littledean, (fn. 48) 180 a. of assart, probably on the hillsides above Newnham, held by the woodward of Blaize bailiwick in 1306, (fn. 49) and, in one of the areas only nominally attached to the Forest, 200 a. assarted from Tidenham chase before 1282 by Tintern abbey (Mon.), owner of Woolaston manor. (fn. 50) In most cases the Crown gave retrospective sanction to the assarts by levying small rents, and it followed a more deliberate policy for all forests in the early 14th century, appointing commissioners in 1303 (fn. 51) and 1313 (fn. 52) to dispose of unwanted land to interested parties at fee-farm rents, and presumably for initial fines.

Bearse bailiwick on the west side of the demesne was dismembered at the period, with 212 a. at Prior's Mesne added by Llanthony priory to its Aylburton estate in 1306, (fn. 53) John of Wyesham, constable of St. Briavels, obtaining a substantial estate at Noxon, near Clearwell, in 1317, and John Joce, the woodward of the bailiwick, securing large tracts of land in the same area. (fn. 54) Detached parts of Newland parish on the fringes of the demesne or forming islands within it (fn. 55) were probably mostly taken out of the demesne between 1305, when the impropriator of Newland church was given the tithes from all recent and future assarts in the Forest, (fn. 56) and the Black Death in 1349, when the era of pressure on land ended.

Detached parts near the main body of Newland parish, at Bream, Yorkley, and Ellwood, had certainly been wholly or partly created by the mid 14th century, (fn. 57) and some more distant parts at Lea Bailey, on the Herefordshire border, were recorded from the early 15th century. (fn. 58) Small detached parts at Lower Lydbrook and in the Oakwood brook valley were apparently made in the early 15th century in connexion with the building of mills on parcels of waste. (fn. 59) An island called Whitemead park, inclosed before 1283 and added to Newland parish, remained in Crown ownership and was sometimes accounted a part of the Forest demesne later. (fn. 60) Abbots wood, covering c. 880 a. on the east side of the Soudley brook valley, also had an anomalous status after the Crown granted it to Flaxley abbey in 1258 quit of forest law but with the herbage, hunting, and mineral rights reserved.

The wood later remained the freehold of the owners of the Flaxley estate but for some purposes it was administered with the royal demesne. (fn. 61) Gifts, sales, and leases made by Charles I in the 1620s effectively disafforested c. 3,000 a. of the royal demesne, and the bulk of the remainder was disafforested when sold to Sir John Winter in 1640, though that sale was rescinded in 1642. (fn. 62) The Act of 1668 reafforested the demesne and applied it to producing timber for the navy and most of the alienated lands were recovered, (fn. 63) but woods called the Snead and Kidnalls, covering c. 280 a. near Lydney, and Mailscot, c. 800 a. on the north-west of the demesne between English Bicknor and Staunton, remained outside the Forest and became parts of the Lydney and Highmeadow estates respectively. (fn.

64) Although severed from the royal demesne, the Snead, Kidnalls, and Mailscot remained extraparochial land until parochialized with the demesne in 1842. (fn. 65) In 1668 the surviving royal demesne land was estimated at c. 23,000 a., (fn. 66) and in 1788 it was surveyed as 23,250 a. (fn. 67) Its main portion was by then confined to the higher ground at the centre of the old Forest area. On the north, east, and south its bounds mostly followed steep ridges, but the boundary with the Wyeside parishes to the west was less clearly defined by the lie of the land. The chief irregularities in the shape of the main part of the demesne, apart from the islands of Newland parish within it, were to the north, where a spur included the Lea Bailey woods on the Herefordshire boundary, and on the north-west, where, following the exclusion of Mailscot wood, a narrow strip of waste extended along the road from Berry Hill to Symonds Yat rock.

Detached parts of the royal demesne were Walmore common (240 a. in 1788) and a small parcel called Northwood green, both within Westbury, Hudnalls covering c. 1,200 a. above the Wye Valley adjoining St. Briavels and Hewelsfield parishes, Bearse common, the Fence, and Mocking Hazel wood, within or adjoining St. Briavels, and the Glydden, within Newland parish near Lower Redbrook. (fn. 68) The royal demesne was further reduced in 1827 when the Crown sold its rights in Hudnalls, which was by then much encroached, Mocking Hazel, and the Fence. (fn. 69) In 1869 it sold its rights in Abbots wood, which was disafforested under an inclosure award of 1872; (fn. 70) the freehold was bought back by the Crown in 1899. (fn. 71) In 1871 when the Crown inclosed the bulk of Walmore and Bearse commons both were disafforested. (fn.

72) From the mid 18th century encroachments by cottagers removed from Crown control other land on the fringes of the central block of royal demesne, where new hamlets were formed. In 1838 the Crown conceded ownership of encroachments made before 1787 and later sold many others to the occupants; (fn. 73) by 1874 2,100 a. had been removed from the demesne in that way. During the later 19th and the 20th centuries the Forest of Dean still constituted the whole 23,000-24,000 a. of the former royal demesne, but the land that was owned by the Crown and administered by the Commissioners of Woods, mainly inclosed timber plantations and commonable waste, was restricted to c. 19,200 a. by 1874, (fn. 74) and the area transferred to the Forestry Commission in 1924 was 19,347 a.

Highmeadow woods, on the north-west of the Forest, bought by the Commissioners of Woods in 1817, and other local woodlands acquired by the Forestry Commission in the 20th century were administered with Dean but not part of it. (fn. 75) Footnotes 1 . For discussions of the early boundaries, C. E. Hart, 'Metes and Bounds of the Forest of Dean', Trans. B.G.A.S. lxvi. 166-207; M. L. Bazeley, 'Forest of Dean in its Relations with the Crown during the 12th and 13th Centuries', ibid. xxxiii. 153-64. G. B. Grundy, 'Ancient Woodland of Glos.' ibid. lviii. 65-155, fails to appreciate the distinction between the demesne and manorial lands, confuses the dating of the perambulations, and misidentifies many landmarks. 2 . For the Domesday manors, cf. maps in Dom. Bk.: Glos. ed. J. S. Moore (1982); Herefs. ed. F.

and C. Thorn (1983); but 'Newarne' is more likely to be the place of that name in Lydney, and other identifications are necessarily speculative. 3 . Below, this chapter. Forest of Dean: Introduction | British History Online Forest of Dean: Introduction Forest of Dean: Introduction Pages 285-294 This free content was digitised by double rekeying . All rights reserved. Citation: Footnotes THE FOREST OF DEAN The Forest of Dean lies in west Gloucestershire in the angle formed by the rivers Severn and Wye as they approach their confluence. A large tract of woodland and waste land there was reserved for royal hunting before 1066 and survived into the modern period as one of the principal Crown forests in England, the largest after the New Forest. The name Forest of Dean was recorded from c. 1080 (fn. 1) and was probably taken from the valley on the north-east of the area, where a manor called Dean was the Forest's administrative centre in the late 11th century.

In modern times the name Forest of Dean was sometimes used loosely for the part of Gloucestershire between the Severn and Wye, but all that land belonged to the Forest (used in the specific sense of the area subject to the forest law) only for a period in the early Middle Ages. In the 13th century the Forest's bounds were the two rivers and it extended northwards as far as Ross-on-Wye (Herefs.), Newent, and Gloucester; it then included 33 Gloucestershire and Herefordshire parishes, besides a central, uncultivated area which the Crown retained in demesne. Revised bounds, perambulated in 1300 and accepted by the Crown in 1327, reduced the extent of the Forest to the royal demesne and 14 parishes or parts of parishes, most of them, like the demesne itself, in St. Briavels hundred. After 1668 in practice, and after 1833 officially, the Forest comprised the royal demesne only. The changes in the bounds over the centuries are described below. (fn.

2) The royal demesne remained extraparochial until the 1840s when, villages and hamlets having grown up within it, it was formed into the civil townships (later parishes) of East Dean and West Dean and into ecclesiastical districts. After mid 20th-century changes the bulk of the former demesne land belonged in 1994 to the civil parishes of West Dean, Lydbrook, Cinderford, Ruspidge, and Drybrook. (fn. 3) This part of the volume relates the history of the central block of royal demesne land as constituted after 1668, an area of c. 23,000 a. (c. 9,308 ha.). (fn. 4) For convenience of treatment, the account also covers a number of detached parts of Newland parish and its tithing of Lea Bailey, which were islands within the extraparochial Forest or bordered it, (fn.

5) a detached part of Mitcheldean called Blackwell meadows, and the whole of Lydbrook village, which was divided between the extraparochial Forest, Newland, English Bicknor, and Ruardean. Some parts of the extraparochial Forest which lay detached from the main block are treated with the histories of parishes which adjoined them: the largest, lying near the Wye and called Hudnalls, is included in part with St. Briavels and in part with Hewelsfield, while Mocking Hazel wood, Bearse common, and the Fence in the same area are included with St. Briavels, the Glydden, also in the Wye Valley, with Newland, and Walmore common and Northwood green, to the north-east of the main block, with Westbury-on-Severn in another volume. Woods at Mailscot, near English Bicknor parish, and at Kidnalls and the Snead, north of Lydney parish, removed from the royal demesne by 1668 but remaining extraparochial, are treated above with the histories of those parishes.

FOREST OF DEAN : BOUNDS 1840 The formerly extraparochial land of the Forest of Dean lies mainly at over 200 m. (656 ft.), reaching its highest point, 290 m. (951 ft.), at Ruardean hill in the north. Sometimes described as a plateau but actually comprising steep ridges and the valleys of streams draining to the Severn and Wye, its boundaries with the surrounding cultivated and ancient parochial lands are in most places defined by a scarp where the underlying carboniferous limestone of the region outcrops. On the west, however, the limestone outcrops at a shallower angle and there is a less obvious distinction in height between the Forest and the cultivated land of the large ancient parish of Newland. The long valley of Cannop brook, earlier called the Newerne stream, (fn. 6) crosses the west part of the Forest from north to south, and a stream called in its northern part Cinderford brook and in its southern Soudley brook forms a long winding valley through the east part. Blackpool brook, so called by 1282, (fn.

7) carves another deep valley through the south-eastern edge of the high land to meet Soudley brook at Blakeney below the Forest's scarp, and at the Forest's northern edge Greathough brook, formerly Lyd brook, (fn. 8) descends a valley to the Wye. The streams were dammed in places for ironworks, notably in the Cannop valley where two large ponds were made in the 1820s to provide power for works at Parkend. (fn. 9) Other large ponds on a tributary stream of Soudley brook at Sutton bottom, near Soudley, were built as fishponds in the mid 19th century for a privately-owned estate in that part of the Forest called Abbots wood. (fn. 10) In the late 20th century the Forestry Commission maintained the Forest's ponds as nature reserves and as a public amenity; new ones were made at Woorgreen, near the centre of the Forest, as part of landscape restoration following opencast coal mining in the 1970s, (fn.

11) and at Mallards Pike, near the head of Blackpool brook, in 1980. (fn. 12) Geology has given the Forest its rich industrial history. The land is formed of basin-shaped strata of the Carboniferous series. Underlying and outcropping at the rim are limestones which, especially the stratum called Crease Limestone, contain deposits of iron ore. Above are beds of sandstone, shale, and coal. The lowest bed of sandstone is known by the local name of Drybrook Sandstone, and the highest is the Pennant Sandstone. There are over 20 separate coal seams, varying in thickness from a few inches to 5 ft., the highest yielding being the Coleford High Delf which rises close to the surface near the rim of the Forest. (fn. 13) Surface workings, shallow pits, or levels driven into the hillsides were the means of winning the iron ore and coal until the late 18th century when deeper mines were sunk.

There were also numerous quarries, notably those in the Pennant Sandstone at Bixhead and elsewhere on the west side of the Cannop valley; that stone, which varies in colour but is mainly dark grey, was the principal building material used in the Forest's 19th-century industrial hamlets. The Forest was most significant as a producer of oak timber, which was the principal reason for its survival in the modern period. Until the early 17th century, however, there was as much beech as oak among its large timber trees, (fn. 14) and chestnut trees once grew in profusion on the north-east side of the Forest near Flaxley (fn. 15) and gave the name by 1282 to a wood called the Chestnuts. (fn. 16) The underwood was composed of a variety of small species such as hazel, birch, sallow, holly, and alder. (fn. 17) The ancient forest contained many open areas.

In 1282 various 'lands', or forest glades, maintained by the Crown presumably as grazing for the deer, included several with names later familiar in the Forest's history, Kensley, Moseley, Cannop, Crump meadow, and Whitemead (later a part of Newland parish). Numerous smaller clearings called 'trenches' had also been made (fn. 18) as corridors alongside roads for securing travellers against ambush (fn. 19) or for the grazing and passage of the deer. (fn. 20) Larger areas of waste, or 'meends', such as Clearwell Meend and Mitcheldean Meend, lay on the borders adjoining the manorial lands, whose inhabitants used them for commoning their animals. Much ancient woodland was destroyed to make charcoal for the iron industry in the 16th and 17th centuries, but the re-establishment of the woods was encouraged by a policy of inclosure begun in the 1660s and designed to produce shipbuilding timber. The policy faltered during the 18th century but in the early 19th century large new inclosures were again formed and planted almost entirely with oak.

A few Weymouth pines planted before 1787 (fn. 21) were apparently the first conifers introduced to the Forest, and conifers were widely planted in the 19th century to shelter the young oak plantations. Large plantations of pure conifer were made during the 20th century and threatened to dominate the woodlands before 1971 when a policy of keeping equal proportions of coniferous and broadleaved trees was adopted. In 1994, when the Forest was more thickly planted than for several centuries, it included isolated late 17th-century oaks, park-like areas of early 19th-century oak preserved mainly as an amenity, and large plantations of oak, beech, fir, and spruce managed for commercial purposes. (fn. 22) Although the royal demesne land was without permanent habitation until the early modern period, it was crossed by many ancient tracks, used by ironworkers, miners, and charcoal burners; large numbers, many termed 'mersty' (meaning a boundary path), were recorded in 1282 in a perambulation of the Forest bailiwicks, its administrative divisions. (fn.

23) One of the more important ancient routes, known as the Dean road, had a pitched stone surface and borders of kerbstones. It ran between Lydney and Mitcheldean across the eastern part of the demesne by way of Oldcroft, a crossing of Blackpool brook, recorded as Blackpool ford in 1282, (fn. 24) and a crossing of Soudley brook at Upper Soudley. The survival of much pitching and kerbing after the road went out of use in the turnpike era, and the possibility that it had linked two important Roman sites at Lydney and Ariconium, in Weston under Penyard (Herefs.), has led to the suggestion that it was a Roman road, (fn. 25) though much of the stonework probably dates from the medieval and early modern periods; an estimate was made for renewing long stretches of the road, including the provision of new border stones, as late as the 1760s. (fn. 26) Much remained visible in the 1930s, but recent damage by timber wagons and other vehicles was recorded then (fn. 27) and continued later.

A short stretch near Blackpool brook, (fn. 28) including part of a side branch across a bridge beside the ford, was preserved and open to view in 1994. Two main routes crossed the extraparochial Forest from north-east to south-west and on them were sited the principal points of reference in a terrain with few landmarks. A route from the Severn crossing at Newnham to Monmouth recorded in 1255, when 'trenches' were ordered to be made beside it, (fn. 29) was presumably that through Littledean, the central Forest, and Coleford. It entered over a high ridge west of Littledean, where a hermitage of St. White had been founded by 1225, (fn. 30) and crossed Soudley (or Cinderford) brook at the place called Cinder ford in 1258, (fn. 31) long before its name was taken by the principal settlement of the extraparochial Forest that formed on the hillside to the north-east of the crossing.

Further west, near the centre of the Forest, the road passed the clearing called Kensley, where a courthouse stood by 1338 close to the site of the later Speech House, (fn. 32) and crossed Newerne (or Cannop) brook at Cannop, which for a few years in the mid 17th century was the centre of a large private estate established within the Forest. (fn. 33) The road emerged into the cultivated land of Coleford tithing at a place later called Broadwell Lane End, where a tree called Woolman oak in 1608 (fn. 34) was probably the 'W(o)lfmyen' oak which in 1282 was a landmark at the boundary of four of the Forest's bailiwicks. (fn. 35) The other main route, recorded in 1282 as the high road to Monmouth, (fn.

36) was that crossing the high north-western part of the extraparochial land from Mitcheldean, by way of Nailbridge, Brierley, Mirystock, where it crossed a tributary of Cannop brook above Lydbrook, to Coleford. The two remained the principal routes through the Forest but the northern one, described in the 1760s as the great road through the Forest from Gloucester to South Wales, was much altered in its course by later improvements. (fn. 37) The rivers Severn and Wye played a vital role in the development of Dean's industry but few of the various tracks and hollow ways that led from the central Forest to riverside landing-places and ferries were usable other than by packhorses before the 19th century. One of the few routes negotiable by wagons and timber rigs was the central main road out to Littledean with its branch down to Newnham; that was the usual route for carrying timber out of the Forest in 1737 when the Crown was asked to assist Newnham parish to repair part of it. (fn.

38) Later in the 18th century a road leading from the south part of the woodlands by way of Parkend and Viney Hill to Gatcombe and Purton on the Severn became the principal route for timber destined for the naval dockyards. (fn. 39) The repair of the roads, which was the responsibility of turnpike trustees from 1796, and the development of a network to serve the new Forest settlements are discussed below, (fn. 40) as are the tramroads and railways which were built in the 19th century to serve the Forest's industry. (fn. 41) The Crown's hunting rights, which provided the original motive for the Forest's preservation, were much used in the 13th century. The frequent orders made at the period for taking deer for gifts by the Crown and to meet the needs of the royal household suggest that fallow deer were the majority species in Dean, with red deer and roe present in smaller numbers. (fn. 42) In 1278 the Forest was sufficiently well stocked for royal huntsmen to take 100 fallow bucks. (fn.

43) At that period all three species of deer were classed as beasts of the forest, reserved for the exclusive use of the Crown, but roe were not classified as such after 1340. (fn. 44) During the 17th century felling of the woods reduced the numbers of deer. The reafforestation Act of 1668, referring to a possible 'restoration' of the king's deer, set an upper limit of 800 animals, so as not to threaten the new inclosures made for navy timber. (fn. 45) Preservation of the deer remained a role of the re-invigorated Forest administration following the Act, (fn. 46) and lax administration during the 18th century allowed poaching to reduce the numbers. In 1751 the scarcity of the deer made advisable a three-year moratorium on taking venison under royal warrants. (fn. 47) In 1788 the keepers estimated that the woods contained c. 500, (fn. 48) but twenty years later there were said to be hardly enough to meet the Crown's usual annual demand of 4 bucks and 4 does. (fn.

49) Tighter administration introduced then to protect extensive new plantations encouraged an increase by 1839 to c. 800 and, in spite of losses in the hard winter of 1840-1, c. 600 remained in the late 1840s and 20 or 30 a year were killed under warrant. In 1849 the Crown Commissioners of Woods ordered the destruction of the deer, on the grounds of the 'demoralizing effects' on the local population of the opportunities for poaching, and all, or almost all, were killed before 1855. At the beginning of the 20th century, however, a small herd of fallow lived in Highmeadow woods, a large Crown estate adjoining the Forest, possibly descendants of some given to the Crown in 1846 and released there; (fn. 50) by mid century another herd had become established in the centre of the Forest woodland, near the Speech House. In 1969 there were c. 65 animals in the Highmeadow herd and c. 50 near the Speech House, (fn. 51) and c.

250 fallow deer grazed the Forest and adjoining woodlands in 1994. (fn. 52) Of the other beasts of the forest, wild boar were numerous in Dean in the early Middle Ages, with, for example, 100 boars and sows ordered for a Christmas feast in 1254. (fn. 53) Boar still roamed the Forest in the 1280s, like the deer a prey both of royal huntsmen and poachers. (fn. 54) In 1282 eyries of falcons and sparrowhawks were among the perquisites claimed by woodwards of several Forest bailiwicks, (fn. 55) and there were eyries of goshawks in the woods in 1565. (fn. 56) Some traditional nesting places were lost by the indiscriminate felling of great trees in the early and mid 17th century, including eyries reserved for the king's use in a wood called the Bourts, at the northern rim of the demesne above English Bicknor, (fn.

57) but peregrine falcons continued to nest later in cliffs above the Wye adjoining the Forest near Symonds Yat. (fn. 58) Until the 1280s or later the Forest's woods sheltered packs of wolves. (fn. 59) The commoning of pigs, sheep, and cattle in the royal demesne land of the Forest is described below as an integral, and often contentious, part of the story of the Forest's administration and management. (fn. 60) From the mid 18th century encroachment of land on the fringes of the royal demesne created numerous smallholdings. Their occupants, often miners or quarrymen, pastured sheep on the Forest waste and worked small arable plots, gardens, and orchards. In 1896 in the parishes of East and West Dean, in which most of the formerly extraparochial Forest land was then included, 338 occupiers of land were returned. They held a total of c. 2,200 a., including 416 a. of arable, mainly growing potatoes and oats, turnips, and other fodder crops, and 163 a.

of orchard; their stock was 6,514 sheep, 379 cattle, and 590 pigs. (fn. 61) The sheep were part of a larger number in the Forest, where a survey found 10,851 in 1898, (fn. 62) though sheep were of dubious legality and were commoned only on sufferance of the Forest authorities until 1980 when a limit of 5,000 was accepted. (fn. 63) In 1926 when 222 occupiers of land in East and West Dean made returns only 14 had more than 20 a. (fn. 64) The few larger farms included some, like Hoarthorns farm, near English Bicknor, and Loquiers farm, near Drybrook, in former detached parts of Newland that had been added to the two parishes. In the late 20th century smallholdings, usually worked part-time, were still characteristic of the cleared and settled area on the Forest fringes, (fn.

65) and the commoners' sheep, roaming the wastes and roadside verges, remained a familiar feature of the Forest scene. The history of the royal demesne land of the Forest of Dean in the Middle Ages is that of the administration established to enforce the forest law in defence of the vert and venison and of the mining and ironmaking industries. The administration operated in its fullest form between the late 12th century and the early 14th, a period when it had jurisdiction over a wide tract of manorial and parochial land as well as the royal demesne. It was centred on St. Briavels castle and manor, headed by a royal appointee of considerable standing who was styled constable of St. Briavels castle and warden of the Forest of Dean, and staffed by various categories of foresters, the principal ones holding office by tenure of surrounding manors. The forest system was enforced by an attachment court, presided over by verderers, and by the regular forest eyres with their wide judicial and investigative functions. Even with the full apparatus of a royal forest in place, however, there was corruption by officials and much poaching and timber stealing by local inhabitants.

Mining, which in the Middle Ages was mainly for iron ore, and the associated ironmaking industry were anciently established in Dean. A body of mining law, codified in the 13th or 14th century, and protected, enforced, and amended by a mine law court and a Crown-appointed gaveller, restricted the digging, carrying, and sale of ore, coal, and stone to the 'free miners' of St. Briavels hundred. By the 13th century the mines and numerous charcoal pits supplied and fuelled small bloomery forges, which were moved from place to place in the woodlands of the royal demesne and surrounding parishes; the inefficient working of the bloomeries left a legacy of mounds of 'cinders' (slag rich in ore) to be reprocessed later by the water-powered blast furnaces, first introduced to surrounding parishes in the late 16th century. In the early modern period the Forest administration's basic aim shifted from the defence of the royal hunting rights, and the associated gathering of revenue in the form of fines on offenders, to the preservation and management of the woods for shipbuilding timber.

As a result it came into conflict even more markedly with the ironworkers and miners who needed wood for charcoaling and for shoring mines, with the larger numbers of local inhabitants who claimed, and jealously guarded, the right to pasture animals on the demesne, and with squatters who established themselves there in makeshift cabins and stole wood for a variety of trades. The later history of Dean had a cyclical pattern: the pressures tending to the destruction of its woods gained ground in times of weak and inefficient administration and were restricted again in times when the government pursued determinedly its aim to preserve the Forest as a nursery of timber. In the early 17th century the Stuart kings, seeking short-term profit from their assets, allied themselves with the destructive forces. From 1612 they allowed ironmasters to set up furnaces and forges on the demesne and assigned to them a large annual quota of coppice wood and offal wood for charcoaling; the exercise of those concessions was accompanied by embezzlement of wood, the introduction of cabiners to the demesne, and, though great trees were supposed to be preserved, the destruction of much potential shipbuilding timber.

Charles I leased or sold large parts of the demesne in the 1620s. At the same time his search for revenue led him to reimpose the forest law on the local inhabitants in its full rigour by an eyre in 1634. His policy culminated in the sale of the bulk of the demesne to Sir John Winter of Lydney in 1640 but the Long Parliament's assault on the royal prerogative made that arrangement short lived. In the Civil War local royalists, led by Winter, contested control of the Forest and surrounding parishes with the parliamentary garrison at Gloucester. There were numerous skirmishes in the Forest area and some larger incursions, including the advance of Welsh levies against Gloucester under the command of Lord Herbert in February 1643 and the arrival of a destructive force under Prince Rupert in the spring of 1645. (fn. 66) Following the war, with the forest administration enfeebled by the sanctions imposed on the royalist gentry, a group of army officers took control of the ironworks and did further damage to the woodlands.

Under the Protectorate the Forest was more efficiently administered, and after the Restoration Charles II's government, committing itself to a policy of preservation to raise ship timber, inclosed over half the demesne under an Act of 1668, removed the ironworks and illegal squatters, and added more effective elements to the cumbersome administrative apparatus. During the 18th century, however, governmental control was relaxed and the local administration, vitiated by a system of fees which put a premium on abuse and neglect, allowed wood stealing and encroachment to become rife. Squatters began to establish hamlets around the fringes of the demesne, which contained almost 600 dwellings by 1787. The new settlers lived in primitive conditions in roughly-built cottages, and evangelical clergy and nonconformist preachers, who began to minister to them c. 1800, equated the task with missions to the heathen. Three Anglican churches built between 1816 and 1822, at Berry Hill, Harrow Hill near Drybrook, and Parkend, were among signs that the new settlements had become accepted as permanent features of the demesne.

A regular supply of good quality timber produced for the naval dockyards from the late 17th-century inclosures encouraged the government to embark on a fresh programme of inclosing and planting at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and, under the Crown Commissioners of Woods and a long-serving local deputy surveyor, Edward Machen, the efficiency and reputation of the forest administration were restored. The Forest's industry was also transformed in the early 19th century as outsiders invested in it and formed partnerships with local men. Edward Protheroe of Bristol was the most notable of the 'foreign' capitalists at the period, and later the Crawshay family of Merthyr Tydfil (Glam.) played a leading role. Coal mining especially was developed by building tramroads to carry the coal to shipping points on the Severn and Wye and by installing more steam pumps and new equipment to enable mines to be sunk to the deeper and higher quality seams; the iron industry was revived by the introduction of coke-fired blast furnaces, and quarrying was also much expanded.

Many of the poorer inhabitants felt threatened by the changes, in their role as free miners by the erosion of the old protective customs and in their role as commoners by the restrictions imposed under the replanting programme. Their antagonism culminated in riots against the new inclosures in 1831. A detailed enquiry into the Forest, begun the following year, led to statutory measures for regulating the mines, regularizing the Foresters' tenure of their cottages and encroachments, and parochializing the Forest. In the later 19th century and the early 20th the Forest was a complex industrial region, including deep coal mines and iron mines, iron and tinplate works, foundries, quarries and stone-dressing works, wood distillation works producing chemicals, a network of railways, and numerous minor tramroads. The Forest population grew rapidly: Cinderford was laid out in the mid 19th century on a fairly conventional urban plan and Lydbrook, Parkend, and Drybrook became minor centres, but the characteristic form of settlement remained the sprawling hamlets of haphazardly placed cottages on the periphery.

There were substantial accumulations on the hillsides above Ruardean on the north side, along the Soudley valley on the east, above Blakeney on the south-east, in the Yorkley and Bream area above Lydney on the south, and in the Lane Ends and Berry Hill areas adjoining Coleford on the west. Altogether the Forest came to contain c. 20 villages and hamlets, and its population rose from 7,014 in 1831 to 26,624 in 1921. As part of the infrastructure of the new settlements, more Anglican churches were built, and numerous small nonconformist chapels were founded as nonconformity, particularly the fundamentalist Bible Christian and Primitive Methodist sects, gained a firm hold. Education was provided mainly by church schools until the 1870s when a school board, dominated by nonconformists, undertook a major building programme. From the 1870s the need of the new settlements for watersupply and sewerage schemes began to be addressed, and a proper system of minor roads was formed in the early 20th century.

The Foresters' origins as illegal squatters and their struggle to defend their commoning and mining rights gave them a strong sense of community, as well as a reputation for surliness and suspicion towards outsiders. Characteristics shared with other British coalfields, such as a devotion to sport, the central role of miners' clubs, and the formation of brass bands, also helped to create a distinct identity. The demise of wooden navies long before the early 19th-century plantations matured led to a period of uncertainty about the role of the Forest's administration, but its timber later proved of great national value in the two world wars. In 1924 the Commissioners of Woods transferred control to the Forestry Commission, which during the rest of the 20th century managed the Forest, together with large tracts of woodland in surrounding areas, as primarily a commercial enterprise but with increasing stress on the provision of amenities for leisure; in 1994 the two buildings which had played the principal roles in the administration of the Forest both served tourism, the Speech House in the centre as a hotel and St. Briavels castle in an adjoining parish as a youth hostel.

The gradual loss of jobs in traditional industries in the 20th century, ending with the closure of the last deep mines in the 1960s, made necessary the provision of new sources of employment, found mainly in surrounding parishes and towns. Those changes and other modern pressures began to dilute the character of the people and, with the reclamation of industrial sites and more intensive planting, soften the appearance of the landscape, though features such as the continuing use of the rights of free miners and commoners and the survival from the old forest administration of the office of verderer helped to preserve the memory of the area's distinctive history. In 1994 enough remained of the traditional character of the Forest of Dean for it to be seen by outsiders and by its inhabitants as very different from the rest of Gloucestershire. Footnotes 1 . Hist. & Cart. Mon. Glouc. (Rolls Ser.), ii. 186. This account of the Forest of Dean was written between 1992 and 1994.

Question: In which county is the Forest of Dean?
Answer: Gloucester