The soft geniality of this autumn day-the wind gently stirring the foliage and making music in the tree-tops and the sun burnishing into gold the greenery on which it falls-causes the birds to sing cheerily all around us. Continuing onwards and upwards our lane, winding under overarching shrubbery and under trees whose tops meet midway and cast the pathway into shadow, we soon reach Brockenhurst Church, standing upon a knoll on the right-hand side of the way, embowered amidst Oak and Ash trees. Passing up some rude steps and through an iron latch gate we find ourselves in the churchyard, crossing which, along by way of the south side of the church, we reach two enormous trees -an Oak and a Yew, both of which were probably contemporaries of William the Conqueror. Measuring the Yew we find that at three feet from the ground it girths sixteen feet eight inches, whilst the girth of the Oak, at the same distance from the ground, is twenty-one feet; at five feet from the ground one foot more in girth, and twenty-three feet in girth at six feet from the ground. Both trees are hollow and the Oak is supported by props, and, though its enormous limbs bear no branches, young sprays of foliage grow from its ancient bole. Brockenhurst Church is mentioned in Domesday, and is one of the only two churches in the New Forest so mentioned, the other church being that of Milford. The charge against William the Conqueror-repeated by various historians-of having destroyed many villages and some fifty churches to make his royal hunting-ground has, in all probability, been wildly exaggerated. At any rate the mention of Brockenhurst Church suggests the probability that as the two churches of which it is one are the only ones in the forest mentioned in Domesday, and both are still standing, the traditionary culpability of William the Norman has been unjustly magnified. Like other churches in the New Forest (the one at Boldre is perhaps the most familiar illustration), the church at Brockenhurst is built upon a hill, and was intended to serve, as doubtless was the case in similar instances, as a landmark in the immediately surrounding forestal district. Its present situation is a very beautiful one. On the southwest side of the churchyard, opposite to that we enter from the lane we have described, we reach the brow of another lane leading back to the village between leafy hedgebanks bordering treecovered, undulating meadows, and overarched by Oaks. At its bottom we must again cross the railway, and from the other end of the village, opposite that from which we started, pass through its straggling street to our first point of departure. When the New Forest, stretching from the Southampton Water on the east to the Avon on the west, trenched upon the shores of the Solent in its southward range, Brockenhurst―a name which indicated the Badger's Wood-occupied part of its central area. But the area of this wild and beautiful tract of country has become greatly diminished. North and south, east and west, the woodlands have receded, and Brockenhurst but lingers on their southern borders, though it is still sufficiently within their area to remain a true forest village. The time when herds of deer would, in the stillness of the night, walk from the forest on either side through its D high street, until startled and urged to retreat by the barking or pursuit of the village dogs, is gone into that past so full of pleasant memories of the ancient and unspoilt beauty of sylvan England. But beauty lingers yet at Brockenhurst, and though much of the old splendour has departed, it still has the charm of leafiness for the lovers of rural quiet. |