CHAPTER III.

ROYAL CHASE OF SHIRLOT.

Afforestation of Shirlot—Extent—Places Disafforested—Hayes—Foresters—Hunting Lodges—Sporting Priors—Old Tenures—Encroachments upon Woods by Iron-making Operations—Animals that have Disappeared—Reaction due to a Love of Sport—What the Country would have lost—“The Merrie Greenwood”—Remarkable old Forest Trees, &c.

“Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blows His wreathed bugle horn.”

MR. EYTON thinks the afforestation of Shirlot was probably suggested by its proximity to the Morville and Chetton manors, where Saxon kings and Mercian earls had their respective demesnes, and that Henry I. and his successors, in visiting the Castle of Bridgnorth, or as guests of the Prior of Wenlock, had obvious reasons for perpetuating there the exclusive rights of a Royal chace. Although Shirlot Forest was separated from that of Morfe by the Severn, its jurisdiction extended across the river to Apley, and embraced places lying along the right bank of the river, in the direction of Cressage. Bridgnorth with its surroundings was not taken out of its jurisdiction or thrown open by perambulation till 1301, when it was disafforested, together with Eardington, Much Wenlock, Broseley, and other places. The extent and ancient jurisdiction of this forest may be estimated by the number of places taken from it at this date, as Benthall, Buildwas, Barrow, Belswardine, Shineton, Posenall, Walton, Willey, Atterley, the Dean, the Bold, Linley, Caughley, Little Caughley, Rowton, Sweyney, Appeleye (the only vill eastward of Severn), Colemore, Stanley, Rucroft, Medewegrene, Cantreyne, Simon de Severn’s messuage (now Severn Hall), Northleye, Astley Abbot’s Manor, La Dunfowe (Dunwall), La Rode (now Rhodes), Kinsedeleye (now Kinslow), Tasley, Crofte, Haleygton (Horton, near Morville), Aldenham, the Bosc of the Earl of Arundel within the bounds of the forest of Schyrlet, which is called Wiles Wode (_i.e._ Earl’s Wood), Aston Aer, Momerfield (Morville), Lee, Underdone, Walton (all three near Morville), Upton (now Upton Cresset), Meadowley, Stapeley, Criddon, Midteleton (Middleton Scriven), the Bosc of the Prior of Wenlock, called Lythewode, half the vill of Neuton (Newton near Bold), Faintree, Chetton, Walkes Batch (Wallsbatch, near Chetton), Hollycott, Hapesford (now Harpswood), Westwood (near Harpswood), Oldbury, a messuage at the More (the Moor Ridding), a messuage at La Cnolle (now Knowle Sands), and the Bosc which is called Ongeres.

[Picture: Fallow deer]

The ancient extent of the forest must have been about twelve miles by five. The names of the places mentioned to which the limits of the chace are traced are so different in many instances from the present that it may be of interest to give a few of them. From Yapenacres Merwey the boundary was to go up to the Raveneshok (Ravens’ Oak), thence straight to the Brenallegrene, near the Coleherth (Coal Hearth) going up by the Fendeshok (Friends’ Oak) to the Dernewhite-ford. Thence upwards to the Nethercoumbesheved; and so straight through the Middlecoumbesheved, and then down to Caldewall. Then down through the Lynde to the Mer Elyn. Thence down to Dubledaneslegh, and then up by a certain watercourse to the Pirle; and so up to Wichardesok; and so to the Pundefold; and so down by the Shepewey to the Holeweeuen, and then up by a certain fence to Adame’s Hale (Adam’s Hall), and thus by the assarts which John de Haldenham (Aldenham) holds at a rent of the king to the corner of Mokeleyes Rowe (Muckley Row); and thence down to Yapenacres Merwey, where the first land-mark of the Haye begins. There was also, it was said, a certain bosc which the King still held in the same forest, called Benthlegh Haye (Bentley Haye).

In addition to this Haye there was the Haye of Shirlot, opposite to which a portion of the forest in the fifth of Henry III.’s reign was ordered to be assarted, which consisted in grubbing up the roots so as to render the ground fit for tillage.

In connection with these Hayes, generally a staff of foresters, verderers, rangers, stewards, and regarders was kept up; and forest courts were also held at stated times (in the forest of the Clee every six weeks), at which questions and privileges connected with the forest were considered. Philip de Baggesour, Forester of the Fee in the king’s free Haye of Schyrlet in 1255, in the Inquisition of Hundreds, is said to have under him “two foresters, who give him 20_s._ per annum for holding their office, and to make a levy on oats in Lent, and on wheat in autumn.” “The aforesaid Philip,” it is said, “hath now in the said Haye of Windfalls as much as seven trees, and likewise all trees which are wind-fallen, the jurors know not by what warrant except by ancient tenure.” These privileged officers had good pickings, evidently by means of their various time-sanctioned customs, and jolly lives no doubt they led.

In the forty-second of Henry III. Hammond le Strange was steward of this forest, and in the second of Edward I. the king’s forester is said to have given the sheriff of the county notice that he was to convey all the venison killed in the forests of Salop, and deliver it at Westminster to the king’s larder, for the use of the king’s palace. According to the same record, the profits that were made of the oaks that were fallen were to be applied to the building of a vessel for the king. In the nineteenth of Richard II., Richard Chelmswick was appointed forester for life; and in the twenty-sixth of Henry III. the stewardship both of the forests of Morfe and of Shirlot was granted to John Hampton and his heirs.

Some of the chief foresters also held Willey, and probably resided there; at any rate it is not improbable that a building which bears marks of extreme antiquity, between Barrow and Broseley, called the Lodge Farm, was once the hunting lodge. It has underneath strongly arched and extensive cellaring, which seems to be older than portions of the superstructure, and which may have held the essentials for feasts, for which sportsmen of all times have been famous. Near the lodge, too, is the _Dear-Loape_, or Deer Leap, a little valley through which once evidently ran a considerable stream, and near which the soil is still black, wet, and boggy. A deer leap, dear loape, or _saltory_, was a pitfall—a contrivance common during the forest periods, generally at the edge of the chace, for taking deer, and often granted by charter as a privilege—as that, for instance, on the edge of Cank, or Cannock Chace. Sometimes these pitfalls, dug for the purpose of taking game, were used by poachers, who drove the deer into them. It is, therefore, easy to understand why the forest lodge should be near, as a protection. It was usually one of the articles of inquiry at the Swainmote Court whether “any man have any great close within three miles of the forest that have any saltories, or great gaps called deer loapes, to receive deer into them when they be in chasing, and when they are in them they cannot get out again.”

[Picture: Deer Leap]

Among sportsmen of these forest periods we must not omit to notice the Priors of the ancient Abbey of Wenlock. The heads of such wealthy establishments by no means confined themselves within the limits of the chapter-house. They were no mere cloistered monks, devoted to book and candle, but jolly livers, gaily dressed, and waited upon by well-appointed servants; like the Abbot of Buildwas, who had for his vassal the Lord of Buildwas Parva, who held land under him on condition that he and his wife should place the first dish on the abbot’s table on Christmas Day, and ride with him any whither within the four seas at the abbot’s charge. They had huntsmen and hounds, and one can imagine their sporting visitation rounds among their churches, the chanting of priests, the deep-mouthed baying of dogs, early matins, and the huntsman’s bugle horn harmoniously blending in the neighbourhood of the forest. Hugh Montgomery in his day gave to the abbey a tithe of the venison which he took in its woods, and in 1190 we find the Prior of Wenlock giving twenty merks to the king that he may “have the Wood of Shirlott to himself, exempt from view of foresters, and taken out of the Regard.” As we have already shown, the priors had a park at Madeley, they had one at Oxenbold, and they also had privileges over woods adjoining the forest of the Clees, where the Cliffords exercised rights ordinarily belonging to royal proprietors, and where their foresters carried things with such a high hand, and so frequently got into trouble with those of the priors, that the latter were glad to accept an arrangement, come to after much litigation in 1232, by which they were to have a tenth beast only of those taken in their own woods at Stoke and Ditton, and of those started in their demesne boscs, and taken elsewhere. These boscs appear to have been woodland patches connecting the long line of forest stretching along the flanks of the Clee Hills with that on the high ground of Shirlot and, as in the case of others even much further removed, their ownership was exceedingly limited. One of the complaints against Clifford’s foresters was, that they would not suffer the priors’ men to keep at Ditton Priors and Stoke St. Milburgh any dogs not _expedited_, or mutilated in their feet, nor pasture for their goats.

[Picture: Chapter House of Wenlock Priory]

Imbert, one of these priors, was chosen as one of the Commissioners for concluding a truce with David ap Llewellyn in July, 1244. He was subsequently heavily fined for trespasses for assarting, or grubbing up the roots of trees, in forest lands at Willey, Broseley, Coalbrookdale, Madeley, and other places, the charge for trespass amounting to the large sum of £126 13_s._ 4_d._

A survey of the Haye of Shirlot, made by four knights of the county, pursuant to a royal writ in October 21, 1235, sets forth “its custody good as regards oak trees and underwood, except that great deliveries have been made by order of the king to the Abbeys of Salop and Bildewas, to the Priory of Wenlock, and to the Castle of Brug, for the repairs of buildings, &c.”

Some curious tenures existed within the jurisdiction of this forest, one of which it may be worth while deviating from our present purpose to notice, as it affords an insight into the early iron manufacturing operations which, at a later period, led to the destruction of forest trees, but, at the same time, to the development of the mineral wealth of the district within and bordering upon the forest. Of its origin nothing is known; but it is supposed to have arisen out of some kingly peril or other forest incident connected with the chase. It consisted in this, that the tenant of the king at the More held his land upon the condition that he appeared yearly in the Exchequer with a hazel rod of a year’s growth and a cubit’s length, and two knives. The treasurer and barons being present, the tenant was to attempt to sever the rod with one of the knives, so that it bent or broke. The other knife was to do the same work at one stroke, and to be given up to the king’s chamberlain for royal use. {41}

That iron was manufactured at a very early period in the heart of the forests of Shirlot and the Clees, is shown by Leland, who informs us that in his day there were blow-shops upon the Brown Clee Hills in Shropshire, where iron ores were exposed upon the hill sides, and where, from the fact that wood was required for smelting, it is only reasonable to look for them. Historical records and monastic writings, as well as old tenures, traditions, and heaps of slag, tell us that iron had been manufactured in the midst of these woods from very remote periods. As far back as 1250, a notice occurs of a right of road granted by Philip de Benthall, Lord of Benthall, to the monks of Buildwas, over all his estate, for the carriage of stone, coal, and timber; and in an old work in the Deer Leap, very primitive wooden shovels, and wheels flanged and cut out of the solid block, and apparently designed to bear heavy weights, were found a short time since, which are now in possession of Mr. Thursfield, of Barrow, together with an iron axletree and some brass sockets, two of which have on them “P. B.,” being the initials of Philip Benthall, or Philip Burnel, it is supposed, the latter having succeeded the former. At Linley, and the Smithies, traces of old forges occur; so that there is good reason for supposing that knives and other articles of iron may have been manufactured in the district from a very early period. Among the assets, for instance, of the Priory of Wenlock, in the year 1541–2, is a mine of ironstone, at Shirlot, fermed for £2 6_s._ 1_d._ per annum; and a forge, described as an Ierne Smythee, or a smith’s place, in Shirlot, rented at £12 8_s._ Another forge produced £2 13_s._ 4_d._ per annum; and the produce of some other mineral, probably coal, was £5 3_s._ 10_d._ These large rents for those days show the advance made in turning to account the mineral wealth of the district, and the superior value of mines compared with trees, or mere surface produce.

Wherever powerful streams came down precipitous channels, little forges with clanging hammers were heard reverberating through the woods as early as the reigns of the Tudors. Their sites now are—

“Downy banks damask’d with flowers:”

but they reveal the havoc made of the timber by cutting and burning it for charcoal down to the reign of Elizabeth, when an act was passed to restrict the use for such purposes.

These iron-making and mining operations caused the forest to be intersected by roads and tramways, as old maps and reports of the forest shew us; so that few beasts, except those passing between their more secluded haunts, were to be found there; and, as the stragglers preferred the tender vegetation the garden of the cottager afforded, even these were sometimes noosed, or shot with bows and arrows, which made no noise.

[Picture: Waterfall]

To such an extent had destruction of timber in this and other forests in the country been carried, that it was feared that in the event of a foreign war sufficient timber could not be found for the use of the navy. A reaction, however, set in: wealthy landowners set themselves to work to remedy the evil by planting and preserving trees, especially the oak; and many of the woods and plantations which gladden the eye of the traveller in passing through the country, and which afford good sport to the Wheatland and Albrighton packs, were the result.

To this indigenous and deep-rooted love of sport we are therefore indebted, to a very great extent, for those beautiful woods which adorn the Willey country and many other portions of the kingdom. But for our woods and the “creeping things” they shelter, we should have imperfect conceptions of those earlier phases of the island:—

“When stalked the bison from his shaggy lair, Thousands of years before the silent air Was pierced by whizzing shafts of hunters keen.”

The country would have been wanting in subjects such as Creswick, with faithful expressions of foliage and knowledge of the play of light and shade, has depicted. It would have lost the text-work of those characteristics Constable revelled in, and those Harding gave us in his oaks. We should have lost subjects for the poet as well as for the painter; for the ballad literature of the country is redolent of sights and sounds associated therewith. To come down from the earliest times. How the old Druids reverenced them! how the compilers of that surprising survey of the country we find in Domesday noted all details concerning them! what joyous allusions Chaucer, Spenser, and later writers make to them! what peculiar charms the “merry green-wood” and the deep forest glades had for the imagination of the people! Hence the popular sympathy expressed by means of tales and traditions in connection with Sherwood’s sylvan shade, and the many editions of the song of the bold outlaw, and of the adventures contained therein. Even the utilitarian philosopher and the ultra radical, fleeing from the stifling atmosphere of the town, and diving for an hour or so into some paternal wood, is inclined, we fancy, to sponge from his memory the bitter things he has said of the owners and of that aristocratic class who usually value and guard them as they do their picture galleries. Thanks to such as these, there is now scarcely a run in the Willey country but brings the sportsman face to face with vestiges of some sylvan memorial Nature or man has planted along the hill and valley sides, memorials renewed again and again, as winter after winter rends the red leaves from the trees: and the man who has not made a pilgrimage, for sport or otherwise, through these far-reaching sylvan slopes along the valley of the Severn, stretching almost uninterruptedly for seven or eight miles, or through some similar wooded tract, witnessing the sheltered inequalities of the surface, varied by rocky glens and rushy pools—the winter haunt of snipe and woodcock—has missed much that might afford him the highest interest. Here and there, on indurated soils along the valley sides, opportunities occur of studying the manner in which trees of several centuries’ growth send their gnarled and massive roots in between the rocks in search of nourishment, for firmness, or to resist storms that shake branches little inferior to the parent stem. Few places probably have finer old hollies and yew-trees indigenous to the soil, relieving the monotony of the general grey by their sombre green—trees rooted where they grew six or eight centuries since, and carrying back the mind to the time of Harold and the bowmen days of Robin Hood.

[Picture: Forest scenery]

Spoonhill, a very well-known covert of the Wheatland Hunt, was a slip of woodland as early as a perambulation in 1356, when it was recorded to lie outside the forest, its boundary on the Shirlot side being marked by a famous oak called Kinsok, “which stood on the king’s highway between Weston and Wenlock.”

The Larden and Lutwyche woods for many years have been famous for foxes. The late M. Benson, Esq., told us that a fox had for several seasons made his home securely in a tree near his house, he having taken care to keep his secret. The woods, too, on the opposite side of the ridge, rarely fail to furnish a fox; and it is difficult to imagine a finer spot than Smallman’s Leap, {49a} or Ipikin’s Rock, on the “Hill Top,” presents for viewing a run over Hughley and Kenley, or between there and Hope Bowdler. Near Lutwyche is a thick entangled wood, called Mog Forest; and in the old door of the Church of Easthope, {49b} near, is a large iron ring, which is conjectured to have been placed there for outlaws of the forest who sought sanctuary or freedom from arrest to take hold of. Now and then, in wandering over the sites of these former forests, we come upon traditions of great trees, sometimes upon an aged tree itself, “bald with antiquity,” telling of parent forest tracts, like the Lady Oak at Cressage, which formerly stood in the public highway, and suffered much from gipsies and other vagabonds lighting fires in its hollow trunk, but which is now propped, cramped, and cared for, with as much concern as the Druids were wont to show to similar trees. A young tree, too, sprung from an acorn from the old one, has grown up within its hollow trunk, and now mingles its foliage with that of the parent.

[Picture: Lady Oak]

There are a few fine old trees near Willey, supposed to be fragmentary forest remains. One is a patriarchal-looking ash in the public road at Barrow; another is an oak near the Dean; it is one of which the present noble owner of Willey shows the greatest pride and care. There are also two noble trees at Shipton and Larden; the one at the latter place being a fine beech, the branches of which, when tipped with foliage, have a circumference of 35 yards. A magnificent oak, recently cut down in Corve Dale, contained 300 cubic feet of timber, and was 18 feet in circumference. This, however, was a sapling compared with that king of forest trees which Loudon describes as having been cut down in Willey Park. It spread 114 feet, and had a trunk 9 feet in diameter, exclusive of the bark. It contained 24 cords of yard wood, 11½ cords of four-feet wood, 252 park palings, six feet long, 1 load of cooper’s wood, 16½ tons of timber in all the boughs; 28 tons of timber in the body, and this besides fagots and boughs that had dropped off:—

“What tales, if there be tongues in trees, Those giant oaks could tell, Of beings born and buried here; Tales of the peasant and the peer, Tales of the bridal and the bier The welcome and farewell.”

The old oak forests and chestnut groves which supplied the sturdy framework for the half-timbered houses of our ancestors, the rafters for their churches, and the beams for their cathedrals, are gone; and the mischief is, not only that we have lost former forests, but that our present woods every year are growing less, that much of that shrubby foliage which within our own recollection divided the fields, forming little copses in which a Morland would have revelled, have had to give way to agricultural improvements, and the objects of sport they sheltered have disappeared. The badger lingered to the beginning of the present century along the rocks of Benthall and Apley; and the otter, which still haunts portions of the Severn and its more secluded tributaries, and occasionally affords sport in some parts of the country higher up, was far from being rare. On the left bank of the Severn are the “Brock-holes,” or badger-holes, whilst near to it are the “Fox-holes,” where tradition alleges foxes a generation or two ago to have been numerous enough to have been a nuisance; and the same remark may apply to the “Fox-holes” at Benthall. As the district became more cultivated and the country more populated, the range of these animals became more and more circumscribed, and the cherished sports of our forefathers came to form the staple topics of neighbours’ oft-told tales.

Within our own recollection the badger was to be found at Benthall Edge; but he had two enemies—the fox, who sometimes took possession of his den and drove him from the place, and the miners of Broseley and Benthall, who were usually great dog-fanciers, and who were accustomed to steal forth as the moon rose above the horizon, and intercept him as he left his long winding excavation among the rocks, in order to make sport for them at their annual wakes.

[Picture: The Badger]

[Picture: Group of deer]