3-039-190 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A Timber Clearing in the New Forest, Hampshire, 1871. 'What is still called the New Forest is eight centuries old...A discussion has lately been revived upon the question of maintaining the New Forest as a vast uninclosed tract of land, and a national park of unequalled sylvan beauty. Whether the New Forest is, or is not, to be destroyed and inclosed ceases to be a matter involving only individual pecuniary interests, when it is borne in mind that this forest embraces an extent of 63,000 acres, or a little short of 100 square miles...no allotment can ever compensate the smaller commoners, the owners of two or three acres who now turn their cattle and ponies into the forest, for the destruction of their forest rights. The smaller commoners, therefore, are almost to a man opposed to an inclosure. The scene we present...is a spot near Prior's Acre. Quantities of oak, for the purpose of shipbuilding and for sale, fall every year. Vast tracts of the forest from which timber has been removed, and which are covered with gorse, fern, and heather, afford scanty subsistence to the picturesque ponies and cattle in their semi-wild state...The sound of the woodman's ringing axe, or the cry of the green woodpecker, now and then breaks the silence'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.