Moonlight Cottages
The New Forest is home to a tradition known in rural lore as the ‘One Night House’, a way that many poor New Forest families managed to obtain property in the New Forest despite it being against Forest law to build on the Crown land. If the family could have a cottage up by the break of dawn and smoke coming of the chimney, they could stay. These projects were usually carried out on a moonlit night, which also lends the name ‘moonlight-house’ to these cottages.
First the foundations were laid, with protective amulets likely to have been placed under the foundations as protection measures and foundation sacrifices. Then the walls would be built. The cottages would probably have been constructed out of timber, then built up with woven vert (branches, sticks and twigs), followed by wattle and daub applied to finish the outside, which would later be re-worked in cob, a material made up of local clay mixed with turf, straw and heather. A roof was then crudely thatched.
At this point, more protective amulets could be placed within the walls and main timbers of the structure. Amulets were always placed in key places (both hidden and visible) in the home that could be used as a place of entry for malignant forces, such as fireplaces and door and window frames.
In 1997, a team at Beaulieu CET challenged themselves to create a reconstruction of a moonlight cottage, which they built in one night with traditional materials and equipment.
– Vikki Bramshaw, author of the book ‘New Forest Folklore, Traditions & Charms’
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