Many users of the site will be familiar with our map and map overlays which provide a range of heritage and natural environment information.
Owing to changes in how map overlays are provided to the website, from mid 2023 users will temporarily lose access to most of this service.
We apologise for the inconvenience.
Below is a full list of the overlays that will be affected. We are working on a solution to restore the overlays and hope to have good news soon. We will let you know through this page once the overlays are working again.
This paper was presented at the New Forest Knowledge Conference 2018 entitled: The Role of Commoning in the Maintenance of Landscape and Ecology: A New Forest, National and Global Perspective.
Speaker:
Chris Short, Countryside & Community Research Institute (CCRI)
Abstract
Commons can be found across the globe, and often hold an important message for us back home, often about the need for shared problem-solving to meet current and future challenges. In Norway a new project FUTGRAZE, is assessing why some pastoral associations are able to meet the challenges while others are not. In some areas, the conflict level has grown so high that farmers cannot bear the social strain of continuing with farming. Key reasons are poor cooperation between pasture farmers as well as between farmers and other stakeholders. The result is less grazing, increasing encroachment with subsequent loss of biodiversity. But at the same time, in other areas, the grazing associations have managed to handle these complexities despite huge challenges, sometimes bigger than in the areas where cooperation has declined. FUTGRAZE seeks to crystallize alternative ways of organizing, operating and managing commons in Norway, with the purpose of reducing the conflict levels that threaten these areas and to ensure improved communication amongst all stakeholders.
Rockbourne is near Fordingbridge in a picturesque and peaceful part of Hampshire close to the New Forest. This animation recreates the Roman villa that once stood here in the centre of a large farming estate, and is the largest known villa in the area. Its history spans the period from the Iron Age to the 5th century AD.
The animation was created by Aaron Stone, a student in the Creative Technology Department at Bournemouth University using UE4.
In the New Forest, a gully or glen (formed by a stream running down to the sea) is called a ‘bunny’. One such Glen is Chewton Bunny in Highcliffe, which follows the Walkford Brook to the sea. Chewton Bunny was a regular landing place for smugglers as early as the 13th century.
But in the1900’s Chewton Bunny would enter the history books again for a very different reason, when it became a nucleus of the modern witchcraft movement. It was here that a local woman named Dorothy Clutterbuck would write about the fairies and nature spirits that lived at Walkford Brook. One of her closest friends, Katherine Oldmeadow, lived just a stone’s throw from Chewton Bunny in The Glen House on the corner of Mill Lane. Like Dorothy Clutterbuck, Katherine also had a connection with the nature spirits at Chewton Bunny and a love for other ‘pagan’ themes surrounding the natural environment of this area of the New Forest. Ian Stevenson wrote how she ‘absolutely believed in fairies’ and ‘undoubtably’ regarded Chewton Glen as a magical place.
Both women had connections with the Gypsy women, the keepers of ancient knowledge and folklore, and also local practitioners of witchcraft. Several accounts imply that Dorothy may have held a position of authority in the coven and ‘called up the covens’ to perform a ritual named the Operation Cone of Power against the Nazis in 1940.
– Vikki Bramshaw, author of the book ‘New Forest Folklore, Traditions & Charms
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’
The New Forest Community Archaeologist James Brown spoke at the Scotland’s Community Heritage Conference in November 2017 about the work with volunteers and communities in the New Forest and how we were seeking to motivate communities and enhance their engagement with the local heritage. Here is the film of that talk.
