Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/145

Rh part, bends across, gaining a lane on the opposite side, which leads away past Ramsdown into Dorsetshire, and along which tradition says the knight rode to Poole.

The next village we reach is Sopley, that is the soc leag, land with the liberty of holding a court of socmen; just as the neighbouring village is called Boghamton (bocland)—the village of the charter-land, or, as we should now say, freehold. Its interesting little church, Early-English and Perpendicular, is dedicated to St. Michael, and built, in memory of the saint's burial-place, on a mound. The Avon flows below, and the old manor-house, now a mere cottage, stands in an adjoining meadow. On the deep north porch rests the archangel, on a corbel head. The fine old oak roof of the nave was covered up some sixty or seventy years ago by a plastered ceiling; but the corbel figures, playing the double pipe and viol, are still standing. In the north aisle are the heads of Edward III. and his queen. Two brackets for images project from the window in the north transept, whose jambs, now whitewashed over, were once painted with frescoes of the mystical vine, in green and red. Here, in the north wall, too, is an aumbrie, whilst the broken stone stairs to the rood-loft still remain. In the north transept a hagioscope looks into the chancel, where, on the floor, lie two Early Decorated figures, formerly placed in tombs under the rood-loft, and said originally to have been brought from the ruined church of Ripley. In the east window burns the fiery beacon of the Comptons.

Here, too, the whole of the church has been most impartially, and, I may add, successfully defaced. Everywhere has a snowstorm of whitewash fallen. I know not why we in these days should think that God delights in ugliness. Our forefathers at least thought not so. It would be well if for a 127