Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/45

Rh One explanation can alone be given to such facts—that only the waste lands were enclosed, and the cultivated spared.

The village of Totton, though close to the Forest, was not touched, although all the neighbouring hamlets were in various degrees afforested, simply because it consisted of only pasture and plough-land, whose value had increased no less than one fourth. The hamlets of Barton—literally, Bere-tun, the corn village—and Chewton, where to this day is the best land in the south-west of Hampshire, were also spared; though we find all the neighbouring villages and manors, Milton, Beckley, Bashley, Fernhill, Whitefields, Arnwood, all more or less enclosed; the reason being, as was before said, that the Conqueror took only the waste lands and the woods.

In the woods which were afforested people were allowed to live; though, probably, they voluntarily left them, as labour could not there be so well obtained as in the unafforested parts. In all other respects there seems to have been no disarrangement. Both on the outskirts and in the heart of the Forest, the villains and borderers still worked as before, carrying on their former occupations. The mills at Bashley, and Milford, and Burgate, all in the Forest, went on the same. The fisheries at Holdenhurst and Dibden were undisturbed. The salterns at Eling and Hordle still continued at work, showing that the people still, as before, sowed and reaped their corn, and pastured and killed their cattle. 27