The Dukeries

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Gilchrist Murray. The Dukeries

WORKSOP AND THE MANOR

SHERWOOD FOREST AND ROBIN HOOD

WELBECK ABBEY

CLUMBER

THORESBY

OLLERTON

RUFFORD

EDWINSTOWE AND THE OAKS

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To savour the full charm of Sherwood Forest one must stray from the highroad, lose one's path, and wander in happy patience until a broad avenue is reached, or above the treetops one sees the slender and graceful spire of some stately church. The formal beauty of the frequented ways – trimly kept and splendidly coloured – precludes all illusion: only in the remote solitudes with their monstrous old trees is it possible to evoke a mind picture of Robin Hood and his devoted followers. And even in the most secluded places the imagined pageant of these folk suggests the theatre. The loveliness seems unreal – a background devised by some scene-painter of genius.

But Sherwood is always beautiful and always tranquil; to those who know aught of wood magic it is as fair in cold midwinter as in autumn, when the leaves are no longer green leaves, but a rich mosaic of russet and orange and sullen red. My most wonderful memory is of a November day when a fine snow was falling, and the leaves drifted downward in a continuous murmuring veil. Then, no rabbits played upon the grassy wayside or crossed the track, and the pheasants shivered in their hidden shelters. In early springtime one best realizes the antiquity; the first opening leaves call to mind pale lichen growing upon damp castle walls: in summer the air is languorous, bringing a desire for rest and contemplation. Storms are impious there: the ancient oaks and birches and chestnuts must wail and protest, like dotards wakened from senility to cruel hours of actual life.

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Until the sixteenth century the forest seems to have been infested with wolves: we read that one, Sir Robert Plumpton, in Henry the Sixth's time, held land called "wolf-hunt land" at Mansfield Woodhouse, seven or eight miles away, by service of horn-blowing to chase or frighten away these creatures. In 1635, from a survey taken by royal command, it was discovered that the forests contained 1367 red deer, 987 of these being "rascalds", or ill-conditioned. A few years before, the district had been ravaged by fire, and a contemporary writer describes the conflagration as one such as was "never knowne in menes memory; beinge four mille longe and a mille and a halfe over all at once". Later the gentleman tells how "ridinge on his way through the forest homeward, he saw a greate herde of faire red deere, and amonst them 2 extreordanory greet stages, the which he never saw the like".

Much of the forest oak was used for the royal navy, but more was allowed to decay. Folk of good birth but fallen fortunes frequently begged a grant of these trees from the Crown. In 1677 Thoroton writes that so many claims were granted that there would soon not be wood enough left to cover the bilberries! As time went on, the cleared portions, being of no further use for kingly sport, were sold to various noblemen. In 1683, 1270 acres were bought by the Duke of Kingston, to add to Thoresby Park; while early in the eighteenth century 3000 acres were enclosed for the making of Clumber Park. The last portions of the forest remaining were the hays, or enclosures, of Birkland and Bilhagh, which were granted to the Duke of Portland about 1827, in exchange for the perpetual advowson of St. Mary-le-Bone. Bilhagh later became the property of the late Earl Manvers, its price being the manors of Holbeck and Bonbusk, near Welbeck. After the resignation of the Crown lands the waning historical interest of Sherwood ceased. Birkland and Bilhagh are still beautiful as in their prime, but the rest of the neighbourhood is nowadays naught but a wonderful pleasaunce, where drowsy pheasants wander unafraid, and where the chief signs of life are on holidays, when happy folk crowd from the neighbouring towns to view, awestricken, the wonders and the riches of the great houses, and the artificial beauties of perhaps the finest parks in England.

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