which leads us on the right to Fritham, standing on the hill top. In the valley below lies Eyeworth Lodge, with the powder mills lately built; the Ivare of Domesday, and still so called by the peasantry, afterwards Yvez, where Roger Beteston, in the reign of Henry III., held some land by the service of finding litter for the King's bed and hay for his horse whenever he came here to hunt.[1]
Fritham is thoroughly in the Forest; and few spots can equal it in interest. It may be the very place where Rufus fell:[2] but whether or no, close round it lie the barrows of the Kelt, and the potteries of the Roman, covering acres of ground, at Island's Thorn and Crockle, and Sloden and Black Bar, with the banks which mark the sites of the workmen's houses.[3] Close round it, too, encircling it on all sides, rise the woods of Studley, with their great beeches, and Eyeworth, famous for its well. Going along the West Fritham Plain we come to Sloden, with its thick wood of yews, standing, massive and black, in all their depth of foliage, mixed, in loveliest contrast, with clumps of whitebeams. Below runs the brook, flowing under Amberwood, and winding among dark groups of hollies, lost at last in the deep gorge, shut in by the hills of Goreley and Charlford.
The best way to reach Fordingbridge is either to go by
- ↑ Testa de Nevill, p. 237 b. 130. See, also, p. 235 b. (118). As in other parts of England, throughout the Forest, as we have seen at Lyndhurst and Brockenhurst, were similar feudal tenures. Some held their lands, as the heirs of Cobbe, at Eling, by finding 50; and others, again, as Richard de Baudet, at Redbridge, 100 arrows. Testa de Nevill, as in the first reference; and p. 238 a. (132.)
- ↑ See previous chapter, p. 96, foot-note.
- ↑ For some account of the contents of these barrows and potteries, see chapters xvii. and xviii.
