spreads the gloom of a yew, which, from the Conqueror's day, to this hour, has darkened the graves of generations.[1]
But the charm of Brockenhurst, as of all the Forest villages, consists in the Forest itself. To the north runs the small Forest stream, blossomed over in the summer with water-lilies. On the left lies Black Knoll, with its waste of heath and gorse, running up to the young plantations of New Park. On the right, Balmor Lawn, with its short, sweet turf, where herds of cattle are pasturing, stretches away to Holland's Wood, with old thorns scattered here and there, in the spring lighting up the Forest with their white may.
Just now though, it is the southern part of the Forest we must see. So going back again for a little way upon the Beaulieu Road, and leaving it just above the foot-bridge for Whitley Lodge, let the reader go on to Lady Cross. Suddenly he will come out upon the northern edge of Beaulieu Heath, and see again the Island Hills. To the people in the Forest, the Island is their weather-glass. If its hills look dark blue and purple, then the weather will be fine; but if they can see the houses and the chalk quarries on the hill sides, the rain is sure to come.
Keeping straight on, with Lady Cross Lodge to our left, we enter Frame Wood, with its turf and its bridle roads winding
- ↑ The following measurements may have some interest, and can be compared with those of the oaks and beeches in the Forest, given in chap. ii. p. 16, foot-note:—Circumference of the oak, twenty-two feet eight inches. Yew, seventeen feet. An enormous yew, completely hollow, however, stands in Breamore churchyard, measuring twenty-three feet four inches. There are certainly no yews in the Forest so large as these; and their evidence would further show that at all events the Conqueror did not destroy the churchyards. As here, too, there remains some Norman work in the doorway of Breamore church.
