There Seems Room
Enough To Chase The Red Stag From Buckhurst Park With Horn And Hound
Till, Mayhap, He Ended In The Sea At Pevensey.
Buckhurst Park is the
centre of this immense manor.
Of old time the deer did run wild, and were
hunted till the pale was broken in the great Civil War. The 'Forest' is
still in every one's mouth - 'on the Forest,' 'by the Forest,' 'in' it, or
'over' it, everything comes from the 'Forest,' even stone to mend the
roads, or 'through the Forest,' as up from Brighton. People say this farm
used to be forest, or this garden or this house was the first built on
the forest. The enclosures are small, and look as if they had been hewn
out of wood or stubbed out of heather, and there are numbers of small
owners or settlers. Here and there a house stands, as it seems, alone in
the world on the Forest ridge, thousands of acres of heather around, the
deep weald underneath - as at Duddleswell, a look-out, as it were, over
the earth. Forest Row, where they say the courtiers had their booths in
ancient hunting days; Forest Fold, Boar's-head Street, Greenwood
Gate - all have a forest sound; and what prettier name could there be than
Sweet-Haws? Greybirchet Wood, again; Mossbarn, Highbroom, and so on.
Outlying woods in every direction are fragments of the forest, you cannot
get away from it; and look over whatever gate you will, there is always a
view.
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