New Forest Notes: On board with key New Forest figures

The right-hand column shows the names and dates of the Deputy Surveyors of the Forest from 1778, or as many as the compiler could discover, to the present day. The left column records the Official Verderers (chairmen) from the establishment of the court in 1877.

Some were key figures in the Forest’s recent history, while others came and went leaving virtually no mark at all. The two columns combined are a sort of route map through the Forest’s history over the last two centuries.

The position of Official Verderer was established, as was the court, by the New Forest Act of 1877. He was to act as a sort of referee/chairman between the warring elements of the Forest community at the time.

These comprised the commoners on one side and the Crown on the other. How the actual holders of the office actually interpreted their duties was a rather different matter.

The remainder of the court was elected by the commoners and the parliamentary voters of parishes wholly or partially within the perambulation or Forest boundary. There were six of them and they were drawn exclusively from the large landowners of the Forest. Qualification required the ownership of 75 acres, at least some of which must have possessed common rights over the Crown lands.

The Official Verderers tended to be appointed from the same group of large estate owners as the elected members, putting the Crown at something of a disadvantage from the start. It is a pattern of appointment which has only started to change in recent years, long after the elected members and the electorate were modernised.

In 1949 the constitution of the verderers was thrown back into the melting pot. Gone were the restrictive property qualifications for elected members. In 1947 it had been established that only 16 people were actually qualified to be elected.

Now the qualification was reduced from ownership of 75 acres, to the occupation of one acre with the right of common of pasture attached. The tenant of old orchard on which he kept a pony could now stand on equal footing with his landlord who owned perhaps a thousand acres.

Also ditched in 1949 was the right of parliamentary electors to vote in verderers’ elections. This was to protect the dwindling proportion of commoners in an increasingly urbanized population which was mushrooming around the Forest.

The court was, after all, designed chiefly to regulate the commoners’ activities, to tax them through marking fees and to protect their rights.

On the other hand, four additional seats on the court were given to representatives of public authorities and the number of commoners’ representatives was reduced by one so that, theoretically at least, the appointed verderers now hold the whip hand.

Through all this reorganization, the position of Official Verderer survived. Fifteen of the 17 Official Verderers have been large landed proprietors in and around Hampshire; although in recent years several have been drawn from the world of business. There has also been a trend towards landowners who possess professional qualifications aside from their property interests.

Of all the Official Verderers since the establishment of the court, I will have served with half, once a new appointment is made. That says more about the increasing work load the modern chairmen have to face (and thus the quicker they retire), than my own length of service. In the quieter days of the early 20th century, Sir Robert Hobart served from 1907 to 1927, while Maldwin Drummond (after a distinguished term as an elected member) managed only three years (1999-2002) during a difficult period.

Perhaps rather surprisingly, there has (until recently) been no requirement for chairmen of the court to know, at the time of appointment, anything about the Forest on the ground – or indeed, anything about animal husbandry.

One or two of the most distinguished holders of the office might have had difficulty in directing an enquirer to the Knightwood Oak. That is in marked contrast to an elected verderer who will be expected to know every corner of the Forest from Windyates in the north to Shipton Holms in the south and who will certainly need to know one end of a cow from the other.

When the present Official Verderer, Lord Manners, announced his retirement, I think it is fair to say there was a good deal of disappointment, but also a unanimous view that there should be a lengthy hand-over period, so that a successor could receive a good education in the persistent problems plaguing the Forest.

As usual, this sensible precaution was wholly ignored by the authorities. Indeed, of the three months or so hand-over that had been envisaged at the beginning of the year, by the April court the chairman was still unable to announce his successor.

Although a candidate had been recommended the paperwork remained unfinished, including obtaining the signature of the King. With His Majesty rather fully occupied for the next few days, I imagine we will have to wait a bit longer.

I remember that the confirmation of one Official Verderer, over twenty years ago, did not come through until the morning of the first court at which he was to officiate. The new chairman did not reach Queen’s House until the business of the day was well underway.

A development threat to the Forest

Not since the defeat of the Lyndhurst Bypass Bill over thirty years ago has the New Forest been directly threatened by developers seeking to exploit the common land for their own purposes.

Almost every week there are reports of yet another new housing estate being jammed up against the Forest boundary, all down the Avon Valley, along parts of the coastal strip and up Southampton Water; but the Forest itself has remained unscathed.

Its landscape seemed protected, while the fabric has become increasingly worn, littered and degraded through over-use and mis-management.

Now the eyes of developers have once again settled on the Forest, and not simply through an attack on some marginal site already ruined by adjacent building. This time the assault is on the very heart of the Forest. A mobile phone company is seeking to build a mast nearly 100ft tall and powered by a generator, together with associated works, in perhaps the most unspoilt place still remaining, three quarters of a mile west of Fritham.

The site is on the edge of a plateau comprising some of the highest land in the Forest and the structure, if built, would dominate the view across miles of adjacent heathland.

It is very close to the ancient woodland visited by Tennyson in 1866, when he bewailed the loss of fine old trees, felled by the Office of Woods for commercial reasons. This is also the area painted and written about by Heywood Sumner only a few years afterwards.

A worse site within the Forest for such vandalism would be difficult to find.

So where is the special protection which the New Forest is supposed to enjoy through its designation as a national park?

The developer evidently believes (I hope wrongly) that he has powers allowing all statutory and other protection to be swept aside, making landowners, managers and planning authorities subject to his demands. Clearly, if one company can succeed in this, others will follow and there will be no part of the New Forest protected against such ugly and noisy intrusion.

It was good to see the New Forest Association – now the Friends of the New Forest) opposing the plans in a presentment to the April Verderers’ Court. The Court responded with unusual speed, writing to the applicant’s solicitor two days later stating that the Verderers will not approve the development and its associated works. The Court also made it clear that piecemeal development of masts is unacceptable anywhere in the Forest and that a comprehensive scheme must be worked out for what, if any, masts will be allowed on Forest land and where they should be located.

It may be that the companies will be able to bully private landowners and the planners into doing as they are told, but attacking the woods and heaths of the Forest is an enterprise in which more than one entrepreneur has come to grief.