New Forest Notes: Riding permits, felling in the Forest and colt hunting

The wording of the consultation seems very bland and is no doubt intended to be so in order to discourage any in-depth enquiries as to what lies behind it.

Almost all public activities on the common land of the Forest are regulated by bylaws, and most require the permission of the landowner. For example, organised events, access with wheeled vehicles of any kind (except pushchairs and invalid carriages), camping and so on are illegal without consent.

However, one use which is specifically permitted by the bylaws is the riding or leading of horses in the New Forest, so that immediately removes the threat, real or perceived, to reasonable use of ridden horses on our common land.

The exemption does not include horses pulling wheeled vehicles. That does need permission and will probably only be permitted on agreed routes.

Motorists and mountain bikers must keep to the rules, and there can be no good grounds for special exemption of other wheeled vehicles, even it they are powered by a registered New Forest pony.

The origin of the special status of horse riding in the New Forest probably goes back to the days of the old royal forest and the integral part in local life played by hunting.

Today Forest riding is no more than a very minor constituent of recreational use, despite much private land being devoted to horses. It always amazes me that one encounters so few riders on the Forest today. That is very different from the heyday of commercial riding establishments 40 years ago.

The exemption does not, of course, allow riders to ignore the other bylaws such as those preventing interference with other lawful users or wilful damage to the vegetation.

A couple of days before receiving the enquiry about the permit consultation, I observed the state of one of the reseeded runways at Stoney Cross.

Two or three shod horses had evidently been galloped from one end to the other in really wet ground conditions, making a dreadful mess and certainly qualifying for immediate prosecution under the bylaws if those regulations were properly enforced.

So exactly what is FE up to?

I suspect that the answer is “not very much” so far as New Forest individual riders are concerned, but it could be looking for tighter regulation and higher levels of charging elsewhere.

In any case, the proper use of ridden horses is an inseparable part of managing Forest livestock and, with or without bylaw protection, could not be interfered with by FE, short of new primary legislation.

The consultation online at bit.ly/40zOqPh runs until 9th April, so there remain a few days in which to respond.

Destruction at Turf Hill and Millersford

In the “old days”, when I first began to learn about the Forest and how it is run, if things were going badly wrong, someone might write a letter to one of the (then) numerous local papers. Everyone, including management, would sit up and take notice.

If things became worse there might even have been a presentment in the Verderers’ Court.

How different it is today. When, as happened in January and the weeks afterwards, something really distressing occurs, little public attention is attracted even by the publication of a very professional website condemning the errors and omissions of management.

These shortcomings comprised the wholesale destruction of large areas of plantation on FE land and National Trust property comprising much of Turf Hill Inclosure, part of the adjoining open Forest and a portion of Millersford Plantation.

This has, across the north of the Forest, caused huge annoyance and anger amongst regular users of the area, including residents of Godshill, Hale and Redlynch.

The resulting website, halepurlieu.wixsite.com/newforest, was apparently produced by a lady simply named “Naomi” whom I have never met and know nothing about.

It is a very full and largely well reasoned condemnation of FE, although some of her ancillary remarks on public access demands are rather less convincing.

The site contains many brilliant photographs, including some very useful before and after illustrations.

In summary, FE has clear-felled about 25 acres at Turf Hill since Christmas, with an almost total disregard for landscape considerations, the convenience of users or any sensible planning for extraction.

It has cut to pieces and/or blocked almost every path and ride in the area, resulting in seas of deep mud up to 50ft wide in places, by dragging out trees in the most appallingly wet ground conditions.

On the open Forest it has clear-felled a landscape wood of naturally sown Scots pine, whose core was far older than the adjoining plantation and which was a hill-top landscape feature long before the inclosure was planted.

Two acres of adjoining heathland grazing have been totally destroyed. In Millersford Plantation (National Trust land held on lease by FE) the destruction continues over a further nine acres.

Here, in addition to the cutting of the relatively recent conifer, dozens of young and thriving oaks along the boundary of the old Hale estate have been felled. How the National Trust could have permitted this I cannot imagine.

I am not sure that the author of the website has quite understood the law governing such works as this. She deals at length with Lord Montagu’s 1927 tirade in the House of Lords against similar vandalism in the old hardwood plantations of the Forest, but the Turf Hill operations are rather different.

Those hardwood clearances were covered by the New Forest Act of 1877 and were patently illegal. The act applies to the so-called statutory inclosures, and Turf Hill is not one of these – it is a verderers’ inclosure – while Millersford (as National Trust property) is outside the scope of the New Forest Acts.

Still, legalities aside, FE ought to have been guided by the wise provisions of the Act, if not being actually bound by them. Instead, a total disregard of everything but a fanatical desire to fell every last conifer (yet to be fully achieved) so as to “restore” heathland, has dominated.

Now, of course, a careful well planned and executed removal of much of the verderers’ inclosures is of importance to the Forest. It benefits wildlife, commoners and, ultimately, the non-specialists who just want to enjoy a beautiful place.

The work could so easily have been very successful and reasonably uncontroversial if a little advance thought and planning had been involved.

Retention of important landscape features would have cost little in terms of land area. Extraction of timber, only under dry conditions, would have protected the path network. Proper advance survey work would have avoided the significant damage which has been done to a series of Bronze Age sites.

Consultations with local people (and I don’t mean just the odd warning notice in nearby car parks) would have made known the strength of feeling which has now exploded.

It would have made life easier for everyone including management.

When the matter was raised in the Verderers’ Court in March it received the now usual and rather pointless response that it would be “looked into”.

Time will heal some of the physical scars, but it will not restore landscape features or the damaged historical sites. A degraded and largely bracken-covered and birch-infested wilderness is likely to be the legacy of this winter’s adventure, at least for the lifetimes of most users of middle-age or older.

I have seen nothing like it in the New Forest since the 1960s and I hope never to see its repetition.

Colt-hunting of a bygone age

Over 60 years ago, long before every child with a mobile phone became a video producer, the arrival of a film crew in the Forest was quite an event watched with interest by the locals.

The presence of a Rank Organisation film team in the summer of 1960 resulted in one of the short documentaries in the Look at Life series.

It was called Pony-tale and within a wider story was included a fascinating record of colt-hunting in the north of the Forest at the time. The film was broadcast on Channel 306 (Talking Pictures) in February.

The action, which seems to have been made up from extracts of several different colt-hunting “runs”, was centred on Broomy Pound, but not today’s pound adjoining Broomy Mead.

The film showed the old oak-built pound nearer to the Lodge provided, I was told, by the RAF because commoners in the area had been cut off from the Fritham catching facilities by the fencing of Stoney Cross Aerodrome.

It is not easy to identify many of the participants, but I recognise the agisters Raymond Bennett and Raymond Stickland (both in very young versions), my own father and one or two others from the north of the Forest.

The agisters had on green armbands reserved for special occasions such as this, and everyone in those days wore huge baggy breeches or jodhpurs, often held up with pieces of string.

No adult did anything so sissy as to wear safety head protection.

Raymond Bennett, when mounted, carried his branding iron slung across his shoulder and secured with a piece of binder twine. He so appears in the film.

Today’s health and safety enforcers for the verderers would have had apoplexy at such arrangements, but in those days it was simply part of life.

I can remember colt-hunting with Raymond Bennett when he was armed in this manner. In those days the riders would gallop alongside the target foal or yearling and one would grab hold of its tail to slow it up. The others would pile off their horses and hold it down while a rope halter was secured.

The pony would then be led to a nearby holly clump, a fire was lit and the brand applied. Mother and foal would be reunited in perhaps less than half an hour.

Several lady riders appear in the film, one of whom was, surprisingly, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, but I can put a name to none of them.

The film also shows how ponies were often taken home or to the nearest lorry lashed to the side of a riding horse who was no doubt very familiar with the process and perhaps acted as a calming influence.

Finally, there is a rare view of the main runway at Stoney Cross, perhaps the last picture of it before the first wave of huge concrete crushers arrived to attack it in 1966.