Welcome To the e-travelguide to Hotels, guest houses and attractions in The New Forest

Make the most of your time in The New Forest, use the information provided on this web site by clicking on the links above to plan your visit.

The New Forest is the UK’s most recent area of outstanding natural beauty to become designated a National Park, having been granted the status in March 2005. This beautiful region of southern England can trace its history back to the years following the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago, when areas that are now part of the New Forest as we know it were part of the great primeval forest that covered much of Great Britain. Saxon and Viking kings are believed to have used the area for deer hunting, but the first real evidence of this practice dates from after 1079, when the area was commandeered by William I, England’s first Norman king; William had successfully taken control of the country in 1066, giving him his more familiar title ‘William the Conqueror’. William’s ‘Nova Foresta’ was used primarily as a deer hunting area, exclusively for the king and his licensees; penalties for poaching were severe, and the Court of the Verderers, an organisation still active today, was founded in order to uphold Forest Law.

In Norman England, a forest was a large and legally defined area where beasts of the chase and their food were to be protected for the pleasure of The Crown; a medieval forest need not have necessarily been wooded, and this is reflected in the fact that as much of The New Forest today is made up of open heath, grassland and bogs, as it is by woodland. The Domesday Book of 1086 details The New Forest and the surrounding areas as having been subject to Forest Law; as a concession, the right of commoners to turn out their stock into the open forest, to gather wood for fuel, and to dig clay amongst others was passed, and these ‘Rights of Common’ are still upheld vehemently to this day, as the large number of cattle openly browsing The New Forest testifies.

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The New Forest and Hampshire County Show

Contact:   0118 971 4700