The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [390]
‘My great-grandmother was born Dorothy Pride,’ she said. ‘But she came from London.’
He nodded quickly, but said no more on the subject.
He was curious about why she wanted to see Grockleton’s Inclosure. When she explained that her boss, John Grockleton was connected with the Forest, he seemed to think it very funny. ‘Grockleton was a Commissioner of the hated Office of Woods,’ he explained. ‘Built a railway line where several people were injured. Not a popular name here.’
‘Oh.’ She would have to think of something else to tell him.
‘Here we are,’ he said cheerfully, a few minutes later. ‘Grockleton’s Inclosure.’
The plantation, though it had been harvested several times, was much as it had been a century before. The lines of conifer seemed endless. Beneath the trees, in what little space there was, all was dark, silent, dead.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
They were a few minutes early at the New Forest Museum back in Lyndhurst, so they took a quick turn round the exhibits. Every facet of Forest life, from a recent famous snake-catcher to a detailed diagram of how to build a charcoal fire, was covered. By the time they went upstairs to the library she was longing to ask some questions.
The figure who rose from the big central table proved to be a short, white-bearded man with a kindly face and twinkling, observant blue eyes. Peter Pride had already explained that, although the older man’s manner was quiet, he was the discreet force behind much of what went on in the Forest museum.
He was immediately welcoming to Dottie, introduced her to several friendly people working there, explaining that the place was also manned on a daily basis by a team of volunteers.
‘This is Mrs Totton,’ he indicated a rather distinguished-looking lady, who must have been a stunning blonde in her youth. ‘She’s on duty today.’ He gave Dottie an encouraging smile.
‘What would you like to know?’
Dottie had prepared carefully for this meeting, and it proved informative. Was the Forest facing a crisis, she asked?
‘The challenges of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are new; but they grow out of the past as you’d expect,’ the careful historian answered. ‘The reason for the protests and fires is simple enough. The commoners aren’t only having a hard time as farmers, with terrible prices for cattle, pigs and ponies. The newcomers, from outside, are paying such high prices for their pony paddocks that the price of land is being driven beyond the farmers’ reach. Above all, they feel that the modern world – Forestry Commission, local government, central government – just despises them. And yet they really are the Forest, you know.
‘Then you have the degrading of the ancient Forest environment: careless campers and tourists generally.’
‘Thousands of cars?’ she suggested.
‘Yes. But ninety per cent of people in cars never go further than fifty feet from the road. The new influx of bicycles may prove more damaging. We’ll see.’ Dottie had noticed a lone bicyclist on her way to Grockleton’s Inclosure, riding through the trees, churning up the ground as he went. She nodded.
He smiled ruefully. ‘As always, we want tourists for their income but not for the damage they do. That’s another big subject, of course.
‘But there is a third, long-term danger – the great threat of the new century, you might say.’
‘Building?’
‘Exactly. The massive increase in housing needs, the existence of a huge area scarcely touched by housing development. Some people think we should protect the Forest by making it a National Park, which would make development extremely difficult; others, especially the commoners, fear that might take away from the power of the verderers who, for the last hundred and fifty years, have been their one protection.’ He smiled again. ‘We could discuss any or all of those.’
They did, for some time. They helped her put together a list of people to whom she should talk.
‘May I add myself to that list?’ Mrs Totton enquired. A gentle nod from the kindly historian indicated to Dottie that she should accept. ‘Good,’ said the elderly lady.