The Ghost of a Forest Weather of this kind makes
one more than normally conscious of the trees. Wandering about along the southern ridge of the mid-Weald on the borders of Kent and Sussex, after reading some histories of the ancient industry of iron-founding which once flourished there, I have felt the spirit of the vanished forest of Anderida haunting the countryside. How powerful that spirit must have been in the Middle Ages, when the forest stretched for a hundred and twenty miles, from behind Folkestone along the counties into Hampshire, with a depth of thirty miles bounded by the North and South Downs. When Edward III paid a visit to Chichester, he had to employ fifteen different guides to lead his royal progress through the forest, for there were no roads penetrating it. A journey to London from the marshes of Romney or the south coast meant a two-day circumnavigation via Canterbury.
How utterly removed from the noise of the human market must have been the few settlements of charcoal-burners, swineherds, or religious bodies such as the Abbey of Bayham I Even today Ba'ham lies cut off in its wide valley by woodlands as,far as the eye can reach. But four centuries ago! The imagination boggles. One can approach the mood and manner of life of those recluses only by a close attention to the little signs that survive today among the woodland people settled in clearings away from the mainroads. They give the impression still of measuring time by some method other than the clock—the stroke of the axe, perhaps, heard distantly ; or something even more slow than that in rhythm. Maybe, as a present-day poet, John Arlott, has said : " Their time is measured by the girth of trees."
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