ABSTRACT
The New Forest Strictly speaking, the New Forest is neither new, nor a forest, but an area of open heathland, interspersed with woodland. The sandy soils were infertile and unattractive to early settlers, so that when William the Conqueror set the area aside in 1079 as a private deer hunting reserve, it was sparsely populated. William’s ‘new’ hunting forest was much more extensive than the core area of 230 square kilometres designated as the New Forest Heritage Area, although its status as Crown land has undoubtedly protected the New Forest from development over the centuries. Today, the New Forest’s landscape, flora and fauna are conserved under a variety of pieces of legislation which give it national park status in all but name, so that when the government, after a long public inquiry, designated the New Forest National Park in 2004, many stakeholders believed this would bring more problems than benefits. The new national park covers an area of 570 square kilometres, but excludes areas like the Avon Valley and the west coast of Southampton Water that are generally considered to be part of the New Forest region.
