An incredibly dense, quasi scholarly book trawling through all the known to him archive documents to unravel this very local history. At times the author expands to explain the meaning or significance of some medieval or other jargon but mostly the chase is in his sights, which he pursues with full vigour forgetting to take his reader along with him. What a wealth of roughage to digest, a plethora of placenames and titled families with a constantly varying spelling only very occasionally interpreted. The author assumes a thorough familiarity with the successions of the Kings and Queens. The narrative trips back and forth across reigns excitedly following the development of this idea or that family. Unfortunately I did not live up to his expectations so got well confused between the trips over the centuries.

I came to it to expand my understanding of deer parks their history and the part they played in my village. Deer Park were consigned to a concluding chapter, tossed of with contempt. So a very put downable book if it were not for one thing, it is permeated through and through with a sense of a wormhole through to a very different age, the medieval age of Kings and Knights, forests and hunting. How the trials of hunting and bringing home the meal was very much the measure of a mans stature, a stature defended by the King from all would be encroacher's and gifted , or taken back, from his favourite consorts at his whim or displeasure. That and an uneasy running stand-off between the King and the Bishops, the religious embodiment on earth. We see back into the mists of time before the Saxons with the first documented hints of forests and settlements that predated them, past them on to the Normans and how the Saxons lords were displaced and their land taken over. All very turbulent but running through it all, hunting as this passion, obsession to hold the land and take the game that thrive in it. Of course not just deer, but everything that moved including lynx and wolves.

A constant was the enclosure of common land and the spread of the Kings forest, compared to other lesser forests of other titled men, with a complex hierarchy of what could or could not be taken. Old forgotten words to describe every shade of dead wood or each period of deer development from fawn to five year hind. So juries representing the King conducted several 'perambulations' the swear to the extent of the Kings Forest.. The perambulations minutely discribed which each turn and corner of the boundary that enclosed the forest, at that time. Here we discover all the place names we are still familiar with in our own locality, some have far out grown their origins whilst other lost in the mists of time, but Hoar's Oak is now more that just an idiosyncratic name on an OS map, it is wreathed in history for me now.
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All the time the commoner, trying to gather food and fuel, with his life always at peril for not knowing where and what he was entitled to glean, with myriad layers of forest officials able to convict, fine or punish by imprisonment if not life, on a whim or at best summary appearance at one of many forest courts. Fascinating, riveting enough to keep turning the pages hoping for even more insights, which never quite materialised. Nether the less a wonderful taster of what our ancestors lived through and an insight into our inheritance which we are usually so oblivious to. A great book to read, if you know your area. ( )