The Forest Offenders of Medieval Worcestershire

Throughout the early Middle Ages Worcestershire was extensively afforested, both in the natural and the legal sense. The extreme south of the county appears to have been cleared of natural woodland, and immune from forest laws since Saxon times, but to the north of the Avon, at the time of Domesday, the whole territory from eastern to western county boundary, from Warwickshire to Herefordshire, from the Avon to Shropshire and South Staffordshire, was included in one forest or another. To the east, the Forest of Feckenham merged into the woodland of Arden; to the north the Popperode bailliwick of Feckenham gave way to Kinver, which included Worcestershire vills as far south as Chaddesley; to the west were the bounds of Ombersley forest, and to the south-west those of Horewell; across the Severn to the westward lay Malvern, converted to a private Chase early in the 13 th Century; to the northwest stretched the Forest of Wyre. The central “Forest of Worcestershire” extended from the Arrow to the Severn, from the Avon to Bell Brook and Stour, a region which, at its widest extent, covered an area of some 250–300 square miles (Fig. 1

Archaeology · Art · Geography · Forestry · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Medieval Literature and History

• Notes and Comments

  Rodney Hilton, R H Hilton et al.•Past & Present•1962

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• The Domesday Geography of Midland England

  M W Beresford, H C Darby et al.•Geographical Journal•1955

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