Various official reports of this Chace, drawn up from time to time, show how the great forest of Morfe gradually diminished, as the vills of Worfield and Claverley, and other settlements, extended within its limits, causing waste and destruction at various times of timber. During the Barons’ War the bosc of Claverley was further damaged, it was said, “by many goats frequenting the cover;” it suffered also from waste by the Earl of Chester, who sold from it 1,700 oak trees. Other wastes are recorded, as those caused by cutting down timber “for the Castle of Bridgnorth,” and “for enclosing the vill before it was fortified by a wall.” The report further states that “there were few beasts,” because “they were destroyed in the time of war, and in the time when the liberty of the forest was conceded.” By degrees, from one cause or another, and by one means or another, this, the “favourite chace of English kings and Norman earls,” which, so late as 1808, consisted of upwards of 3,820 acres, disappeared, leaving about the names of places it once enclosed an air of quaint antiquity, the very mention of some of which may be interesting. Among them are Bowman’s Hill, Bowman’s Pit, and Warrener’s Dead Fall—names carrying back the mind to times when bowmen were the reliance of English leaders in battles fought on the borders, and before strongholds like the Castle of Bridgnorth. Gatacre, and Gatacre Hall, suggest a passing notice of a family which witnessed many such encounters, and which remained associated with a manor here from the reign of Edward the Confessor to the time when Earl Derby sought shelter as a fugitive after the Battle of Worcester. As Camden describes it, the old hall must have been a fitting residence truly for a steward of the forest. It had, in the middle of each side and centre, immense oak trees, hewn nearly square, set with their heads on large stones, and their roots uppermost, from which a few rafters formed a complete arched roof.