Spoonhill, a very well-known covert of the Wheatland Hunt, was a slip of woodland as early as a perambulation in 1356, when it was recorded to lie outside the forest, its boundary on the Shirlot side being marked by a famous oak called Kinsok, “which stood on the king’s highway between Weston and Wenlock.” The Larden and Lutwyche woods for many years have been famous for foxes. The late M. Benson, Esq., told us that a fox had for several seasons made his home securely in a tree near his house, he having taken care to keep his secret. The woods, too, on the opposite side of the ridge, rarely fail to furnish a fox; and it is difficult to imagine a finer spot than Smallman’s Leap, {49a} or Ipikin’s Rock, on the “Hill Top,” presents for viewing a run over Hughley and Kenley, or between there and Hope Bowdler. Near Lutwyche is a thick entangled wood, called Mog Forest; and in the old door of the Church of Easthope, {49b} near, is a large iron ring, which is conjectured to have been placed there for outlaws of the forest who sought sanctuary or freedom from arrest to take hold of. Now and then, in wandering over the sites of these former forests, we come upon traditions of great trees, sometimes upon an aged tree itself, “bald with antiquity,” telling of parent forest tracts, like the Lady Oak at Cressage, which formerly stood in the public highway, and suffered much from gipsies and other vagabonds lighting fires in its hollow trunk, but which is now propped, cramped, and cared for, with as much concern as the Druids were wont to show to similar trees. A young tree, too, sprung from an acorn from the old one, has grown up within its hollow trunk, and now mingles its foliage with that of the parent. [Picture: Lady Oak] There are a few fine old trees near Willey, supposed to be fragmentary forest remains. One is a patriarchal-looking ash in the public road at Barrow; another is an oak near the Dean; it is one of which the present noble owner of Willey shows the greatest pride and care. There are also two noble trees at Shipton and Larden; the one at the latter place being a fine beech, the branches of which, when tipped with foliage, have a circumference of 35 yards. A magnificent oak, recently cut down in Corve Dale, contained 300 cubic feet of timber, and was 18 feet in circumference. This, however, was a sapling compared with that king of forest trees which Loudon describes as having been cut down in Willey Park. It spread 114 feet, and had a trunk 9 feet in diameter, exclusive of the bark. It contained 24 cords of yard wood, 11½ cords of four-feet wood, 252 park palings, six feet long, 1 load of cooper’s wood, 16½ tons of timber in all the boughs; 28 tons of timber in the body, and this besides fagots and boughs that had dropped off:—