All these woods there are for rambles, flushed in the spring with wood-anemones and wood-sorrel, set in the green moss and the greener heather of the bilberry. Nowhere, too, in the Forest, than in these woods, have I seen more lovely sunsets. Through some deep-cut oriel of the trees have I watched the sun begin to sink, each moment burning brighter, and then suddenly its great brand of fire would fall, reddening each tree trunk, and crimson billows of clouds come rolling eastward. Instead of following the Ringwood Road, beautiful as that is in many parts, especially at Woody Bratley, with its old thorn trees, we will turn off to the right. To the west now rises Ocknell Wood, and its clump of firs, a well-known landmark, and beyond that lies the new Slufter Inclosure, and Bratley Plain, with its great graveyard of barrows. In front of us stretches the East Fritham Plain, with its three barrows, locally called “butts,” the central known as Reachmore. At the second mound we will go into North Bentley Wood, following the wood-cutter’s track. Very wild and unfrequented is this. Here a stray deer will bound across the road; and sometimes a small herd of as many as six or seven are browsing on the ivy clinging to some tree just felled, startled at the slightest sound, and trooping off down the glades. The grey hen rises up at our feet from the heather; and, as we enter the wood, the woodpecker shrieks out his shrill laugh, whilst a buzzard is heavily sailing over the trees. The road winds on through the valley amongst oaks flecked with silver flakes of moss, broken here and there by open glades and green spaces of fern. At last, we reach Queen’s North Lawn, which leads us on the right to Fritham, standing on the hill top. In the valley below lies Eyeworth Lodge, with the powder mills lately built; the Ivare of _Domesday_, and still so called by the peasantry, afterwards _Yvez_, where Roger Beteston, in the reign of Henry III., held some land by the service of finding litter for the King’s bed and hay for his horse whenever he came here to hunt.[142] Fritham is thoroughly in the Forest; and few spots can equal it in interest. It may be the very place where Rufus fell:[143] but whether or no, close round it lie the barrows of the Kelt, and the potteries of the Roman, covering acres of ground, at Island’s Thorn and Crockle, and Sloden and Black Bar, with the banks which mark the sites of the workmen’s houses.[144] Close round it, too, encircling it on all sides, rise the woods of Studley, with their great beeches, and Eyeworth, famous for its well. Going along the West Fritham Plain we come to Sloden, with its thick wood of yews, standing, massive and black, in all their depth of foliage, mixed, in loveliest contrast, with clumps of whitebeams. Below runs the brook, flowing under Amberwood, and winding among dark groups of hollies, lost at last in the deep gorge, shut in by the hills of Goreley and Charlford.