HAMPSHIRE

8 miles south of Salisbury

In the early 1930s two young artists, R. W. Baker and E. R. Payne, came to Woodgreen to decorate the inside of the village hall with murals. They took as their theme the everyday activities of the village, and today their work is a valuable record of a now-vanished way of life. Many of the older villagers nostalgically identify themselves as children picking apples, helping with the harvest, carrying milk buckets, or singing at a Sunday School anniversary at the little chapel near by. Although the hall is usually locked, the key can be obtained from one of the cottages opposite.

Woodgreen lies between the River Avon and a hill on the edge of the central plateau of the New Forest. It is a typical Forest village, with brick and thatch cottages surrounded by thick hedges to keep out the cattle and Forest ponies which gra.~e on the surrounding unfenced greens. Footpaths which were once cattle-tracks lead to the Forest table-land and to Woodgreen Common. Footpaths from the common lead down through the woods to the Drove, a broad, three-quarters-of-a-mile-long avenue of magnificent oaks. They are called the Napoleonic Oaks, and were planted nearly 200 years ago to provide the Royal Navy with timber for its men-of-war.

A few decades ago, the village was famed for its ‘Merries’ - sweet black cherries which have now all but gone. People from all over Britain came to eat the fruit and to enjoy themselves on Merry Sundays and in the Merry Garden.

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