Alice Holt Forest is a royal forest in Hampshire, situated some 4 miles (6.4 km) south of Farnham, Surrey. Once predominantly an ancient oak forest, it was particularly noted in the 18th and 19th centuries for the timber it supplied for the building of ships for the Royal Navy. It is now planted mainly with conifers. Forestry England took over the management of the forest in 1924, and a research station was set up in 1946 in the Alice Holt Lodge, a former manor house. The forest is now part of the South Downs National Park, which was established on 31 March 2010, and it forms the most northerly gateway to the park.
Rural scenery in the Alice Holt Forest
Lodge Pond, Alice Holt Forest
Roman cinerary urn of Alice Holt ware, 2nd century AD, excavated from near Farnham station in 1902.
A royal forest, occasionally known as a kingswood, is an area of land with different definitions in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The term forest in the ordinary modern understanding refers to an area of wooded land; however, the original medieval sense was closer to the modern idea of a "preserve" – i.e. land legally set aside for specific purposes such as royal hunting – with less emphasis on its composition. There are also differing and contextual interpretations in Continental Europe derived from the Carolingian and Merovingian legal systems.
The Royal Forest of Exmoor in Devon. Royal forests do not necessarily include woodland
Medieval forest scene, from the Livre de chasse (1387)
Deer crossing the Long Walk to Windsor Castle
Image: Royal.Forests.1327.1336.annotated