Monday 10 November 2025

South Lawn Hotel, Lymington Road, Milford on Sea , SO41 0RF

Monthly Meeting

Gale Pettifer -   Heart of Oak: The Eighteenth century naval timber crisis and the New Forest. 

Gale is a writer and history lecturer with an interest in political and environmental history. She is a practising New Forest commoner with the ancient Right of Pasturage, meaning she can depasture cattle, ponies and donkeys onto the unenclosed New Forest.
 

During the 18th century there was a widely held belief that Britain was suffering from ‘a great Scarcity of Timber’, more particularly, ‘that sort from which our ships are constructed’. The belief led to proposals for the New Forest to be enclosed for timber production and the remainder to be sold by Public Auction.

This informative and entertaining talk reveals how changes in the relationship between Parliament and the Monarchy, during the reign of George III, exposed corruption, abuse and incompetence in the management of the Crown lands and, as a result, just how close the New Forest, one of Britain’s iconic landscapes, came to being lost to future generations.

Gale Pettifer is a writer and history lecturer with an interest in political and environmental history.  She is a practising New Forest Commoner with the ancient right of Pasture, meaning she can depasture cattle, ponies and donkeys onto the unenclosed New Forest.