Horders View takes its name from Horders Wood, once part of the Forest of Bere which dates back to Norman times.  

Like the New Forest, the Forest of Bere was one of the great “royal forests” of England reserved for hunting by the royal court. The word “forest” was simply a legal definition of land “outside” (foris in Latin) that implied areas kept for specific purposes, such as royal hunting, and where Forest Law rather than Common Law applied. While the New Forest lies to the west of Winchester – then the capital of England – Bere lay to the east, and the total area covered by the Forest of Bere was around 100 square miles.  

It was so large that for administrative purposes it was divided in half: between the River Test at Romsey and River Itchen was the Royal Forest of Bere Ashley, administered from Ashley Manor near Winchester, while from the River Hamble to West Sussex was the Forest of Bere Portchester, administered by the Constable of Porchester Castle. 

Originally the land was a mixture of Saxon estates and farmsteads and, thanks to grazing animals eating any seedlings, a landscape of open pastures with scattered mature trees that were often pollarded or coppiced to create a regular supply of firewood. Once the Normans had annexed it for hunting, deer were encouraged – which also helped to reduce the growth of any self-seeded saplings. 

As the royal hunters opted for other pursuits, enabling local people to take their toll on the deer, those saplings matured and the area gradually became more heavily-wooded, providing a much-needed source of timber for the shipbuilders along the coast. Between 1600 and 1608 some 5,365 trees were felled in the forest with a value of £2,129-4s-6d (equivalent to more than £300,000 today). By the nineteenth century Common Law had replaced Forest Law and much of the forest had been enclosed or sold to existing landed estates. Responsibility for the remaining land passed to the Crown Office of Woods until 1915 and then to the Forestry Commission. 

Numerous pockets of the forest remain – notably the Forestry Commission land at West Walk and Creech Wood, Hundred Acres at Wickham, Hamble Country Park, Swanwick Nature Reserve and Botley Woods. Horders Wood as such, however, is long gone. 

The wood stretched from The Rising Sun in Swanmore to the Winchester-Gosport turnpike (a toll road). This turnpike was established in 1757 and ran from Gosport via Wickham and Bishop’s Waltham to Chawton, much of it along the route of the A32. The turnpike system was gradually phased out during the 1870s as the railway network expanded  At its peak in the 1830s, the Gosport to Chawton stretch of the turnpike (34 miles) was generating about £52 a mile per year (£1,780 p.a) with seven toll-gates (charging points) along its route.  

Horders Wood would thus have spread from Hill Pound to some point along the A32 at Droxford – an area which today still includes the woods of the Holywell estate and Dirty Copse.