Bramshaw

Gunpowder traces at Fritham

The black post box at Fritham is the sort of detail you notice and then have to ask about. It marks the site of Schulze's gunpowder factory, which ran from the 1860s to the early 1900s and then vanished, leaving the box, a pond, and not much else. The pond is Eyeworth, dug to power the works and now a place people come to watch birds. The Royal Oak sits beside it.

The Royal Oak is one of the oldest pubs in the Forest, and it behaves like it — real fire indoors, a large garden, real ales, food that's homemade or sourced locally. A fish-and-chip van turns up fortnightly, and on Thursdays from 5pm Liguori's brings a wood-fired pizza oven. It was Country Pub of the Year in 2020, and the dogs are welcome. You could do worse than plan a walk around it.

The Royal Oak

The other pub is grander. The Bell Inn at Brook is an 18th-century coaching inn with 26 bedrooms, flagstone floors and open fireplaces, and it was owned by the Crosthwaite-Eyre family from the 1770s for over 250 years before being sold, along with the golf club, to Stellar Asset Management for around four million pounds. Head chef Mark Young runs a best-of-British menu with most of the meat, fish and veg sourced within twenty miles. The Sunday roast uses local beef and has been called the best Sunday lunch in the New Forest. There are doggy treats at the bar. The Bell is home to Bramshaw Golf Club, whose Forest Course, laid out in 1880 by John Jeffreys and a fellow landowner, is the oldest in Hampshire.

Bramshaw itself is a linear village strung for several miles along the B3079 — church to the north, the hamlet of Brook to the south, Stocks Cross at the centre, where the stocks and gallows once stood. The gallows were repaired in 1831, which tells you something about how long they stayed in service.

Brook, Bramshaw and the commons

The walking is the reason to be here. The Nomansland and Bramshaw Wood loop is about 3.9 miles through gnarled oaks and silver birch. Bramshaw Commons cover 575 hectares of National Trust lowland heath, grazed by ponies, pigs, donkeys, cattle and sheep — described by the Trust as "some of the best surviving examples of lowland heath in Europe." Up at Pipers Wait, 129 metres, you reach the highest point in the New Forest, with clear-day views to Southampton.

A church across two counties

The Church of St Peter is Grade II*, its 13th-century core rebuilt in brick in 1828–29 by John Peniston. Until 1895 the county boundary ran straight through it: the nave stood in Wiltshire, the chancel in Hampshire. The Domesday surveyors, who found the place in Wiltshire, valued its two holdings at two shillings fivepence and ten shillings.

Connections and the Rufus Stone

Southampton is about ten miles east; the nearest railheads are Ashurst and Brockenhurst. The Salisbury Reds bus passes the crossroads roughly every two hours, which in practice means you'll want a car. A few minutes up the road is the Rufus Stone, marking where King William II was allegedly killed in 1100 — still standing, still contested, still worth the short detour before your pint.