Pilley

The Forest's Old Inn

By the entrance to the Fleur de Lys there is a list of the pub's landlords going back to 1498. It is one of the longest documented records of its kind in England, and the pub uses it to support a larger claim: that this is the oldest pub in the New Forest, with a first pint traced to 1096. The building is a thatched, painted-brick house of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, with a roaring inglenook fire in each room and a stone well in the back garden.

The name comes from a stained-glass window that no longer exists — a thirteenth-century one in Boldre church, showing the arms of the Dauphin of France.

Food and Village Provisions

The food has moved a long way from its origins. The kitchen runs to blue cheese soufflé, salt and pepper squid, and sticky Korean chicken to start, then Beef Wellington at £40, a whole dressed crab, or halibut. There is a sharing fish board for £50 and, on Wednesdays, a burger and a drink for £15. It holds 4.6 out of 5 across roughly 701 Tripadvisor reviews and ranks fourteenth of ninety-one restaurants in Lymington, which is a lot of competition to sit near the top of. Dogs are welcome in the bar, the snug and the garden by the well, though not the restaurant.

For everyday provisions there is a volunteer-run community shop attached to the Boldre War Memorial Hall. The hall handles village events; the play area next to it has swings, a wall for kicking balls against and another for practising netball, and there is a recreation field with football pitches.

Paths, Ponies and Parish History

The walking starts at the door. One well-signposted path runs to Brockenhurst through Royden Woods, past ancient oaks, wildflower grassland and open heath. Closer to home, the lanes around Pilley Bailey and its pond are where the free-roaming ponies, cattle and donkeys wander. In spring the pond fills with white water-crowfoot, and it is a spawning site for a large population of Great Crested Newts.

Pilley sits in the parish of Boldre, two miles north of Lymington, with Pilley Hill at one end and the hamlet of Bull Hill at the other. The village chapel is dedicated to St Nicholas, but the parish church proper, St John the Baptist, stands about a mile off in the Boldre valley. It is Grade II* listed, Norman in origin, and holds a corner memorial to the 1,415 men lost when HMS Hood was sunk on 23 May 1941; Vice-Admiral Holland worshipped here. Robert Southey married his second wife in the same church in 1839.

Domesday Roots and Onward Connections

The Domesday surveyors listed Pilley three times, then took nearly all of it into William the Conqueror's new hunting forest — everything except six acres of meadow that Hugh de Quintin was allowed to keep.

Lymington Town station is about two miles away on the branch line, with Brockenhurst and the London mainline ten minutes beyond it; the A337 runs close by.

Following Pilley's Ponies

The ponies are enough of a fixture that the village keeps a Facebook page, Pilleybailey New Forest Ponies, to track where they have got to.