As we set off into the New Forest, an ancient expanse of woodland and heath, we find ourselves surrounded by centuries of history and legend. Once a royal hunting ground, the forest remains a place where folklore feels very much alive, its mysteries held by the commoners who have preserved ancient rights to the land.
The English Curse of William the Conqueror
The New Forest was born from an act of ruthless power. After the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror seized the land, evicted countless villages, and renamed the area Nova Foresta—a royal hunting ground. As legend holds, this act was not without consequence. A local blacksmith, John, is said to have placed a terrible curse on William, prophesying that his firstborn son would die on the stolen land.
This curse seemed to prove prophetic. William’s son, Prince Richard, died in a hunting accident. But the most infamous death was that of his second son, King William II, known as William Rufus, possibly due to his red hair. On August 2nd, 1100, Rufus was killed by an arrow fired by his companion, Walter Tyrrell. Though Tyrrell claimed it was an accident, many believe it was an assassination orchestrated by Rufus’s brother, Henry I, who swiftly seized the throne. The legend of the curse was even immortalized in a song by musician Frank Turner, with the lines: "The land took him for its own. So if you steal the land of an Englishman, then you shall know this curse."
The Dragon of Bistern
A terrifying tale from the 15th century tells of a fire-breathing serpent that terrorised the village of Bistern. This great beast, with its lair on Burley Beacon, descended on the village to demand a tribute of all the milk the villagers could produce, which they desperately needed for their cheese, butter, and cream. The dragon's demands grew, first to the cows, and then to the villagers themselves.
Enter Sir Maurice de Barclay, a local landowner and ferocious knight. After several fierce battles, Sir Maurice devised a cunning plan. He either had his armor studded with welded iron points or covered in broken glass and birdlime. When the dragon arrived, he walked towards it with a cow and a barrel of milk. The beast, enraged, coiled around him to crush him, but was impaled on his spiked armor. With the help of his two massive hunting mastiffs, Grim and Holdfast, Sir Maurice finally slayed the beast. The dragon fell in what is now the town of Lyndhurst. In honor of his dogs, Sir Maurice had their likenesses carved above his rebuilt manor. Later, the knight, tormented by his memories of the dragon, returned to the site of its death, climbed atop the hill that had formed over the beast’s remains, and died there.
Operation Cone of Power
During the dark days of World War II, a coven of witches performed a ritual in the New Forest to protect Britain from a Nazi invasion. On Lammas Eve, August 1st, 1940, Gerald Gardner, a key figure in modern Wicca, gathered his coven to raise a "cone of power." They were said to have performed the ritual naked, channeling their energy into a powerful force aimed at the minds of the Nazi high command, chanting, "You cannot cross the sea, you cannot come, you cannot come."
This immense magical effort was believed to have cost the lives of some of the elderly practitioners. And while the Allies won the war through conventional means, this story remains a testament to a group of people who were prepared to risk their lives to protect their country with nothing but their belief and will.
A Wyrd World
The New Forest is not the only place where the bizarre intersects with the everyday. Around the world, history and folklore continue to manifest in the weirdest of ways. In Italy, a man named Luciano D'Adamo woke from a coma after a 2019 car crash believing it was 1980 and that he was 23 years old. He did not recognize his 68-year-old self or his adult son, who was 30. Elsewhere, in Gainsborough Old Hall, English Heritage volunteers discovered witch's marks carved into the stone, including a chilling upside-down inscription of a name, a rare curse believed to have been placed on the building's owner in the 16th century.
These stories, much like the legends of the New Forest, remind us that the world is a strange and beautiful place where the past is never truly gone.