Chase is a term used in the United Kingdom to define a type of land reserved for hunting use by its owner. Similarly, a Royal Chase is a type of Crown Estate by the same description, where the hunting rights are reserved for a member of the British Royal Family.
The term ‘chase’ is also used in Australia to describe some national parks. Flinders Chase National Park is on Kangaroo Island in South Australia and Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park is in New South Wales.
The Victoria County History describes a chase as:
"like a forest, uninclosed, and only defined by metes [houses and farmsteads within] and bounds [hills, highways, watercourses etc]; [1] but it could be held by a subject. Offences committed therein were, as a rule, punishable by the common law and not by forest jurisdiction." [2]
Chases are often identified by open clearings, soil type, and retaining additional heath rather than forests for hunting purposes.
Chases faced mass enclosure by Private (specifically local) Acts of Parliament. This type of privatization primarily occurred through the heyday between 1600 and 1850. Enclosure converted many chases from public to private lands to some extent. [3] After these conversions, in many areas the private lands were converted for residential, commercial, industrial or transport infrastructure use. However, the chases listed (see examples) remain largely undiminished by staying a Common, or by a gift to a public body whether to avoid inheritance tax or motivated by philanthropy. [4]
Some examples of chases in England include Wyre Forest, which straddles Worcestershire and Shropshire, Malvern Chase in Worcestershire, Pensnett Chase near Dudley and Cranborne Chase spanning Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire.
Cannock Chase in Staffordshire had once been previously recognized during the Middle Ages as a Royal Forest; [5] however, it has since been reverted to a chase and merged with Beaudesert, a property originally belonging to the Bishop of Lichfield. [6]
Chases and Royal Chases are beneath the status of forests designations and Royal Forests, respectively. Since the late Medieval Period, the word "forest" has come to mean any large woodland. Virtually all of the National Parks, AONB forests or significant other forests have officers and laws that apply only to them. [6]
Worcestershire is a ceremonial county in the West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Shropshire, Staffordshire, and the West Midlands county to the north, Warwickshire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south, and Herefordshire to the west. The city of Worcester is the largest settlement and the county town.
Ashdown Forest is an ancient area of open heathland occupying the highest sandy ridge-top of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is situated some 30 miles (48 km) south of London in the county of East Sussex, England. Rising to an elevation of 732 feet (223 m) above sea level, its heights provide expansive vistas across the heavily wooded hills of the Weald to the chalk escarpments of the North Downs and South Downs on the horizon.
The Midlands is the central part of England, bordered by Wales, Northern England, Southern England and the North Sea. The Midlands were important in the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries and are split into the West Midlands and East Midlands. The biggest city, Birmingham, is the second-largest in the United Kingdom. Other important cities include Coventry, Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Wolverhampton, and Worcester.
The Forest of Arden is a former forest and culturally defined area located in the English West Midlands, that in antiquity and into the Early Modern Period included much of Warwickshire, and parts of Shropshire, Staffordshire, the West Midlands, and Worcestershire. It is associated with William Shakespeare as a territory of his youth, and the setting of some of his drama.
In the United Kingdom, ancient woodland is that which has existed continuously since 1600 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Planting of woodland was uncommon before those dates, so a wood present in 1600 is likely to have developed naturally.
A royal forest, occasionally known as a kingswood, is an area of land with different definitions in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The term forest in the ordinary modern understanding refers to an area of wooded land; however, the original medieval sense was closer to the modern idea of a "preserve" – i.e. land legally set aside for specific purposes such as royal hunting – with less emphasis on its composition. There are also differing and contextual interpretations in Continental Europe derived from the Carolingian and Merovingian legal systems.
The area now known as Worcestershire has had human presence for over half a million years. Interrupted by two ice ages, Worcestershire has had continuous settlement since roughly 10,000 years ago. In the Iron Age, the area was dominated by a series of hill forts, and the beginnings of industrial activity including pottery and salt mining can be found. It seems to have been relatively unimportant during the Roman era, with the exception of the salt workings.
Royal hunting, also royal art of hunting, was a hunting practice of the aristocracy throughout the known world in the Middle Ages, from Europe to Far East. While humans hunted wild animals since time immemorial, and all classes engaged in hunting as an important source of food and at times the principal source of nutrition. The necessity of hunting was transformed into a stylized pastime of the aristocracy. More than a pastime, it was an important arena for social interaction, essential training for war, and a privilege and measurement of nobility. In Europe in the High Middle Ages the practice was widespread.
Huntington is a civil parish and former mining village in Staffordshire, on the outskirts of Cannock Chase. It lies on the A34 road just north of Cannock and is surrounded by woodland. The village had an estimated population of 3,720 in 2004, increasing to 4,536 at the 2011 Census. The population in Huntington on the 2021 census was 4,715, a 3.94% increase from the decade before.
Hanbury is a rural village in Worcestershire, England near Droitwich Spa and the M5 motorway. The population of Hanbury has remained around 1,000 since the early 19th century, and apart from farming and the popular Jinney Ring Craft Centre there is little economic activity, as the parish is lived in mainly by those who commute to the nearby towns of Bromsgrove, Redditch, Droitwich and Worcester, and the slightly more distant areas of Birmingham and the Black Country.
A free warren—often simply warren—is a type of franchise or privilege conveyed by a sovereign in medieval England to an English subject, promising to hold them harmless for killing game of certain species within a stipulated area, usually a wood or small forest. The sovereign involved might be either the monarch or a marcher lord.
Private protected areas of India refer to protected areas inside India whose land rights are owned by an individual or a corporation / organization, and where the habitat and resident species are offered some kind of protection from exploitative activities like hunting, logging, etc. The Government of India did not provide any legal or physical protection to such entities, but in an important amendment introduced by the Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Act of 2002, has agreed to protect communally owned areas of ecological value.
In medieval and Early Modern England, Wales and Ireland, a deer park was an enclosed area containing deer. It was bounded by a ditch and bank with a wooden park pale on top of the bank, or by a stone or brick wall. The ditch was on the inside increasing the effective height. Some parks had deer "leaps", where there was an external ramp and the inner ditch was constructed on a grander scale, thus allowing deer to enter the park but preventing them from leaving.
Needwood Forest was a large area of ancient woodland in Staffordshire, England, which was largely lost at the end of the 18th century.
The Forests of Mara and Mondrem were adjacent medieval forests in Cheshire, England, which in the 11th century extended to over 60 square miles (160 km2), stretching from the Mersey in the north almost to Nantwich in the south, and from the Gowy in the west to the Weaver in the east. Mara and Mondrem were a hunting forest of the Norman Earls of Chester, established soon after 1071 by the first earl, Hugh d'Avranches. They might earlier have been an Anglo-Saxon hunting forest. Game included wild boar, and red, fallow and roe deer.
Pensnett Chase was a wooded area of land owned by the Lords of Dudley Castle in the parishes of Kingswinford and Dudley. As a chase, it was originally used by them to hunt game in although it was also used as common land by local people. At some periods it was regarded as extending into Gornal and including Baggeridge Wood at one end and perhaps Cradley Heath at the other. By the 17th century the ancient woodlands had largely been cleared.
Feckenham Forest was a royal forest, centred on the village of Feckenham, covering large parts of Worcestershire and west Warwickshire. It was not entirely wooded, nor entirely the property of the King. Rather, the King had legal rights over game, wood and grazing within the forest, and special courts imposed harsh penalties when these rights were violated. Courts and the forest gaol were located at Feckenham and executions took place at Gallows Green near Hanbury.
Malvern Chase was a royal chase that occupied the land between the Malvern Hills and the River Severn in Worcestershire and extended to Herefordshire from the River Teme to Cors Forest.
In Great Britain and Ireland a sporting lodge – also known as a hunting lodge, hunting box, fishing hut, shooting box, or shooting lodge – is a building designed to provide lodging for those practising the sports of hunting, shooting, fishing, stalking, falconry, coursing and other similar rural sporting pursuits.