In England's New Forest, pigs still hold a medieval right to eat acorns
Every autumn in a corner of southern England, officials called verderers declare when pigs may be turned loose to gorge on fallen acorns. The custom, pannage, is one of several grazing and gathering rights the New Forest's commoners have kept since the Normans, and it still helps shape the landscape.
William the Conqueror declared the area a royal hunting forest in about 1079, sweeping more than 20 small hamlets and farmsteads into one compact reserve, which is why it was new. It appears as Nova Foresta in Domesday Book in 1086, the only forest the survey describes in detail. Later chroniclers claimed William razed 36 parishes to make it, but most historians doubt that, since much of the poor soil could never have supported many farms.
Legend made the forest a place of royal punishment. Two of William's sons died there: Prince Richard in the early 1070s, and King William Rufus in 1100, reportedly struck by a stray arrow from a hunting companion. Local folklore read the deaths as payback for the evictions, and a marker called the Rufus Stone still stands at the supposed spot.
Forest law guarded the king's deer, but inhabitants kept rights older than the hunting reserve: grazing horses and cattle, gathering firewood, cutting peat, digging clay and letting pigs forage in autumn. Pannage lasts at least 60 days, with the start timed to when acorns fall, and it matters because acorns eaten in quantity can poison ponies and cattle while pigs digest them easily. Rather than a fixed quota, commoners pay a marking fee for each animal, and local agisters trim tails in distinct patterns to show the fee is paid. The grazing keeps heath, bog and wood-pasture open for wildlife.
Timber needs pressed on these rights. Naval plantations spread in the 18th century, and the Great Storm of 1703 felled about 4,000 oaks. An 1877 Act protected the commoners, capping enclosures and making the Court of Verderers their representatives rather than the Crown's. The forest became a National Park on 1 March 2005, though commoning now faces a quieter threat as houses carrying rights pass to buyers with no interest in keeping animals.
Source: New Forest
