Burley is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the

New Forest The New Forest is one of the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in Southern England, covering southwest Hampshire and southeast Wiltshire. It was proclaimed a royal forest by William the Conqueror, featu ...

, Hampshire, England. It has ancient origins and is now somewhat tourist-oriented.

The village

Burley is located towards the western edge of the

, south-east of the town of Ringwood.Burley
, New Forest Explorers Guide The village is fairly scattered, and apart from the village centre, there is Burley Street to the north; Bisterne Close to the east; and the Mill Lawn area to the north-east. Burley has a post office, newsagents, butcher's shop, and village stores, as well as tea rooms, a Hippy/festival clothing shop, antique shops, art galleries and gift shops, pubs and a large Cycle Shop and Cycle Hire centre. The village still practises the old tradition of commoning, allowing animals to graze on the open Forest, and

ponies A pony is a type of small horse, usually measured under a specified height at maturity. Ponies often have thicker coats, manes and tails, compared to larger horses, and proportionally shorter legs, wider barrels, heavier , thicker necks and s ...

and cattle roam freely around the village.Burley Village Website
Burley is home to a football club and a cricket club. Burley Golf Club can be found to the southeast of the village. The village is surrounded by the open heathland of the New Forest, containing a complex of woodland, heathland and acid grassland, shrub and valley bog, supporting a richness and diversity of wildlife.
Burley is twinned with Beurlay,

Charente-Maritime Charente-Maritime (; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''Chérente-Marine''; ) is a Departments of France, department in the French Regions of France, region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, on the country's west coast. Named after the river Charente (river), Charen ...

, France. Burley Fire Station is thought to be the only fire station in the country with a cattle grid at the entrance.

History

People have lived in the Burley area since prehistoric times. At least 23

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

barrows are known in the Burley area. The site of an

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

hillfort A hillfort is a type of fortification, fortified refuge or defended settlement located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typical of the late Bronze Age Europe, European Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe, Iron Age. So ...

can be seen just to the west of the village at Castle Hill. There is evidence of Saxon occupation as the name Burley is composed of two Saxon words 'burgh', which means fortified palace, and 'leah', which means an open meadow or clearing in a wood.Burley history, New Forest Online
Burley is not specifically mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086, but the entry for nearby Ringwood may well refer to Burley when it mentions lands in the forest with "14 villagers and 6 smallholders with 7 ploughs; a mill at 30d; and woodland at 189 pigs from pasturage."Burley History
, New Forest Explorers Guide Burley was part of the royal lands of the New Forest.Victoria County History, (1912), A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 5, Pages 606–614
By the beginning of the 13th century the family of de Burley was firmly established here. Richard de Burley held the estate from

Edward I Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots (Latin: Malleus Scotorum), was King of England from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he was Lord of Ireland, and from 125 ...

who gave the village of Burley and Manor of Lyndhurst as

dowry A dowry is a payment such as land, property, money, livestock, or a commercial asset that is paid by the bride's (woman's) family to the groom (man) or his family at the time of marriage. Dowry contrasts with the related concepts of bride price ...

to his second wife

Margaret Margaret is a feminine given name, which means "pearl". It is of Latin origin, via Ancient Greek and ultimately from Iranian languages, Old Iranian. It has been an English language, English name since the 11th century, and remained popular thro ...

, sister of

Philip IV of France Philip IV (April–June 1268 – 29 November 1314), called Philip the Fair (), was King of France from 1285 to 1314. Jure uxoris, By virtue of his marriage with Joan I of Navarre, he was also King of Navarre and Count of Champagne as Philip&n ...

. The manor is said to have belonged to the Crown down to the time of

James I James I may refer to: People *James I of Aragon (1208–1276) * James I of Sicily or James II of Aragon (1267–1327) * James I, Count of La Marche (1319–1362), Count of Ponthieu * James I, Count of Urgell (1321–1347) *James I of Cyprus (1334� ...

. There was a

watermill A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as mill (grinding), milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in ...

belonging to the manor of Burley, which ceased operating around 1820.Hampshire Treasures, Volume 5 (New Forest), Burley, page 61
The mill is commemorated in names of Mill Lawn and Mill Lawn Brook, but the only building which survives is the grist house in the grounds of Mill Cottage. The first known church in Burley was the

Calvinistic Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed Christian, Presbyterian, ...

Burley Chapel erected in 1789. The ecclesiastical parish of Burley was formed in 1840 out of Ringwood., this was served by the Anglican church of John the Baptist which was built in 1839 and added to in 1886–7. A school was built in Burley in 1854 large enough to accommodate 120 children. In 1852 the manor passed into the possession of Colonel Esdaile who pulled down the old manor house and built a new one. Further changes to the building have been made since that time, and the manor house is now a hotel. to the north-east of the Burley village lies Burley Lodge, whose history dates back to the 15th century. It was part of the lands of the "

bailiwick A bailiwick () is usually the area of jurisdiction of a bailiff, and once also applied to territories in which a privately appointed bailiff exercised the sheriff's functions under a royal or imperial writ. In English, the original French combi ...

of Burley" which was held in the 18th century by the Paulets, Dukes of Bolton and Marquesses of Winchester. The civil parish of Burley was formed in 1868 from Burley Walk and Holmsley Walk, extra-parochial parts of the New Forest, together with the ancient

vill Vill is a term used in English, Welsh and Irish history to describe a basic rural land unit, roughly comparable to that of a parish, manor, village or tithing. Medieval developments The vill was the smallest territorial and administrative unit� ...

of Burley. From 1847 to 1964, Burley was served by trains at nearby Holmsley railway station, about southeast of the village. The station buildings still stand, and are now tea rooms. Arthur Clough (son of

Arthur Hugh Clough Arthur Hugh Clough ( ; 1 January 181913 November 1861) was an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to Florence Nightingale. He was the brother of suffragist Anne Clough and father of Blanche Athena Clough, who both becam ...

) and his wife Eleanor Freshfield built Castletop House on Castle Hill Lane in 1898: Eleanor's father was President of the Royal Geographic Society and brought back many exotic plants from his travels which were planted at Castletop. Burley has a long connection with witches; in the late 1950s,

Sybil Leek Sybil Leek (''née'' Fawcett; 22 February 1917 – 26 October 1982) was an English witch, astrologer, occult author and self-proclaimed psychic. She wrote many books on occult and esoteric subjects, and was dubbed "Britain's most famous wit ...

, a self-styled

white witch Jadis is a fictional character and the main antagonist of '' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'' (1950) and '' The Magician's Nephew'' (1955) in C. S. Lewis's series, ''The Chronicles of Narnia''. She is commonly referred to as the White Witc ...

, lived in the village. She could be seen walking around Burley with her pet jackdaw on her shoulder before she moved to America.Broomsticks in Burley
, BBC Southampton, Tuesday, 29 October 2002 Some of the gift shops in Burley now sell witch-related gifts and ornaments. Burley was also once a favourite haunt for

smugglers Smuggling is the illegal transportation of objects, substances, information or people, such as out of a house or buildings, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations. More broadly, soc ...

, and a secret cellar in the ''Queens Head'' pub was discovered during renovation work, where pistols, coins, and other unusual items were discovered.Burley
, New Forest National Park

The Bisterne Dragon

Burley is notable in English folklore for the supposed location of a

dragon A dragon is a Magic (supernatural), magical legendary creature that appears in the folklore of multiple cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but European dragon, dragons in Western cultures since the Hi ...

's lair at Burley Beacon, just outside the village.John Henry Blunt, (1877)
''Dursley and its neighbourhood; being historical memorials of Dursley''
, pages 124–6 There are several versions of the tale, one being that the creature "flew" every morning to Bisterne, where it would be supplied with milk. To kill the dragon, a valiant knight (usually named Berkeley) built a hide, and with two dogs lay in wait. The creature came as usual one morning for its milk, and when the hut door was opened the dogs attacked it, and while thus engaged the knight took the dragon by surprise, the dogs dying in the affray. The fight raged throughout the forest, with the dragon finally dying outside Lyndhurst, its corpse turning into a great hill (now known as Boltons Bench). Though the knight had defeated the dragon he had been mentally broken by the battle, and after thirty days and thirty nights he went back to Boltons Bench to die alone atop it, his body turning into the yew tree which can still be seen today.Reeve, Richard
New Forest Hauntings
, Historic-UK, 2016

References

External links

Official Burley Village Website WorldwideBurley Village WebsiteBurley Parish CouncilA 101-year-old Burley resident reminisces on the village as it used to be
{{authority control Villages in Hampshire