Where is the New Forest?

Location of Elizabeth Goudge's "Pilgrim’s Inn", aka "The Herb of Grace"

The New Forest from photographer Ariel Kozak on Instagram

The lane was narrow and winding, only just wide enough to take the car. It must have been of a great age, for it was very deeply sunken in the earth. Upon each side were grassy banks covered with primroses and dog violets, with great ramparts of golden gorse above. Oak trees grew in the unseen field upon their right, and their wind-blown branches stretched right over their heads, turning the lane into that tunnel which had immediately changed the twins into the train. Looking up through the flame-tipped, burning young green leaves and the gray lichened twigs one could see the blue sky. Somewhere overhead a lark was singing madly.

They went on a little farther and the lane turned off downhill to the left. It changed its character now. To their right above the steep bank of primroses was a most enchanting wood.

"The Wild Wood! The Wild Wood!" cried José when she saw it. "The Wild Wood where Mr. Badger lived!"

To the left was an orchard of old gnarled apple trees with a gate leading into it. These trees, too, leaned over the lane and made a tunnel of it. Beyond the gate, in the lovely orchard, a rough track bordered with clumps of daffodils led away down-hill. Down at the bottom of the lane, framed by the trees as in a picture frame, was a blaze of sunlight and the river…

🍂Elizabeth Goudge, Pilgrim’s Inn, chapter 5

Arriving at the Herb of Grace

When George and the children drive up to the Herb of Grace for the first time, they are all speechless with amazement. Here is a home by the water and woods - a place of dreams:

“They walked up the paved path to the old ship’s door, George coming last, holding Jerry and Jose firmly by the hand. Yet the twins were still astonishingly quiet. Accustomed as they were to being in fairytales of their own conception, they found this fairytale that had suddenly encompassed them without any volition of their own slightly bewildering, They couldn’t imagine what was going to happen next and awaited it in breathless silence.”

The US edition has a nice line drawing of what the home itself might have looked like:

There was not a single home that we can point to for Goudge’s inspiration, but rather a melding together of many places along the river in the New Forest that would have been similarly grand and gracious.

So where is the New Forest anyway?