Sporting lodge

The lodges would also often serve as accommodation for the king's staff whose job was to protect the land and game or quarry from poachers, and later to enforce law and order within the forest.

However the rabbits were ill-adapted to the English climate and easy prey for native predators, so purpose built artificial 'warrens' were established and fenced in, usually on poor, sandy or heath land on the grounds of medieval manors.

Initially hunting and sporting rights were closely guarded by the King, however in due course they also allowed members of the nobility and senior clergy to 'empark' deer parks (to enclose the land with a wall or hedgebank and to establish a captive herd of deer within, with exclusive hunting rights).

[9] Hunting remained an important royal pastime into the Tudor era, and having access to it, as well as a lodge in which to host and entertain, could elevate ones social status.

King Henry VIII for example, stayed at Savernake forest in 1535, where it is believed that his eye was then taken by his host's daughter, Jane Seymour.

After the execution of Anne Boleyn in May 1536, they were subsequently married, and Jane was crowned Queen just months later, causing the head of the family at Savernake to suddenly find himself father-in-law to Henry VIII.

Lodge Park on the Sherborne estate is England's only surviving 17th-century deer course and grandstand, having been built by the Dutton family in the 1630s.

Agricultural rents came to be more profitable as a form of passive income for those who needed the money to maintain their standing and land would be increasingly turned over to these purposes.

Additionally with the proliferation of pleasure grounds and landscape gardens as a status symbol, the medieval parks were incorporated into the landscaped grounds of the post-medieval country houses that replaced the manor houses and grander Sporting lodges that had previously stood at the heart of these parks until the transition from feudalism.

Meanwhile James I and his ministers Robert Cecil and Lionel Cranfield pursued a policy of increasing revenues from the forests and starting the process of disafforestation – timber was needed to build ships, fuel forges and later for the industrial revolution.

[13][14][15][16] The Tudor monarchs of England passed a series of increasingly strict hunting laws and restrictions on game seasons.

Although the Scottish monarchs imposed their own hunting regulations, they were not as strict as the laws passed south of the border.

[19] The Scottish chronicler Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie wrote that during the reign of James V, the Earl of Atholl arranged a hunt for the King, his mother Margaret Tudor, and a Papal Ambassador.

[21] Scottish Sporting Lodges also experienced a renaissance in the Victorian era, coinciding with the purchase by Prince Albert and Queen Victoria of the Balmoral estate for the purposes of hunting, along with the Romantic revival of Jacobitism.

Each year after the social season in London, the upper classes would make their way back out to the countryside to their country estates.

Around this era Clan Chiefs and Scottish Lairds began to invest in more substantial and luxurious sporting lodges with a view to letting them out to rich clients.

Like the country houses, many of the larger sporting lodges were also requisitioned and converted into convalescent homes, or hospitals for the war wounded.

[23] Following the decline of large historic residential properties in the 20th century, in the present era many private country houses, manors and castles have had to find alternative revenue streams to support maintenance costs.

Trout fishing huts, often by ponds or streams, are designed to be smaller, and provide shelter from summer rain.

Of arguably even greater historic importance is Charles Cotton's Fishing Hut, built 1674 on the Banks of the River Dove and which was used by Izaak Walton.

Though this did not require a conventional fishing hut, the British Tunny Club converted an old inn in the harbour for the purposes of a headquarters, for weighing catches and for storing equipment.

They were often basic affairs, similar to a bothy, but would usually at least have room for food to be eaten, and a fire to dry out and warm up when the weather was inclement.

Older buildings in good locations, such as remote disused gatekeepers lodges, could often be repurposed into shooting boxes.

For example, Affeton Castle was a ruined gatehouse for a former Manor House in East Worlington, restored in 1868 to serve as a shooting box.

Cranbourne Tower in Windsor Royal Park was refurbished into a shooting box for the King and Edward VII was said to use it every season.

Falconry or Hawking was popular among the English aristocracy, mostly during the medieval era, and the maintenance of birds of prey meant providing structures to care for and house them.