Royal forest in the context of Fallow deer

The Forest of Bowland, also known as the Bowland Fells and formerly the Chase of Bowland, is an area of gritstone fells, deep valleys and peat moorland, mostly in north-east Lancashire, England, with a small part in North Yorkshire (however roughly half of the area falls into the area of the historic West Riding of Yorkshire). It is a western outlier of the Pennines.

The Forest of Bowland was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in 1964. The AONB also includes a detached part known as the Forest of Pendle separated from the main part by the Ribble Valley, and anciently a royal forest with its own separate history. One of the best-known features of the area is Pendle Hill, which lies in Pendle Forest. There are more than 500 listed buildings and 18 scheduled monuments within the AONB.

The Charter of the Forest of 1217 re-established rights of access for free men to the royal forest that had been eroded by King William the Conqueror and his heirs. Many of its provisions were in force for centuries afterwards. It was originally sealed in England by the young King Henry III, acting under the regency of William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke.

It was in many ways a companion document to Magna Carta. The charter redressed some applications of the Anglo-Norman Forest Law that had been extended and abused by King William Rufus.

Cannock Chase, often referred to locally as The Chase, is a mixed area of countryside in the county of Staffordshire, England. The area has been designated as the Cannock Chase National Landscape, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and much of it is managed by Forestry England for its important ecology and for recreational use. The Chase gives its name to the Cannock Chase local government district. It is a former Royal forest.

The royal hunt was an institution found throughout Eurasia and Northern Africa from antiquity until the early 19th century. It can be traced in ancient Egypt about 4000 years ago, but it lasted the longest in Iran, where it survived almost to the end of the Qajar dynasty. Its core area was the Iranian Plateau, North India amd Turkestan. Next to the core area were Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Transcaucasia. Even accounts of royal hunts from places as distant as Ethiopia and Qing China are so similar as to be nearly interchangeable.

The popularity of the royal hunt was correlated with the popularity of cavalry over infantry and with the presence of big game. It was inversely correlated with the popularity of hunting for sustenance. The royal hunt was not universal across Eurasia. It is not found, for instance, around the Mediterranean Sea in classical antiquity. Greek and Roman authors looked down on the Persian practice of hunting in enclosed parks. After the fall of Rome, however, the royal hunt gained prominence in Europe. The hunt as a "ritual of royalty" and a "force for [political] consensus" peaked during the reign of Charlemagne in the centuries after the fall of Rome. The royal forest as a hunting preserve dates to the Carolingian era.

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, featuring in Domesday Book.

It is the home of the New Forest Commoners, whose ancient rights of common pasture are still recognised and exercised, enforced by official verderers and agisters. In the 18th century, the New Forest became a source of timber for the Royal Navy. It remains a habitat for many rare birds and mammals.

The Forest of Pendle is a hilly area to the east of Pendle Hill in eastern Lancashire, roughly defining the watershed between the River Ribble and its tributary the River Calder. The area is not a forest in the modern sense of being heavily wooded, and has not been so for many centuries. Historically a somewhat larger area than the modern forest was one of the several royal forests of the area, under the control of Clitheroe Castle, or Honour of Clitheroe. Over its history, the forest has gone from being protected and regulated as a medieval royal forest, to being labelled as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The forest is not coterminous to the modern local government district of Pendle, which is larger, and the modern version of the forest has come to contain areas to the north and east of Pendle Hill which are partly in the district of Ribble Valley.

Sherwood Forest consists of the remnants of an ancient Royal Forest in Nottinghamshire, in the East Midlands region of England. It is associated with the legend of Robin Hood. The forest was proclaimed by William the Conqueror and mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1086. The reserve has the highest concentration of ancient trees in Europe.

Today, Sherwood Forest National Nature Reserve encompasses 424.75 hectares (1,049.6 acres), surrounding the village of Edwinstowe and the site of Thoresby Hall. The reserve contains more than a thousand ancient oaks which are known to be more than 500 years old, with the Major Oak being twice that age. Sherwood Forest is within an area which used to be called "Birch Lund", which is Viking in origin, now known as Birklands. The oak trees from Sherwood Forest were used to build the roof of St Paul's Cathedral in London and 1st Viscount Nelson's naval fleet.

Epping Forest is a 2,400-hectare (5,900-acre) area of ancient woodland, and other established habitats, which straddles the border between Greater London and Essex. The main body of the forest stretches from Epping in the north, to Chingford on the edge of the London built-up area. South of Chingford, the forest narrows and becomes a green corridor extending deep into east London, as far as Forest Gate; the forest's position gives rise to its nickname, the Cockney Paradise. It is the largest forest in London.

It lies on a ridge between the valleys of the rivers Lea and Roding. It contains areas of woodland, grassland, heath, streams, bogs, and ponds, and its elevation and thin gravelly soil (the result of glaciation) historically made it less suitable for agriculture. The forest was historically managed as a common; the land was held by a number of local landowners who exercised economic rights over aspects such as timber, while local commoners had grazing and other rights. It was designated a royal forest, meaning that only the monarch had the right to hunt deer.