Rockingham Forest

Rockingham Forest is a former royal hunting forest in the county of Northamptonshire, England. It is an area of some 200sqmi lying between the River Welland and River Nene and the towns of Stamford and Kettering. It has a rich and varied landscape, with farmland, open pasture, pockets of woodland and villages built from local stone.HistoryThe forest was named after the village of Rockingham, where the castle was a royal retreat. The boundaries were marked by the River Nene on the eastern side and on the western side what is now the A508 road from Market Harborough to Northampton. Over the years the forest shrank, and today only a patchwork of the north-eastern forest remains. The bulk of the remaining forest is located within a square, of which the corners are Corby, Kettering, Thrapston and Oundle.The area became a royal hunting ground for King William I after the Norman conquest. The term forest represented an area of legal jurisdiction and remained so until the 19th century.