A little way along the main road lies Somerford, once one of the Granges of Christchurch Priory. Its barns and stables are partly built from the prior's lodgings, whose site may here and there be faintly traced; and the chapel, which in Grose's time was still standing, with the initials of the last prior, John Draper, cut on the window labels.[1]
The best plan, however, is not to go along the road, but the shore as far as Chewton Glen, and there climb up the cliff. The sands are white and hard, strewed with fragments of iron-stone, and large septaria, from which cement is made, and for which, farther on, a fleet of sloops are dredging a little way from the shore. In the far distance gleam the white and black and orange-coloured bands of sand and clay scoring the Barton cliffs.[2]
The glen, or "bunny," as it is locally called, runs right down into the sea; the high tide rushing up it, and driving back its Forest stream. Down to the very edge it is fringed with low oak copses, covered in the spring, as far as high-tide mark,
- ↑ Antiquities, vol. ii., where there is a sketch of the Grange as it was in 1777.
- ↑ For the geology of High Cliff, Barton, and Hordle Cliffs, see chapter xx. There are not many fossils in either the grey sand or the green clay before you reach the "bunny." Plenty, however, may be found in the top part of the bed immediately above, known as the "High Cliff Beds," and which rise from the shore about a quarter of a mile to the east of the stream.
Of Hurst, bound westward to the gloomy bower
Where Charles was prisoned in yon island tower.
Here, witched from summer sea and softer reign,
Foscolo courted Muse of milder strain.
On these ribbed sands was Coleridge pleased to pace
Whilst ebbing seas have hummed a rolling base
To his rapt talk."
