The New Forest: its history and its scenery/Chapter 5

by John Richard de Capel Wise

 

CHAPTER V.

CALSHOT CASTLE AND THE OLD SOUTH-EASTERN COAST.

This corner of the Forest, once perhaps the most beautiful, is now the least known, because, to most people, so inaccessible. It lies quite by itself. No railway yet disfigures its fields and dells. The best way to see it and the whole Forest is to cross the ferry at Southampton, and land at the hard at Hythe. And as we cross, behind us, amongst a clump of trees, rises the ruined west end of Netley Abbey Church, and the modern tower on Henry VIII.'s Fort; whilst, lower down, the new Government Hospital loads the shore with all its costly ugliness. If we have not, perhaps, yet reached the height of Continental profanity which has turned the Convent of Cordova into barracks, and St. Bernard's Monastery at Clairvaux into a prison, and the Church of Cluny into racing stables, we yet seem to delight to place side by side with the noblest conceptions that ever rose in beauty from English ground, our modern abortions. There is not a cathedral town whose minster-square is not disgraced by some pretentious shed. And now Government not only invades the country, but chooses above all, the better to display our folly, that place which the old Cistercian monks had for ever made sacred by the loveliness of faith and work.

Hythe is only a little village, but as its name shows, once the port of the New Forest.^[1] The Forest, however, has now receded from it, and in this chapter we shall see nothing of its woods. The district, however, is too important in an historical point of view to be omitted. The walk, even though it is not over wild moors and commons, is still very beautiful. True English lanes will lead us by quiet dells, with glimpses here and there through hedgerow elms of the blue Southampton water, down to the shore of the Solent.

So, leaving Hythe^[2] and going southward, skirting Cadlands Park, we reach Fawley, the Falalie and Falegia of Domesday, where, at the time of the survey, Walchelinus, Bishop of Winchester, held one hyde and three yardlands. The whole of the village was thrown into the Forest, but in its place now are ploughed fields and grass pastures. The church, with its central tower, stands at the entrance of the village, and its handsome Romanesque doorway shows plainly that the Conqueror did not destroy every place of worship. The building was partially restored in 1844, but the pillars on the north side of the chancel were copied from the original Norman work, which, with the three piscinas and the hagioscope, give it a further interest to the ecclesiologist.

After Fawley, the walk becomes more beautiful. We pass deep lanes and scattered cottages set in their trim gardens, when suddenly on the shore rises the round gray castle of Calshot, standing at the very end of a bar of sand, separating the Southampton water from the Solent. Though much repaired, it stands not much altered from Henry VIII.'s original blockhouse. Once of great importance, its garrison now consists of only the coastguard and a master-gunner. Its walls are still strong, measuring in the lower embrasures sixteen feet through, but the upper storeys are much slighter. On the west side is cut the date 1518, whilst some stone cannon balls of the Commonwealth period show the importance Cromwell attached to the place. But the stronger fortifications of Hurst, and the new batteries in the Isle of Wight, have done away with its necessity, and it stands now only as a monument of Tudor patriotism and of Cromwell's care.^[3]

But the place has older associations than these. In The Chronicle and Florence of Worcester we read^[4] that, in 495, Cerdic and his son Cynric arrived with five ships, and landed at Cerdices-ora, and on the same day defeated the natives. No site has given rise to so much discussion as this Cerdices-ora. Mr. Thorpe in one place says it is not known, whilst in another, by an evident oversight, he fixes upon Charford.^[5] Dr. Guest places it at the mouth of the river Itchen,^[6] whilst Mr. Pearson and others have identified it with Yarmouth.^[7] Now, I think there can be little doubt, looking both at the etymology of the name and the situation, that Calshot is the true place. The land here runs out into the sea with no less than ten fathoms of water close to it, so that large vessels can to this day lie alongside the Castle. It is the first part, too, of the mainland which can be reached, and on its lee side offers a safe anchorage. Besides, about four miles off stand some barrows, which, though we may not be able to identify them as covering those slain in the first battle which the West-Saxons fought, offer some presumption in favour of that theory. In the very word Calshot, and its intermediate forms of Caushot, Caldshore, and Cauldshore,^[8] we may, without difficulty, recognize a corruption of the original Cerdices-ora of the Chronicle and Florence. The word is formed like the names of various places close by, such as Needsore (the under-shore) and Stansore Point.^[9] But going farther back, we come much nearer to its original form in the old Forest perambulation made in the eighth year of Edward I., where it is spelt Kalkesore.^[10] As then, Charford, on the north-east borders of the New Forest, is the representative of Cerdices-ford, where Cerdic's last victory was gained over Ambrosius; so here, I think, at the south-west, near Kalkesore, now Calshot, was his first achieved.

From this point the scenery completely changes. Instead of lanes and cultivated fields, the shingly beach of the Solent, covered in places to the water's edge with woods, sweeps away to the west. Passing on to Eagle-hurst, and noticing the truth of the termination even to this day, let us sit down on the shore. Here is a view which should be remembered. In one sense the world cannot show its equal. Far away to the east stretches the low Hampshire coast, ended by the harbour of Portsmouth and its bare forest of masts. To the south, towards Spithead, rides the long line of battle-ships; and round the harbours of the two Cowes sail fleets of yachts, showing how much still of the old Scandinavian blood runs in our veins—of the spirit which finds pleasure in adventure and delight in danger. Steamers, with their black pennants of smoke, hurry down the narrow strait, carrying the news or the merchandise of the world; whilst all is overshadowed by supreme natural beauty, the hills of the Isle of Wight standing boldly up, crested with their soft green downs, and their dark purple shadows resting fold over fold on the valley sides. Still continuing along the shore we reach Leap, a small fishing village, where boats ply across from its hard to the Island. Its name is derived from the Old-English leap, a weel, or basket for catching fish. Here, it is said, but I know not on what authority save that worst—tradition, that the Dauphin, afterwards Louis VIII. of France, embarked after the defeat of his army at Lincoln, and his fleet off Dover. Certain it is that he had adherents to his cause in the neighbourhood, especially in William de Vernon, whose arms were formerly blazoned with his own in the east window of the north aisle of the Forest Church of Boldre.^[11]

On somewhat better authority,^[12] it rests that the unhappy Charles I., on the 18th of November, 1647, outwitted by his enemies and deceived by his friends, entrusted himself, after his flight from Hampton Court, to Colonel Hammond, and, embarking here, returned by Hurst to atone for the past by his life.

But of greater interest is the Roman Road which connected Leap with Southampton and Winchester in one direction, and Ringwood and the west in another. Its traces may be found not only here but on the opposite side, where, still known by the Norman name of Rue Street, it passes westward of Carisbrook to the extreme south of the Island. Its old appellation is preserved, too, on this side in the name of a farmhouse—King's Rue, and Rue Copse, and Rue Common; and it is well worthy of notice that this word is even now sometimes used in the Forest, as in Sussex, for a row or hedgerow. The road, however, can still tell us something of the past. The opinion of late philologists and geographers, with the exception of Lappenburg and Sir G. C. Lewis, has been against the idea that the Isle of Wight was the Vectis or Ictis of the ancients. The arguments, however, against the passage in Diodorus Siculus,^[13] that it would be so much easier for the Phoenicians to have exported the tin from the Cassiterides instead of bringing it by inland transport to the island, and then shipping it to Gaul, is founded upon ignorance. Sea carriage was then far more difficult and dangerous than land conveyance. Ancient mariners were easily frightened, and their vessels put into land every night. As Sir G. C. Lewis further remarks, foreign merchants were always regarded with jealousy and distrust, and the overland route would enable the traffic to be carried out through the whole distance by native traders.^[14]

Singularly enough, however, Warner^[15] states that a large mass of tin was found on the very site of this old Roman road. Not only, too, was tin brought here from Cornwall, but also lead from the Mendip Hills. Pigs of it have been picked up on a branch of the same Roman road running from Uphill on the Severn to Salisbury, and from thence joining the Leap road. One of them, stamped with the name of Hadrian, is now in the Bath Museum. We are thus enabled to connect Leap with the famous passage of the Greek historian.

Sir George Lewis's theory has, too, been singularly corroborated in other directions, especially by the large quantities of bronze ornaments found during the excavations in the Swiss Lakes, 1858 and 1854, the metals of which could only have been brought there by an overland route.

Further, too, we must not reject the account of Diodorus, because he says that at low tide the tin was carried over in carts. We must remember the extremely indefinite views of the ancients on all geographical subjects. The vaguest ideas were held, especially about Britain. Erring in a different direction, the mistake is not so bad as Pliny's, in making the Island six days' sail from England. There seems, however, a most natural explanation, that Diodorus, not having been there, took for granted the wild traditions and rumours which reached him, and which, even in these days, with only the slightest possible variation of form, still hold their ground with the Forest peasantry, in the legend that the stone of which Beaulieu Abbey is built was brought over the dry bed of the Solent, in carts, from the Binstead Quarries.

Still the passage is not without the further difficulty, that Diodorus seems, from the context, to have supposed that the Island was situated close to where the tin was dug. This, again, must be set down to that ignorance of geography, which has involved all Greek writers in such extraordinary mistakes.

Leap itself is now nothing but a village, with a scattered agricultural population; some few, however, maintaining themselves by fishing in the summer, and in the winter by shooting the ducks and geese which flock to the creeks and harbours of the Solent. Leaving it, and still keeping westward, we come to the Beaulieu river, where, in the autumn, after the heavy floods from the Forest, the salmon leap and sport in the freshets. The road now winds past Exbury by the side of thick copses which fringe the river. At last, at Hill Top, we reach Beaulieu Heath, and, in the far distance, the green foliage of the Forest hangs cloudlike in the air, whilst down in the valley lies the village of Beaulieu.

Footnotes

1. In the Rolls of Parliament, vol. i. p. 125, A.D. 1293, 21st Edward I., is an account of a vessel, the All Saints, "de Hethe juxta Novam Forestam," which, laden with wine from Rochelle, was wrecked and plundered on the Cornish coast.
2. A little beyond Hythe is a good example of Mr. Kemble's test (see the Saxons in England, vol. i., Appendix A, p. 481) for recognizing the Ancient Mark. To the north lies Eling, the Mark of the Ealingas, and in regular succession from it come the various hursts, holts, and dens, now to be seen in Ashurst, Buckholt, and Dibden. The last village has a very picturesque church, its roof completely thatched with ivy, disfigured, however, by a wretched spire. A Roman glass manufactory has, I believe, whilst these pages were in the press, been here discovered. In Domesday it possessed a saltern and a fishery. Eling, at the same time, maintained two mills, which paid twenty-five shillings, a fishery and a saltern, both free from tax. The manor was bound, in the time of Edward the Confessor, to find half-a-day's entertainment (fima) for the King. For a curious extract from its parish register, see chapter xix. Staneswood (Staneude), which is more southward, also, according to Domesday, possessed a mill which paid five shillings, and two fisheries worth fifty pence. Farther north lies Redbridge, the Rodbrige of Domesday, which also maintained two mills, assessed, however, at fifty shillings. This was the Hreutford and Vadum Arundinis of Bede, where lived Cynibert the Abbot, who, failing in his attempt to save the two sons of Arvald from Ceadwalla, delayed their death till he had converted them to Christianity. (Bede, Hist. Eccl., tom. i., lib. iv., cap. xvi., p. 284, published by the English Historical Society.) All these places, with the exception of Redbridge, were more or less afforested. The district, however, seems to have been by far the most flourishing of any adjoining the New Forest, owing, no doubt, to the immigration which the various creeks invited, and the remains of salterns still show its former prosperity. Next to it came the Valley of the Avon, its mills often assessed, in Domesday, by a payment of the eels caught in the river.
3. Colonel Hammond, Governor of the Isle of Wight, in a letter to the Committee of Derby House, dated from Carisbrook Castle, June 25th, 1648, speaks of "Caushot Castle as a place of great strength." (Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. ii, book ix., p. 383.) In the reign of Elizabeth there were stationed here a captain, with a fee of one shilling a day; a subaltern with eightpence; four soldiers and eight gunners with sixpence each; and a porter with eightpence. (Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. i., book ii., p. 66.) And in 1567, we find the queen ordering "the mountyng of ordinance," probably to pay attention to Philip, who was expected to pass through "the narrowe seas." Record Office. Domestic Series, No. 43, Aug. 27. 1567, f. 52.
4. The Chronicle. Ed. Thorpe. Vol. i. p. 24. Florence. Ed. Thorpe. Vol. i. pp. 3, 4.
5. Compare his edition of The Chronicle, vol. ii. p. 13, with note 1 at p. 4, vol. i., of Florence.
6. Early English Settlements in Great Britain—The Proceedings of the Archaeological Institute, the Salisbury volume, pp. 56-60. It is, of course, not without much consideration that I presume to differ from Dr. Guest; but surely the passages quoted from Bede refer to nearly 200 years after the arrival of Cerdic and his nephews, Stuf and Wihtgar, when their descendants would have been sure to have crossed over, finding the east side far richer than the cold, barren district where the New Forest afterwards stood.
7. The Early and Middle Ages of England, p. 56, foot-note. I may, perhaps, add, that Camden also placed it at Yarmouth; Carte, at Charmouth, in Dorsetshire; and Milner, at Hengistbury Head. Gibson, with some others, in his edition of The Chronicle (under nominum locorum explicatio, pp. 19, 20), alone seems to have fixed on this spot. Lappenburg, however, says that the site is no longer known. England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings. Ed. Thorpe, p. 107.
8. In a letter of Southampton's to Cromwell, 17th September, 1539 (State Papers, vol. i. p. 617), it is called Calsherdes; whilst in another letter of his, also to Cromwell (Ellis's Letters, second series, vol. ii. p. 87), he writes Calshorispoynte. Leland, in his Itinerary (Ed. Hearne, second edition, vol. iii., p. 94, f. 78), speaks of both "Cauldshore" and "Caldshore Castelle;" and again (p. 93, f. 77), calls it Cawshot, as it is also spelt in Baptista Boazio's Map of the Isle of Wight, 1591; whilst in the State papers of Elizabeth we find Calshord. (Record Office. Domestic Series, No. 43, f. 52. Aug. 27th, 1567.) I give these examples to show the number of variations through which the name has passed. No form is too grotesque for a corruption to assume. How names become corrupted, let me give an example in the word Hagthorneslad (from the Old-English "hagaþorn," a hawthorn), as it is written in the perambulation of the Forest in the twenty-ninth year of Edward I., which in Charles II.'s time is spelt Haythorneslade, thus losing its whole significance, although to this day the word "hag" is used in the Forest for a "haw," or "berry."
9. The simple termination "ore"—"ora," and not "oar," as spelt in the Ordnance Map, may be found within a stone's throw of Calshot, in Ore Creek.
10. See previously, chapter iv. p. 40, foot-note.
11. At the date of the Dauphin's leaving England, William de Vernon was dead, which makes his embarkation at Leap less probable. Neither Roger of Wendover (vol. iv. p. 32. Ed. Coxe), nor Walter Hemingburgh (vol. i. p. 259. Ed. Hamilton), nor Ralph Coggeshale (Chronicon Anglicanum. Bouquet. Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, tom, xviii. p. 113 C), nor the Chronicon Turonense (in the Veterum Scriptorum Amplissima Collectio of Marténe and Durand, tom. v. p. 1059 B), nor Rymer's Foedera ("De salvo conductu Domini Ludovici," tom. i. p. 222), say anything of the place of embarkation.
12. I believe on that of the Oglander MSS. in the possession of the Earl of Yarborough, but which I have never seen. Neither the Iter Carolinum, Herbert's Memoirs (London, 1572, p. 38), Huntington's account (same volume, p. 160), Berkeley's Memoirs (second edition, 1702, p. 65), The Ashbumham Narrative (London, 1830, vol. ii. p. 119), nor Whalley's letter in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa (tom, ii., lib. ix, pp. 374, 375), nor Hammond's, in Rushworth's Collection (part iv., vol. ii., p. 874), mention the place, though the latter would seem to indicate that the King sailed direct from Tichfield to Cowes. Ashburnham and Berkeley had, we know from Berkeley (Memoirs, same edition as before, p. 57) and Ludlow (Memoirs, 1771, p. 93), previously gone by Lymington to the Island.
13. As the passage is so important, I give it in full:—Ἀποτυποῦντες δ´ εἰς ἀστραγάλων ῥυθμοὺς κομίζουσιν εἴς τινα νῆσον προκειμένην μὲν τῆς Βρεττανικῆς, ὀνομαζομένην δὲ Ἴκτιν· κατὰ γὰρ τὰς ἀμπώτεις ἀναξηραινομένου τοῦ μεταξὺ τόπου ταῖς ἁμάξαις εἰς ταύτην κομίζουσι δαψιλῆ τὸν καττίτερον. Ἴδιον δέ τι συμβαίνει περὶ τὰς πλησίον νήσους τὰς μεταξὺ κειμένας τῆς τε Εὐρώπης καὶ τῆς Βρεττανικῆς· Κατὰ μὲν γὰρ τὰς πλημυρίδας τοῦ μεταξὺ πόρου πληρουμένου νῆσοι φαίνονται, κατὰ δὲ τὰς ἀμπώτεις ἀπορρεούσης τῆς θαλάττης καὶ πολὺν τόπον ἀναξηραινούσης θεωροῦνται χερρόνησοι.—Lib. v., cap. xxii., vol. i., p. 438. Ed. Dindorf. Leipsic, 1828-31. Pliny, as Wesseling remarks, in his note on this passage, quoted by Dindorf, vol. iv. p. 421, by some mistake, makes the Isle of Wight (Mictis) six days' sail from England. See Sir G. C. Lewis's Astronomy of the Ancients, chap, viii., sect. iii. p. 453.
14. As before, sect. iv. p. 462.
15. Topographical Remarks on the South-Western Parts of Hampshire, vol. ii. pp. 5, 6, 1793.