Newsletter 44 - Autumn 2005

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Edward Roberts et al, Hampshire Houses: Their Dating and Development, 2nd edn, Hampshire County Council, 2004; pp.275, £19.95 plus £5.16 postage from Hampshire County Council.

This splendid book, first published in 2003, and republished with some updating in 2004, should be both essential reading and an indispensable reference book for architectural historians, local historians and all those interested in the historic background to their local communities. The first part on ‘Structure and Materials’ is by John Crook and Linda Hall; parts 2 and 3 by Edward Roberts, who is also the overall editor; and part 4 on ‘Dendrochronology’ is primarily the work of Daniel Miles. There is also a helpful glossary; a particularly useful gazetteer of Hampshire towns and villages giving details of those buildings discussed in the text; and a comprehensive bibliography. The whole book is attractively illustrated with colour and black-and-white photographs, line drawings, plans, maps and graphs. About the maps and graphs, there is a word of warning for the unwary. As the editor says in his introduction: ‘Of necessity, this is mainly a study of surviving houses … Inevitably, we know less about … lost houses and any survey must, to this extent, be somewhat skewed’. It is a familiar problem for all historians and archaeologists: our raw material is no more than what has survived – what we have discovered – and (in this case) what we have dated so far. Examples of the dangers here are figure 1.1, a distribution map based on 11 surviving examples; and figure 8.17, a block graph based on 10 surviving buildings. Read with caution, of course, the maps and graphs form an important part of the text, and contribute to the construction of a fascinating narrative from the riches of the evidence itself.

George Watts

The Westgate, Winchester: Medieval to Modern Times, Winchester City Council, 2005; pp.24, £2.50.

This lavishly illustrated and colourful guide to the Westgate in Winchester provides a brief survey of the history and architecture of the building, and describes many of the artefacts on display in the museum there. A particular focus is on the 16th and 17th centuries. The objects on view include the 16th-century ceiling and frieze, originally designed for Winchester College to celebrate the marriage of Mary Tudor and Philip of Spain at Winchester Cathedral in 1554, and a unique set of bronze weights and measures dating from the 14th to the 19th century. The Westgate served as a prison between the 16th and 18th centuries; some examples of prisoners’ graffiti are still visible. By 1760 the first floor chamber was used for ‘fencing, theatrical and musical exhibitions’, and was the smoking room of the ‘Fighting Cocks’ public house, later known as the ‘Plume of Feathers’, which abutted the gate on the north side. In 1837 the chamber was converted for use as a store for the city’s archives, before opening as a museum in 1898. Now one of the city’s most prominent landmarks, this guide offers an admirable introduction to the varied history of the Westgate over almost 900 years.

Mark Page

Winchester: A Souvenir Guide to the Story of the City from its Beginnings to the Present Day, 3 vols, Winchester City Council, 1997-2001; pp.72, £6.99.

These three volumes are designed to accompany the permanent exhibitions on the three floors of the City Museum. The first, Venta Belgarum, describes the Roman town founded in AD 70. There are accounts of the town’s forum, which lay to the north of the present cathedral, trade and industry, private houses, mosaics, and agricultural hinterland. The villa at Sparsholt is discussed, together with the cemeteries which surrounded the town. The second volume, called Wintanceaster, focuses on Saxon and medieval Winchester. Archaeological excavations of pagan cemeteries and settlements have revealed much about life between the 5th and 7th centuries. The growth of Winchester as a religious and royal centre is traced, with plentiful illustrations of the works of art produced by the Winchester School between 966 and 1066. The excavation of John de Tytynge’s house, the wool merchant who lived on Upper Brook Street from 1299 to 1312, is also described. The final volume, Into the Modern Age, is concerned with the period after 1700. Subjects include public health, Jane Austen, the expansion of the city, tourism, shopping, and the celebrations to mark the 1000th anniversary of the death of King Alfred in 1901. All three volumes are beautifully produced and provide both an attractive souvenir for visitors to the museum and a valuable summary of Winchester’s development.

Mark Page

Peter Marcan, South East England History and Heritage Handbook, London, 2004; pp.viii+159, £35 plus £2.50 postage from Peter Marcan, PO Box 3158, London, SE1 4RA.

This handbook provides information about museums, libraries, record offices, booksellers, organizations and societies with an interest in local history and heritage. Listings are provided for 14 south-eastern counties, including Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Entries for individual organizations include contact details, opening times, aims and objectives, and publications. The editor has gone to some lengths to provide information about village societies and publications – for example, in Crondall, Denmead, and Tadley, to name but three – as well as the better known county groups, such as the Hampshire Field Club, and large organizations based in towns and cities. Much useful and interesting information is presented. Inevitably in a book of this kind, some of the information, especially contact details, may soon be out of date, and there are omissions. Nevertheless, this is a valuable work of reference for local historians.

Mark Page

Brian Tippett, W H Hudson in Hampshire, Hampshire Papers 27, 2004; pp.32, £3.

W H Hudson (1841-1922) is well known as the author of Hampshire Days and A Shepherd’s Life. In this excellent paper, Brian Tippett explores Hudson’s relationship with Hampshire and his writings about the county. Hudson was born in Argentina; as a boy he became interested in natural history and over the years acquired an unrivalled knowledge of local birds and wildlife. He came to England in 1874 at the age of 33, where he hoped to pursue a career in ornithology. Thwarted in this ambition, for the next 20 years Hudson and his wife – he married his landlady in 1876 – endured a life of penury and hardship as he struggled to make his way as a writer. In the 1890s he achieved modest success with books about his life and work in Argentina, and with his first studies of English ornithology and country life. Thereafter, he achieved widespread recognition as one of the foremost writers on the English countryside, with works such as Nature in Downland (1900), Hampshire Days (1903), and A Shepherd’s Life (1910).

Hudson was a frequent visitor to Hampshire from 1894. Selborne, with its associations with Gilbert White, was a favoured resort. Hudson began work on Hampshire Days in 1900 and was given much encouragement by the enthusiastic reception of Nature in Downland. A large part of the book is concerned with the New Forest: Hudson stayed with families who lived at Boldre and Fawley. It is also very much a natural history, with relatively little about local people. Hudson was not uninterested in people but, as Tippett makes clear, was most inspired by ancient, unspoiled landscapes. He disliked modern intrusions, condemning in particular the urbanization of the coastline of southern England. In Hampshire, he felt a particular antipathy towards Aldershot, Bournemouth, Eastleigh, and Lyndhurst (‘a vulgar suburb … on which London vomits out its annual crowd of collectors’), but had an affection for Winchester (‘a nice old city’). Following the publication of Hampshire Days in 1903, his visits to the county became less frequent, although it was while staying in Silchester that Hudson began one of his greatest books, A Shepherd’s Life. He spent much of his last years in Cornwall, and died at the age of 81 in 1922.

Mark Page

Fareham Past and Present, vol.5, nos.14, 15, 2004-5; pp.60, £2 each.

Fareham P&P continues on its entertaining and informative course. Of particular interest in these numbers are the two articles by the editor, Pam Wenden, in which she almost certainly succeeds in identifying the site of the medieval tide-mill, referred to in 1302 as le Hok’ and in 1410 as Hoke (Hampshire Record Society, vols.14, 16), at the later Lower Quay in Fareham. Also in the Spring number are yet more extracts from the diary of Mary Ann Sims, which give a charming self-portrait of the rapidly disappearing Hampshire smallholder, selling her potatoes and plums, picking gallons of blackberries, and attending the funeral of the Revd. Pitt Cobbett.

George Watts

Gavin Daly, ‘Napoleon’s lost legions: French prisoners of war in Britain, 1803-14’, History, vol.89, no.295 (2004), 361-80.

This article is a very useful overview of a topic that has long interested Hampshire local historians. Daly refers to the war prisons at Portchester Castle and Forton in Gosport, to the hulks in Portsmouth Harbour, and to the paroled officers in Andover and Alresford. As well as a description of policy and practice in the administration of the whole system, he gives us much colourful detail, for instance about the lace industry in Portchester Castle; the popular theatre there that competed with the Portsmouth theatre; and about love affairs with local women. Of interest to those of us investigating the droving trade is his description of the daily ration for the prisoners, which included 2½ lb. of beef a week – for up to 8,000 prisoners in Portchester Castle alone: so where did all those cattle come from? Unfortunately (and no doubt because he works at the University of Tasmania) Daly has missed most of the local material that is available: in particular Mrs A D Deacon’s excellent article in volume 43 of Proceedings (1987) modestly entitled ‘Some French prisoners of war on parole in Hampshire’. As well as Portchester, Alresford and Andover, Deacon refers to Bishops Waltham, Hambledon, Odiham, Whitchurch, Basingstoke, Fareham, Petersfield and Winchester, and uses Alresford as a particular example. In addition to her archive materials, she also gives a useful list of secondary works of local interest. From a Hampshire point-of-view, Daly and Deacon are now complementary sources which can be used as springboards into further studies; for instance, neither Daly nor Deacon mention the hospital in Fareham, with its graveyard, Hospital Fields, nearby (see Alice James, Our Beloved Fareham, 1991, p.70). We might note that the Hampshire of the prisoners of war was also the Hampshire of the Royal Southampton Archers.

George Watts

Archery revisited

In Newsletter 42 I contributed a notice of an interesting article on Regency archery clubs, at the end of which I asked if more was known of the Royal Southampton Archers. This brought a very helpful response from distinguished Southampton historian A G K Leonard. He draws our attention to two articles he wrote for Hampshire magazine: ‘The story of Archers Lodge’ in November 1979; and ‘La Sainte Union College celebrates’ in March 1980. Amongst much other useful material he mentions a list of the 120 members of the Southampton Archers which occupies four pages of the Southampton Guide of 1793 – as he says, ‘the local elite of town and country’. For anyone looking for a research topic, a biographical study of these 120 people would give us a marvellous cross-section of better-off society in the Southampton of Jane Austen and the Hampshire of the Duke of Wellington.

George Watts

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