Newsletter 44 - Autumn 2005

Editorial
The droving saga continues. This time Malcolm Walford from Waterlooville reports on his researches into droving across the Hampshire/ Sussex border before the railways came to replace this centuries old method of moving cattle. Many of these routes on the Hampshire/Sussex border are little more today than tracks and footpaths, but we are given a vision of the long-vanished fairs and markets that were served by these country by-ways. Malcolm follows this with a very interesting letter about other uses made of our old drove roads and inns by smugglers.

Livestock Movements on the Hampshire-Sussex Border

Malcolm Walford

The pre-railway movement of livestock across Hampshire into Sussex and Kent is well attested in historic sources. Speaking in 1845 on the proposed railway from Salisbury to Southampton a Mr Lanham said that "a great quantity of cattle was brought annually into this town (Southampton) from Bridgewater, Taunton, Yeovil and the parts adjacent, a number of calves from Dorsetshire and of sheep from Devonshire.” He was of the opinion that the railway would make Southampton a great cattle entrepot between the West of England and London and “obviate the evils to which cattle are exposed travelling on foot" (1).

The Winchester Trinity Fair in 1821 "was unusually full, we have never witnessed a greater shew of horned cattle, horses or pigs". At Petersfield, the Hampshire Telegraph advertised on September 11th 1820 "To Graziers, Cattle Dealers etc. a Fair or Shew of Cattle will be held on Saturday, 7th October next on Petersfield Heath. N.B. The principal dealers from Devonshire and the different counties of Wales will attend with Cattle". And on October 6th 1821 "it is expected that many dealers from the Eastern and Western parts of England will attend the Cattle Fair on the Heath, and the Sheep Fair in a field adjoining." In the event "cattle went off briskly at good prices - 400 head of Devon and between 300 and 400 of Welch cattle were sold and about 6000 Somerset, Dorset and Southdown sheep were sold".

Nearer the coast, the fair at Cosham (the site of which moved several times) was said to have been a big centre for the distribution of Welsh black cattle. And further east the Arundel Fat Stock Show in December 1819 was offering a prize in the Hampshire Telegraph for the best fat Welsh runt as well as for the best Scotch fat runt. R. J. Colyer records Welsh drovers at Selsey (2).

How did livestock move across Hampshire avoiding the expensive turnpike roads? This article concentrates on the movement between south-east Hampshire and Sussex. For the purposes of the article the field study area has been selected small enough for all the locations considered to be investigated, as well as studied through maps and documentary sources. In undertaking the field work, use has been made of the identifying features suggested by George Watts in his articles in this Newsletter (3).

In the 1790s there were eight places with markets and fairs in the study area.  In the south was Havant with fairs in June and October; Rowlands Castle with fairs in May and November; Emsworth with fairs in April and December; and Chichester with fairs in April, May, July, September and October, and markets on alternate Wednesdays. Further north were Petersfield with several fairs and a Saturday market; Harting, a May fair; Rogate a September fair; and Midhurst, April, May and November fairs and a Thursday market (4).

In tracing the routes used by drovers, packhorsemen and other travellers in moving between these and the more distant markets and fairs, two nodal points have been identified, together with some tracks leading to and from them - Chalton in Hampshire ( which had once had its own market ) and Walderton in West Sussex.

The route into Chalton from the west was a south-eastern branch of the ancient ridgeway along the South Downs. It passed the Bat and Ball Inn, then called the Hambledon Hutt, came through Clanfield, across Clanfield Down via a round barrow and a pond into Chalton. The Chalton Enclosure Award map of 1816 shows two locations which are almost certainly the overnight resting places elsewhere known as stances (5). Beside South Lane, half-a-mile from the Red Lion Inn and the blacksmith's shop was a five acre field called Drovers (OS 729156). Closer to the village centre, next to the Chalton-Buriton road, was a two acre field called Nights Paddock. Eastwards from Chalton the track ran over Chalton Down into Huckswood Lane and (over the county boundary) into Cowdown Lane to Little Green, perhaps another stance. Here, cutting down across a modern field, and crossing a north-south road, now a B road, the track ran east past Hundred Acres Farm, where it is described in the Original Surveyor's Drawing of 1805-6 as "the Old British Way from Winchester" (6). It passes a prominent long barrow called Bevis Thumb, and continues as Long Lane to Chilgrove, where there was an inn, pond and blacksmith's shop. Thence tracks led to Midhurst. The junction with the north-south route at Little Green also gave travellers access northwards to Harting and Rogate, and south towards Emsworth and Chichester.

Among other ancient routes into the Chalton 'node' were via South Lane, from both Havant and Cosham; and via North Lane from Buriton and Petersfield. Another ran north-eastwards via Harris Lane towards the Domesday Book manor of Sunwood, passing by the notorious Harris Well where a shoemaker was drowned by smugglers in 1747, and the deserted medieval village of Downley (7). On past Sunwood Farm a deeply sunken holloway goes down the scarp slope of West Harting Down to become The Droveway, thence east or west, or northwards to the medieval monastery of Durford (8).

The second of the nodal points which has been identified is Walderton in West Sussex. This is accessed from the north from the previous road network by turning south at Little Green along the now metalled B road, passing through Compton with an inn, a smithy and a pond; and West Marden with an inn and a pond. From the west, Walderton seems to have been anciently approached from Rowlands Castle via a deeply hollowed track called Woodlands Lane; but with the rebuilding of Stansted House and the remodelling  of Stansted Park in 1786, to the west it is represented by the straightened line of the Western Downs cycle route and the 'Monarch's Way'. But there was also an alternative westerly route through the deserted medieval village of Lordington, via Park Lane and Monument Lane. Along Park Lane in 1785 was site of the old 'Packhorse Inn' (OS 763098) while further to the south-west was the newly sited 'Packhorse Inn' (OS 753099), a site now occupied by a pottery (9). Both of these routes would lead traffic from the markets and fairs in Havant and Emsworth towards Walderton.

In Walderton, a map of 1818 shows what is probably a stance, an eight acre field just north of the village called Lodgers Field (OS 790110) reached by Lodgers Lane. In the village were an inn, the river Ems, and a blacksmith's shop (10). Next to the blacksmith's shop, a stony lane leads south to Funtington, with a track branching eastwards towards Bow Hill, a focus of several radiating trackways. Eastwards from Walderton the ancient route ran up the valley of the Ems to Stoughton, where there had been a smithy before the blacksmith moved to a better located site at Walderton; thereafter by well-marked downland tracks north-east to Chilgrove and south-east towards Bow Hill, and so on towards Midhurst, Chichester and other markets and fairs of West Sussex.

References

1.Hampshire Chronicle, 10 May 1845.
2. R. J. Colyer, The Welsh Cattle Drovers
(University of Wales 1976), p.105.
3. Newsletter 40, 41; I should like to thank George Watts for his comments on the present article.
4. The Universal British Directory 1793-98; Walter Butler The Hundred of Bosmere 1817.
5.  HRO 124M71/M1.
6. Original Surveyors' Drawings (British Library): copies held by county Record Offices.
7. An Historical Atlas of Sussex, section 24 " Deserted Settlements " by Pennington and Platt.
8. Buriton Tithe Map: HRO 21M65/57/41/1&2.
9. A Valuation of the Estates of Thomas Barwell Esq. 1785 : WSRO ADD175.2156.
10. Survey of the lands of Thos. Peckham Phipps of Little Green: WSRO ADDMS 29678.

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