The ruins of the Cistercian Church which once graced this shore and raised above the trees its lighthouse tower, a seamark by day and a beacon by night, are among the loveliest in Wessex. Though perhaps these relics of a former splendour, when they consist of more than a few bits of broken masonry, should rather be said to be heartrending in their reminder of what we have lost.
Not so beautiful is the great pile, a mile to the south, built during the Crimean war for the invalid warriors and named after their Queen. A short distance away is another great building, or series of structures, erected during the Great War, to further our claim to the empire of the air.
The Hamble river is the only considerable stream before the barrier spit of Calshot Castle is reached. This comes down from historic Bishop's Waltham with its considerable remains of the "palace" of the earlier Bishop of Winchester. After passing Botley, an ancient market town, the river widens into an estuary haven altogether out of proportion to the stream behind it, and at Bursledon, where it is crossed by the Portsmouth highway, it becomes really beautiful: the curving banks are in places embowered in trees that descend to the water's edge. When the tide is full the scene would hold its own with many more favoured by the guide books. The fields around are devoted to the culture of the strawberry for the London market, and the crops are said to be finer than those of the better-known Kentish districts.
Two finds from the stream bed are in Botley market hall, a portion of a Danish war vessel and an almost entire prehistoric canoe.
A name better known to the majority of our readers will be that of the Meon, a further reference to which district will be found in the concluding chapter. The waters of this longer stream rise on a western outlier of Butser Hill and, draining a remote and beautiful district served by the Meon Valley Railway, reach Titchfield Haven over three miles below the Hamble. Titchfield, two miles as the crow flies from the sea (for we are now on the open waters of the Solent), is a pleasant old town with an interesting church and the gatehouse remnant of a once famous abbey of Premonstratensians. Part of the tower and nave of the church are Saxon, and the remainder is in a whole range of styles. A chapel on the south was once the property of the abbey and is called the Abbot's Chapel, this has a fine tomb of the first and second Earls and first Countess of Southampton. Perhaps of more interest to some visitors will be the flag hung near the opening to the chancel. This was the first to fly over Pretoria after the British occupation.
The western shore of Southampton Water may be accepted as the eastern boundary of the New Forest, as the straight north and south valley of the Salisbury Avon is its western barrier. From the sea at Christ-church Bay to the Blackwater valley west of Romsey is about twenty miles and all this great district partakes more or less of the character of the country seen from the Bournemouth express after it leaves Lyndhurst Road. To attempt to describe in detail this unique corner of England would be beyond the possibilities of this book or its author, and only the barest outline will be attempted.