Peeps at Many Lands: England

by John Finnemore

Why is this? The answer is simple. They lack water. Down their sides flow no brooks, babbling from stone to stone; they are waterless, and therefore treeless and houseless. They get plenty of rain, of course, for when the sou'-westers blow up from the Atlantic they are drenched by many a heavy storm. But the water does not run down their sides as a river, or gather in their hollows as a lake. The chalk of which they are composed is too porous for that, and the rain sinks swiftly and is lost.

Water is so abundant in almost every part of our land that we are inclined to forget that the first need of a house is its water-supply. He who thinks to build on the Downs must first reckon how deep a well he must dig through the chalk before the water can be reached. And he finds that the cost of obtaining water is so great that he must build his house elsewhere. One or two houses have been built high up on the Downs by wealthy people who were resolved to carry out a fancy. In winter the water-supply is furnished by the rain which falls on the roofs; in summer it is carted from the valley at great expense.

In some parts of the Downs water is obtained by dew-pans or dew-ponds. A space is hollowed out, as a rule, near the summit of a hill. It is circular in form, and of no great depth. It is coated with clay or cement, or some material which prevents the passage of water, and it then fills with dew and rain, and, strange to say, many of these dew-ponds never fail after they have once filled. You may visit them in perfect certainty of obtaining some water.

"Those who best know the Downs, and have lived among them all their lives, can testify how, for a whole day's march, one may never meet a man's face; or, if one meets it, it will be the face of some shepherd, who may be standing lonely, with his dog beside him, upon the flank of a green hill, and with his flock scattered all around."

Another great feature of Wessex is its broad heaths—great sweeps of country dark with furze and gorse and heath, save when they blaze in May with the yellow blossoms of the gorse, or glow in autumn with the purple of the heather.

And bordering these heaths and downs are great stretches of smiling meadow and corn land, dotted by quaint and beautiful townlets and villages. Of large towns there are but few, for Wessex knows nothing of the toil and turmoil of great industrial centres. She tills her land and tends her flocks, and those occupations mean old farmhouses and cottages, half-timbered or stone-built, roofed with red tiles or grey thatch, and little country towns, silent and sleepy save on market-days, when the farmers and dealers come in and buy and sell their cattle and their produce.

The coast of Wessex is washed by the English Channel, and through all our history no other part of our coast-line has been so busy with sailors and shipping as that which looks upon the narrow seas.

The Roman, the Saxon, the Dane, have landed at its river-mouths, and marched inland. In later days, the pirates which swarmed along the Channel have attacked and plundered its towns. All through the Middle Ages the citizens of the little towns along the shore had to be prepared at any moment to beat off the attacks of freebooters who sought plunder wherever it was to be found. Thus, in 1338, Southampton was attacked suddenly by pirates on a Sunday when the people of the town were in church, and the town was plundered and burned.

To this day the visitor notes with wonder the size and strength of some old parish churches along the coast. They seem needlessly large in view of the small population of the village, and also needlessly strong. But 500 years ago the church was also the fortress of the place. When news was brought that an enemy was near at hand, all fled into the church for protection; and while the women and children crouched before the altar, where the priest prayed for the rout of the foe, the men strung their bows, and prepared to launch showers of arrows from every window and loophole.

All through the long French wars the Wessex ports were in the thick of the fray, fitting out privateers and supplying men for the Navy. Along these coasts the press-gangs were very busy when sailors were needed for the fleet and not enough men had volunteered. The press-gang was a body of seamen, commanded by a naval officer, and sent out to seize men and carry them on board ship by force. Tales are told to this day in Wessex of a press-gang marching into a village at dead of night and rushing into cottages to drag men out of bed and make them prisoners to serve the King at sea. Sometimes the ploughman was snatched from his plough, the shepherd from his flock. At times these men returned after many years' absence to tell of their lives on board a man-o'-war, and the battles fought with Britain's enemies; others were never heard of again in their native place.