The New Forest: Its History and Its Scenery

by John R. Wise

Calshot Castle

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.[63] 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 a 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[64] and going southward, skirting Cadlands Park, we reach Fawley, the Falalie and Falegia of Domesday, where Walkelin, Bishop of Winchester, held in demesne, as Abbey land, one hyde and three yardlands. The whole of the manor 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 1513, 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.[65]

But the place has older associations than these. In The Chronicle and Florence of Worcester we read[66] 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.[67] Dr. Guest places it at the mouth of the river Itchen,[68] whilst Mr. Pearson and others have identified it with Yarmouth.[69] 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 north 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,[70] 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.[71] 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.[72] 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 employment 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, perhaps, derived from the Old-English leap, a weel, or basket for catching fish.[73] 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.[74]

On somewhat better authority,[75] it rests that the unhappy Charles I., on the 13th 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.[76] 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. Previous to it, however, there existed a British track, still clearly visible across the Forest, especially near Butts Ash barrows, by its deep depressions. Both roads, though, 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 argument, however, against the passage in Diodorus Siculus,[77] that it would be so much easier for the first traders to have exported the tin from Belerium 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.[78]