The New Forest: Its History and Its Scenery

by John R. Wise

It was standing, though no longer a fortification, in the Commonwealth period. Nothing, however, now remains but the mere shell of the keep, whose walls are in places four yards thick.[160]

Below it stands what was, perhaps, the house of Baldwin de Redvers, also in ruins, and roofless, but still a capital specimen of what is so rarely seen, the true domestic architecture of the twelfth century. Like all the other remaining houses of this period, it is a simple oblong, seventy-one feet by twenty-four broad, and only two stories high, placed for defence on a branch of the Avon, which serves as a moat. On the south-east it is flanked by a small attached tower, now in ruins, under which the stream flows. The ground floor was divided in half by a wall, whilst the outer walls, thicker on the east and south sides, where more exposed to attacks than on the north and west, are pierced with deeply-splayed loopholes looking out on the stream. On this side was the hall, where lord, and guest, and serf, alike ate and drank, and slept on the floor. The other western half was divided into chambers and cellars, the kitchen probably standing in the courtyard.

The Norman House.

Above, approached by two stone staircases from within, and not, as in most cases, from without, was the principal dwelling-room, the solar, lighted on each side by three double lights, carved on their outer arches with zig-zag and billet mouldings, and on the south by a circular, and on the north by a fine double window, once richly ornamented, but now nearly destroyed. The fire-place, the only one in the house, is set nearly in the centre of the east wall; and above it still stands, in the place of the old smoke-vent, the beautiful round chimney, one of the earliest in England, like the fire-place, hid in ivy.

There seems, however, as in the case of the still older Norman house at Southampton, to have been no wall-passage connecting the building, as we might have expected, with the castle; but like it, its entrances, of which there were three, one opening out upon the stream, were on the ground floor.[161]

Coming down to later times, the great Lord Clarendon here possessed large property, and one of his favourite schemes was to make the Avon navigable to Salisbury. For this purpose it was surveyed by Yarranton, the hydrographer, who not only reported favourably of the idea, but proposed to make the harbour an anchorage for men-of-war, bringing forward the great natural advantages of Hengistbury Head, as also the facilities of procuring iron in the district, and wood from the New Forest.[162] All, however, fell to the ground with Clarendon’s exile, and the harbour is now silted up with sand and choked with weeds.

Nothing else is there to be mentioned, except the visit by Edward VI. to the town, from whence he wrote a letter to his friend Barnaby Fitz-Patrick, far superior to most royal letters. The lazar-house, which stood in the Bargates, has long since been destroyed. The old market-place has been lately taken down; but in the main street, not far from the castle keep, remains, lately-restored, one of those timbered houses so common in the Midland counties and the Weald of Kent, with their dormer windows and richly-carved bressumers and barge-boards, but rarer in the West of England.[163] The glory, however, of the town, the Priory Church, still stands. Before describing it let us give some account of its history. Its earliest buildings were founded by some of the secular canons of the order of St. Augustine, probably on a spot used for worship by the Romans.[164] Mention of it is made in Domesday as existing in Edward the Confessor’s reign, and as possessing five hydes and one yardland in Thuinam, as also its tithes, and the third of those of Holdenhurst.[165] The present building, however, dates only from the time of Flambard, who rebuilt the church, pulling down the earlier building with its nine cells.[166] And in Henry I.’s reign, Baldwin de Redvers brought in the regular instead of the secular canons, and placed them under the first prior, Reginald.

With this change new privileges and grants were made. Riches flowed in on every side. Not only were the Redvers benefactors, but the Courtenays, and Wests, and Salisburys, into whose hands the manor of Christchurch came.[167]

Like most other ecclesiastical buildings, we hear but little of it till its dissolution. From its state we may be able to judge of the general condition of the monasteries, and how imperative was the change.