WINCHESTER TO ALTON
[Illustration: ROOF OF STRANGERS' HALL, WINCHESTER.]
Few traces of the Pilgrims' Way are now to be found in Hampshire. But
early writers speak of an old road which led to Canterbury from
Winchester, and the travellers' course would in all probability take
them through this ancient city. Here the foreign pilgrims who landed at
Southampton, and those who came from the West of England, would find
friendly shelter in one or other of the religious houses, and enjoy a
brief resting-time before they faced the perils of the road. The old
capital of Wessex, the home of Alfred, and favourite residence of Saxon
and Norman kings, had many attractions to offer to the devout pilgrim.
Here was the splendid golden shrine of St. Swithun, the gentle Bishop
who had watched over the boyhood of Alfred. In A.D. 971, a hundred years
after the Saint's death, his bones had been solemnly removed from their
resting-place on the north side of the Minster, where he had humbly
begged to be buried" so that the sun might not shine upon him," and laid
by Edgar and Dunstan behind the altar of the new Cathedral which Bishop
Ethelwold had raised on the site of the ancient church of Birinus. This
was done, says the chronicler Wulfstan, although the Saint himself
"protested weeping that his body ought not to be set in God's holy
church amidst the splendid memorials of the ancient fathers," a legend
which may have given rise to the popular tradition of the forty days'
rain, and the supposed delay in the Saint's funeral. From that time
countless miracles were wrought at the shrine of St. Swithun, and
multitudes from all parts of England flocked to seek blessing and
healing at the great church which henceforth bore his name.
[Illustration: THE WEST GATE, WINCHESTER.]
Under the rule of Norman and Angevin kings, the venerable city had
attained the height of wealth and prosperity. In those days the
population numbered some 20,000, and there are said to have been as many
as 173 churches and chapels within its wall. In spite of the horrors
of civil war, which twice desolated the streets, in the time of Stephen
and Henry III., the frequent presence of the court and the energy of her
prince-bishops had made Winchester a centre of religious and literary
activity. And, although after the death of Henry III., who throughout
his long life remained faithful to his native city, royal visits became
few and far between, and the old capital lost something of its
brilliancy, there was still much to attract strangers and strike the
imagination of the wayfarer who entered her gates in the fifteenth
century. Few mediæval cities could boast foundations of equal size and
splendour. There was the strong castle of Wolvesey, where the bishops
reigned in state, and the royal palace by the West gate, built by King
Henry III., with the fair Gothic hall which he had decorated so
lavishly. There was the Hospital of St. Cross, founded by the
warrior-bishop, Henry de Blois, and the new College of St. Mary, which
William of Wykeham, the great master-builder, had reared in the meadows
known as the Greenery, or promenade of the monks of St. Swithun.
Another venerable hospital, that of St. John's, claimed to have been
founded by Birinus, and on Morne Hill, just outside the East gate, stood
a hospital for lepers, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene. There,
conspicuous among a crowd of religious houses by their wealth and
antiquity, were the two great Benedictine communities of St. Swithun and
Hyde. And there, too, was the grand Norman church which the Conqueror's
kinsman, Bishop Walkelin, had raised on the ruins of Ethelwold's
Minster, with its low massive tower and noble transepts, and the long
nave roofed in with solid trees of oak cut down in Hempage Wood. Three
centuries later, William of Wykeham transformed the nave after the
latest fashion of architecture, cut through the old Norman work, carried
up the piers to a lofty height, and replaced the flat wooden roof by
fine stone groining. But the Norman tower and transepts of Bishop
Walkelin's church still remain to-day almost unchanged.
[Illustration: WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL, SOUTH AISLE OF CHOIR.]
So great was the concourse of pilgrims to St. Swithun's shrine in the
early part of the fourteenth century, that Bishop Godfrey Lucy enlarged
the eastward portion of the church, and built, as it were, another
church, with nave, aisles, and Lady Chapel of its own, under the same
roof. The monks had no great love for the lower class of pilgrims who
thronged their doors, and took good care to keep them out of the
conventual precincts. They were only allowed to enter the Minster by a
doorway in the north transept, and, once they had visited the shrine and
duly made their offerings, they were jealously excluded from the rest of
the church by those fine ironwork gates still preserved in the
Cathedral, and said to be the oldest specimen of the kind in England.
[Illustration: ON THE RIVER ITCHEN, WINCHESTER.]
Towards the close of the century, in the reign of Edward I., the fine
old building still known as the Strangers' Hall was built by the monks
of St. Swithun at their convent gate, for the reception of the poorer
pilgrims. Here they found food and shelter for the night. They slept,
ate their meals, and drank their ale, and made merry round one big
central fire. The hall is now divided, and is partly used as the Dean's
stable, partly enclosed in a Canon's house, but traces of rudely carved
heads, a bearded king, and a nun's face are still visible on the
massive timbers of the vaulted roof, blackened with the smoke of bygone
ages. In the morning the same pilgrims would wend their way to the doors
of the Prior's lodging, and standing under the three beautiful pointed
arches which form the entrance to the present Deanery, would there
receive alms in money and fragments of bread and meat to help them on
their journey.
[Illustration: KING'S GATE, WINCHESTER, FROM THE CLOSE.]
The route which they took on leaving Winchester is uncertain. It is not
till we approach Alton that we find the first traces of the Pilgrims'
Way, but in all probability they followed the Roman road which still
leads to Silchester and London along the valley of the river Itchen.
Immediately outside the city gates they would find themselves before
another stately pile of conventual buildings, the great Abbey of Hyde.
This famous Benedictine house, founded by Alfred, and long known as the
New Minster, was first removed from its original site near the Cathedral
in the twelfth century. Finding their house damp and unhealthy, and
feeling themselves cramped in the narrow space close to the rival
monastery of St. Swithun, the monks obtained a charter from Henry I.
giving them leave to settle outside the North gate. In the year 1110,
they moved to their new home, bearing with them the wonder-working
shrine of St. Josse, the great silver cross given to the New Minster by
Cnut, and a yet more precious relic, the bones of Alfred the Great. Here
in the green meadows on the banks of the Itchen they reared the walls of
their new convent and the magnificent church which, after being in the
next reign burnt to the ground by fire-balls from Henry of Blois' Castle
at Wolvesey, rose again from the flames fairer and richer than before.
Here it stood till the Dissolution, when Thomas Wriothesley, Cromwell's
Commissioner, stripped the shrine of its treasures, carried off the gold
and jewels, and pulled down the abbey walls to use the stone in the
building of his own great house at Stratton. "We intend," he wrote to
his master, after describing the riches of gold and silver plate, the
crosses studded with pearls, chalices, and emeralds on which he had lain
sacrilegious hands, "both at Hyde and St. Mary to sweep away all the
rotten bones that be called relics; which we may not omit, lest it be
thought we came more for the treasure than for the avoiding of the
abomination of idolatry." Considerable fragments of the building still
remained. In Milner's time the ruins covered the whole meadow, but
towards the end of the last century the city authorities fixed on the
spot as the site of a new bridewell, and all that was left of the once
famous Abbey was then destroyed. The tombs of the dead were rifled. At
every stroke of the spade some ancient sepulchre was violated, stone
coffins containing chalices, croziers, rings, were broken open and bones
scattered abroad. Then the ashes of the noblest of our kings were blown
to the winds, and the resting-place of Ælfred remains to this day
unknown. A stone marked with the words, Ælfred Rex, DCCCLXXXI., was
carried off by a passing stranger, and is now to be seen at Corby
Castle, in Cumberland. To-day an old gateway near the church of St.
Bartholomew and some fragments of the monastery wall are the only
remains of Alfred's new Minster.
From this spot an ancient causeway, now commonly known as the Nuns'
Walk, but which in the last century bore the more correct title of the
Monks' Walk, leads alongside of a stream which supplied Hyde Abbey with
water, for a mile and a half up the valley to Headbourne[7] Worthy. The
path is cool and shady, planted with a double row of tall elms, and as
we look back we have beautiful views of the venerable city and the great
Cathedral sleeping in the quiet hollow, dreaming of all its mighty past.
Above, scarred with the marks of a deep railway cutting, and built over
with new houses, is St. Giles' Hill, where during many centuries the
famous fair was held each September. Foreign pilgrims would gaze with
interest on the scene of that yearly event, which had attained a
world-wide fame, and attracted merchants from all parts of France,
Flanders, and Italy. The green hill-side from which we look down on the
streets and towers of Winchester presented a lively spectacle during
that fortnight. The stalls were arranged in long rows and called after
the nationality of the vendors of the goods they sold. There was the
Street of Caen, of Limoges, of the Flemings, of the Genoese, the
Drapery, the Goldsmiths' Stall, the Spicery, held by the monks of St.
Swithun, who drove a brisk trade in furs and groceries on these
occasions. All shops in the city and for seven leagues round were closed
during the fair, and local trade was entirely suspended. The mayor
handed over the keys of the city for the time being to the bishop, who
had large profits from the tolls and had stalls at the fair himself,
while smaller portions went to the abbeys, and thirty marks a year were
paid to St. Swithun's for the repair of the great church. The Red King
first granted his kinsman, Bishop Walkelin, the tolls of this three
days' fair at St. Giles' feast, which privilege was afterwards extended
to a period of sixteen days by Henry III. The great fair lasted until
modern times, but in due course was removed from St. Giles' Hill into
the city itself. "As the city grew stronger and the fair weaker," writes
Dean Kitchin, "it slid down St. Giles' Hill and entered the town, where
its noisy ghost still holds revel once a year."
[Illustration: WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH]
Leaving these historic memories behind us we follow the Monks' Walk
until we reach Headbourne Worthy, the first of a group of villages
granted by Egbert, in 825, to St. Swithun's Priory, and bearing this
quaint name, derived from the Saxon _woerth_--a homestead. The church
here dates from Saxon times, and claims to have been founded by St.
Wilfred. The rude west doorway and chancel arch are said to belong to
Edward the Confessor's time. Over the west archway, which now leads into
a fifteenth-century chapel, is a fine sculptured bas-relief larger than
life, representing the Crucifixion and the Maries, which probably
originally adorned the exterior of the church. But the most interesting
thing in the church is the brass to John Kent, a Winchester scholar, who
died in 1434. The boy wears his college gown and his hair is closely
cut, while a scroll comes out of his lips bearing the words:
"Misericordiam Dni inetum cantabo." Next we reach Kingsworthy, so called
because it was once Crown property, a pretty little village with low
square ivy-grown church-tower and lych-gate, and a charming
old-fashioned inn standing a little back from the road.
[Illustration: THATCHED COTTAGE, MARTYR WORTHY.]
The third of the Worthys, Abbotsworthy, is now united to Kingsworthy.
Passing through its little street of houses, a mile farther on we reach
Martyrsworthy, a still smaller village with another old Norman church
and low thatched cottages, picturesquely placed near the banks of the
river, which is here crossed by a wooden foot-bridge. But all this part
of the Itchen valley has the same charm. Everywhere we find the same old
farmhouses with mullioned windows and sundials and yew trees, the same
straggling roofs brilliant with yellow lichen, and the same cottages and
gardens gay with lilies and phloxes, the same green lanes shaded with
tall elms and poplars, the same low chalk hills and wooded distances
closing in the valley, and below the bright river winding its way
through the cool meadows. "The Itchen--the beautiful Itchen valley,"
exclaims Cobbett, as he rides along this vale of meadows. "There are few
spots in England more fertile, or more pleasant, none, I believe, more
healthy. The fertility of this vale and of the surrounding country is
best proved by the fact that, besides the town of Alresford and that of
Southampton, there are seventeen villages, each having its parish
church, upon its borders. When we consider these things, we are not
surprised that a spot situated about half-way down this vale should have
been chosen for the building of a city, or that that city should have
been for a great number of years the place of residence for the kings of
England."
[Illustration: CHILLAND FARM, NEAR ITCHEN ABBAS.]
Towards Itchen Abbas--of the Abbot--the valley opens, and we see the
noble avenues and spreading beeches of Avington Park, long the property
of the Dukes of Chandos, and often visited by Charles II. while Wren was
building his red-brick palace at Winchester. Here the Merry Monarch
feasted his friends in a banqueting-hall that is now a greenhouse, and a
room in the old house bore the name of Nell Gwynne's closet. In those
days it was the residence of the notorious Lady Shrewsbury, afterwards
the wife of George Brydges, a member of the Chandos family, the lady
whose first husband, Francis, Earl of Shrewsbury, was slain fighting in
a duel with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, while the Countess
herself, disguised as a page, held her lover's horse.
The river winds through the park, and between the over-arching boughs of
the forest trees we catch lovely glimpses of wood and water. In the
opposite direction, but also close to Itchen Abbas, is another
well-known seat, Lord Ashburton's famous Grange, often visited by
Carlyle. Here the dark tints of yew and fir mingle with the bright hues
of lime and beech and silver birch on the banks of a clear lake, and
long grassy glades lead up to wild gorse-grown slopes of open down.
Still following the river banks we reach Itchen Stoke, another
picturesque village with timbered cottages and mossy roofs. A little
modern church, with high-pitched roof and lancet windows having a
curiously foreign air, stands among the tall pines on a steep bank above
the stream. But here our pleasant journey along the fair Itchen valley
comes to an end, and, leaving the river-side, we climb the hilly road
which leads us into Alresford.
New Alresford, a clean, bright little town, with broad street, planted
with rows of trees, boasts an antiquity which belies its name, and has
been a market-town and borough from time immemorial. Like its yet more
venerable neighbour, Old Alresford, it was given by a king of the West
Saxons to the prior and monks of St. Swithun at Winchester, and formed
part of the vast possessions of the monastery at the Conquest. Both
places took their name from their situation on a ford of the Arle or
Alre river, a considerable stream which joins the Itchen below Avington,
and is called by Leland the Alresford river. In the eleventh century New
Alresford had fallen into decay, and probably owes its present existence
to Bishop Godfrey Lucy, who rebuilt the town, and obtained a charter
from King John restoring the market, which had fallen into disuse. At
the same time he gave the town the name of New Market, but the older one
survived, and the Bishop's new title was never generally adopted. The
same energetic prelate bestowed a great deal of care and considerable
attention on the water supply of Winchester, and made the Itchen
navigable all the way from Southampton to Alresford.
In recognition of this important service, Bishop Lucy received from King
John the right of levying toll on all leather, hides, and other goods
which entered Winchester by the river Itchen through this canal, a right
which descended to his successors in the see. South-west of the town is
the large pond or reservoir which he made to supply the waters of the
Itchen. This lake, which still covers about sixty acres, is a well-known
haunt of moor-hens and other waterfowl, and the flags and bulrushes
which fringe its banks make it a favourable resort of artists. Old
Alresford itself, with its gay flower-gardens, tall elms, pretty old
thatched cottages grouped round the village green, may well supply them
with more than one subject for pen and pencil.
[Illustration: NEW ALRESFORD.]
New Alresford was at one time a flourishing centre of the cloth trade,
in which the Winchester merchants drove so brisk a trade at St. Giles'
Fair. The manufacture of woollen cloth was carried on till quite recent
times, and Dean Kitchin tells us that there are old men still living who
remember driving with their fathers to the fair at Winchester on St.
Giles' day, to buy a roll of blue cloth to provide the family suits for
the year. But New Alresford shared the decline as it had shared the
prosperity of its more important neighbour, and suffered even more
severely than Winchester in the Civil Wars, when the town was almost
entirely burnt down by Lord Hopton's troops after their defeat in
Cheriton fight. The scene of that hard-fought battle, which gave
Winchester into Waller's hands and ruined the King's cause in the West
of England, lies a few miles to the south of Alresford. Half-way between
the two is Tichborne Park, the seat of a family which has owned this
estate from the days of Harold, and which took its name from the stream
flowing through the parish, and called the Ticceborne in Anglo-Saxon
records. In modern times a well-known case has given the name of
Tichborne an unenviable notoriety, but members of this ancient house
have been illustrious at all periods of our history, and the legend of
the Tichborne Dole so long associated with the spot deserves to be
remembered. In the reign of Henry I., Isabella, the wife of Sir Roger
Tichborne, a lady whose long life had been spent in deeds of mercy,
prayed her husband as she lay dying to grant her as much land as would
enable her to leave a dole of bread for all who asked alms at the gates
of Tichborne on each succeeding Lady Day. Sir Roger was a knight of
sterner stuff, and seizing a flaming brand from the hearth he told his
wife jestingly that she might have as much land as she could herself
walk over before the burning torch went out. Upon which the sick lady
caused herself to be borne from her bed to a piece of ground within the
manor, and crawled on her knees and hands until she had encircled
twenty-three acres. The actual plot of ground still bears the name of
Lady Tichborne's Crawles, and there was an old prophecy which said that
the house of Tichborne would only last as long as the dying bequest of
Isabella was carried out. During the next six centuries, nineteen
hundred small loaves were regularly distributed to the poor at the gates
on Lady Day, and a miraculous virtue was supposed to belong to bread
thus bestowed. The custom was only abandoned a hundred years ago, owing
to the number of idlers and bad characters which it brought into the
neighbourhood, and a sum of money equal in amount to the Dole is given
to the poor of the parish in its stead.
Whether any of our Canterbury pilgrims stopped in their course to avail
themselves of the Tichborne Dole we cannot say, but there was a
manor-house of the Bishops of Winchester at Bishop Sutton, near
Alresford, where they would no doubt find food and shelter. Nothing now
remains of the episcopal palace, and no trace of its precincts is
preserved but the site of the bishop's kennels.
After crossing the river at Alresford the pilgrims turned north-east,
and according to an old tradition their road led them through the parish
of Ropley, a neighbouring village where Roman remains have been
discovered. A little further on the same track, close to Rotherfield
Park, where the modern mansion of Pelham now stands, was an ancient
house which bore the name of Pilgrims' Place, and is indicated as such
in old maps.
[Illustration: THE HOG'S BACK.]