SELBORNE
I set out from Winchester early one June morning by Jewry Street, as it
were out of the old North Gate to follow, perhaps, the oldest road in
old England towards Alton, intending to reach Selborne more than twenty
miles away eastward on the tumble of hills where the North Downs meet
the South, before night.
I say the road by which I went out of Winchester and followed for so
many miles, through King's Worthy and Martyr Worthy, Itchen Abbas, New
Alresford and Bishops Sutton, is perhaps the oldest in England; in fact
it is the old British trackway from the ports of the Straights and
Canterbury to Winchester and Old Sarum, the western end, indeed, of the
way I had already followed from Canterbury to Boughton Aluph up the
valley of the Great Stour, known to us all as the Pilgrim's Way. For
though it is older than any written history, it was preserved from
neglect and death when the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were making
all new, here as elsewhere, by the pilgrims, who, coming from Western
England, from Brittany and Spain to visit St Thomas' shrine, used it as
their road across Southern England from Winchester to Canterbury.
Now, though for any man who follows that road to-day it is filled with
these great companies of pilgrims, there are older memories, too, which
it evokes and which, if the history of England is precious to him, he
cannot ignore.
To begin with the exit from Winchester: there in Jewry Street a Roman
road overlies the older British way, not indeed exactly, but roughly,
certainly as far as King's Worthy, whence it still shoots forth
straight as an arrow's flight over hill over dale to Silchester. The
very street by which he leaves the city, as it were, by the now
destroyed North Gate, is Roman, one of the four roads which met in the
Forum of Venta Belgarum and divided Roman Winchester into four
quarters, though, perhaps because of the marshes of the Itchen, not
into four equal parts as in Chichester. The present name of this road,
Jewry Street, indicates its character all through the Middle Ages, when
here by the North Gate, upon the road to London, the Jews had their
booths, and the quarter of Winchester which this road served was
doubtless their ghetto, the richest quarter of the city.
It was not, however, of the Middle Age, but of the Dark Age I thought
as I issued out of Winchester where, not much more than a hundred years
ago, the old North Gate still held the way. In the year 1001, after the
battle of Alton, in which the men of Hampshire were utterly broken by
Sweyn and his Danes, this road was filled with the routed Saxons in
flight pouring into the city of Winchester. The record of that
appalling business is very brief in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," a few
lines under the date 1001. "A. 1001. In this year was much fighting in
the land of the English, and well nigh everywhere they (the
Danes) ravaged and burned so that they advanced on one course
until they came to the town of Alton; and then there came
against them the men of Hampshire and fought against them.
And there was Ethelward the King's high-steward slain, and Leofric at
Whitchurch and Leofwin the King's high-steward and Wulfhere the
bishop's thane, and Godwin at Worthy, Bishop Elfry's son, and of all
men one hundred and eighty; and there were of the Danish men many more
slain, though they had possession of the place of slaughter." A mere
plundering expedition, we may think, but it foretold with certainty the
rule of the Danes in England, which as we know came to pass, and was
not the catastrophe it might have been, because of the victory of
Alfred at Ethandune, a century and a half before, when he had made
Guthrum and his host Christians. Till the year 1788 Alfred's bones lay
beside this very gate through which the beaten Saxons poured into his
city in 1001. For though Hyde Abbey was destroyed at the Reformation
his bones seem to have been forgotten, to be discovered in the end of
the eighteenth century in their great leaden coffin and sold, I know
not to whom, for the sum of two pounds.
I considered these unfortunate and shameful things as I went on along
this British, Roman, Saxon and English way, the way of armies and of
pilgrims into Headbourne Worthy, whose church stands by the roadside on
the north.
This little church dedicated in honour of St Swithin is all of a piece
with the road, and illustrates it very well. Its beauty alone would
recommend it to the wayfarer, but it also possesses an antiquity so
great that nothing left to us in Winchester itself can match it. For in
plan, and largely in masonry too, it is a Saxon sanctuary, though a
late one, dating as it would seem from the early part of the eleventh
century. What we see is a beautiful little building consisting of nave
with curious western chamber, chancel, south-western tower and modern
south porch. The original church probably did not differ very much in
plan from that we have, but only the north and west walls of the nave
of the original building remain to us; the latter having the original
doorway of Binstead stone. The south wall of the nave and the tower
were rebuilt in the thirteenth century, as was the chancel, which is
now a modern building so far as its north and eastern walls are
concerned. In the late fifteenth century the western chamber was added
to the nave as in our own day the south porch. The best treasure of the
church is, however, the great spoilt Rood, with figures of our Lady and
St John, upon the outside of the west wall of the Saxon nave, to
preserve which, in the fifteenth century, the western chamber was
built. The western chamber was originally in two stages, the lower
acting as a porch to the church, the upper as a chapel with an altar
under the Saxon rood. It is needless to say that the Reformers, Bishop
Horne of Winchester it is said, the accursed miscreant who ordered the
destruction of all crucifixes in his diocese, defaced this glorious
work of art and religion, cutting the relief away to the face of the
wall so that only the outline remains. Nevertheless it is still one of
the most imposing and notable things left to us in southern England.
Headbourne Worthy, granted to Mortimer after the Conquest, was the most
important of the three little places grouped here in a bunch which bear
that name. King's Worthy, where the road first turns eastward and where
the church, curiously enough, stands to the south of the way,
[Footnote: According to Mr Belloc (_The Old Road_) this modern road
does not exactly represent the route of the Pilgrim's Way which ran to
the south of King's Worthy church] was but a hamlet and of Martyr
Worthy, Domesday knows nothing. Little that is notable remains to us
in either place, only the charming fifteenth century tower of King's
Worthy church and a fourteenth century font therein.
Much the same must be said of Itchen Abbas, Itchen A Bas, where the
road falls to the river, the small Norman church there having been both
rebuilt and enlarged in or about 1863, while an even worse fate has
befallen the church of Itchen Stoke, two miles further on, for it has
disappeared altogether. Nor I fear can much be said for the church of
New Alresford or the town either, for apparently, owing to a series of
fires, it has nothing to show us but a seventeenth century tower, a
poor example of the building of that time, the base of which may be
Saxon, while the windows seem to be of the thirteenth century.
New Alresford would seem only to have come into existence as a town in
the end of the twelfth century, when it was re-established by Bishop
Godfrey de Lucy (1189-1204). The old road did not pass through it as
the modern road does; for as Mr Belloc seems to have proved the
Pilgrim's Way, which descended to the river at Itchen A Bas as we have
seen, crossed the ford at Itchen Stoke, Itchen Stakes that is, and
proceeded east by south where the workhouse now stands, coming into the
modern road again at Bishop Sutton. But though the Pilgrim's Way knew
it not, New Alresford is of high antiquity. Local tradition has it that
it owes its existence, as distinct from Old Alresford, "to a defeat
inflicted by the Saxons on a party of Danes near the village of West
Tisted about five miles (south) east of Alresford. The Saxons granted
quarter to the defeated enemy on condition that they went to the ford
over the River Alre [Footnote: It is curious that Guthrum was baptised
at Aller and then his Danes in the Alre] to be baptised. In
commemoration of the victory a statue of the Virgin was then erected in
the churchyard of Old Alresford." [Footnote: V.C.H., Hampshire, vol. 3,
p. 350.] Local tradition cannot, at any time, be put lightly aside, and
when as here it preserves for us one of the great truths of the early
history of modern Europe we should rejoice indeed. For here we have the
obvious reality of the eighth century when Europe, slowly recovering
itself and beginning to realise itself as Christendom, was everywhere
attacked by hordes of pagans. The work of Charlemagne, of Offa and of
Alfred was not merely the conquest of the barbarians, but really since
they could not be wholly destroyed, their conversion, and thus alone
could Christendom be certainly preserved. So after Ethandune Guthrum
must be christened at Aller, and after the fight here on the Alre the
defeated heathen must be christened at the ford. Since New Alresford
has preserved for us a memory of this fundamental act we can easily
forgive her lack of material antiquity.
The little village thus founded, certainly still existed in the time of
the Conquest, and such it would always have remained but for Godfrey de
Lucy, Bishop of Winchester, who, among his many achievements, numbers
this chiefly that he made the Itchen navigable not only from
Southampton to Winchester but here also in its headwaters, and this by
means of the great reservoir, known as Alresford Pond, into which he
gathered the waters of many streams to supply his navigation. In
return, King John not only gave him the royalty of the river, but a
weekly market here for which he rebuilt the place and called it New
Market a name which was soon lost, the people preferring their old name
New Alresford. So the market town of New Alresford came into existence,
and, but for the unfortunate fires of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, would bear upon its face the marks it now lacks of
antiquity.
Bishop Godfrey de Lucy was constantly in residence at Bishop Sutton in
the palace there. The road passes through this delightful village a
mile or more to the east of New Alresford and something remains, the
ruins of the kennels it is said, of the palace. This was doubtless "the
manour-house ... a verie olde house somtyme walled round aboutte with
stone now decaied well waterid with an olde ponde or moote adjoyning to
it," of which we hear in the time of Edward VI. It seems to have been
destroyed in the Civil war, but even in 1839 much remained of it.
"Within the memory of many persons now living," writes Mr Duthy in
1839, "considerable vestiges of a strong and extensive building stood
in the meadows to the north of the church, which were the dilapidated
remains of an ancient palace of the Bishops of Winchester. The walls
were of great thickness and composed of flints and mortar, but it was
impossible to trace the disposition of the apartments or the form of
the edifice." Bishop Sutton had belonged to the church of Winchester
since King Ine's day, but in the early part of the eleventh century it
was held by Harold, and after the Conquest by Eustace of Boulogne.
Bishop Henry de Blois regained it for the church by exchange, in whose
possession it has remained but for a few brief intervals in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in one of which John Evelyn
bought it, until to-day.
It is probably to this fact we owe the beauty and preservation of the
church here, with its fine twelfth century nave, not fundamentally
altered, and its chancel still largely of the thirteenth century.
Especially notable are the two Norman doorways in the nave and curious
supports of the belfry there, four naked and massive posts.
[Illustration: SELBORNE FROM THE HANGER]
Bishop Sutton was the last place I was to see upon the old road, for a
mile beyond that village I left it where it turned northward, to go
east into Ripley and so by the byways to climb into the hills, and
crossing them to descend steeply at evening into the village of
Selborne by the Oakhanger stream just before it enters that narrow
brief pass into the Weald. There in the twilight I stayed for awhile
under the yew tree in the churchyard to think of the writer, for love
of whom I had made this journey all the way from Winchester.
"In the churchyard of this village," writes Gilbert White in "The
Antiquities of Selborne," "is a yew-tree whose aspect bespeaks it to be
of great age; it seems to have seen several centuries and is probably
co-eval with the church, and therefore may be deemed an antiquity; the
body is squat, short and thick, and measures twenty-three feet in the
girth, supporting a head of suitable extent to its bulk. This is a male
tree, which in the spring sheds clouds of dust and fills the atmosphere
around with its farina.... Antiquaries seem much at a loss to determine
at what period this tree first obtained a place in churchyards. A
statute was passed A.D. 1307 and 35 Edward I., the title of which is
"Ne rector arbores in cemeterio prosternat." Now if it is recollected
that we seldom see any other very large or ancient tree in a churchyard
but yews, this statute must have principally related to this species of
tree; and consequently their being planted in churchyards is of much
more ancient date than the year 1307. As to the use of these trees,
possibly the more respectable parishioners were buried under their
shade before the improper custom was introduced of burying within the
body of the church where the living are to assemble. Deborah, Rebekah's
nurse, was buried under an oak--the most honourable place of interment
--probably next to the cave of Machpelah, which seems to have been
appropriated to the remains of the patriarchal family alone. The
further use of yew trees might be as a screen to churches, by their
thick foliage, from the violence of winds; perhaps also for the
purpose of archery, the best long bows being made of that material, and
we do not hear that they are planted in the churchyards of other parts
of Europe, where long bows were not so much in use. They might also be
placed as a shelter to the congregation assembling before the church
doors were opened, and as an emblem of mortality by their funeral
appearance. In the south of England every churchyard almost has its
tree and some two; but in the north we understand few are to be found."
Even in that passage, full as it is of all the quietness of the English
countryside, something of the secret of Gilbert White, his ever living
incommunicable charm may be found: his extraordinary and gentle gift of
becoming, as it were, one with the things of which he writes, his
wonderfully sympathetic approach to us, his so simple and so consummate
manner. The man might stand in his writings for the countryside of
England, incarnate and articulate. He not only leads you ever out of
doors, but he is just that, the very spirit of the open air, the out-
of-doors of a country where alone in Europe one can be in the lanes, in
the meadows, on the hills under the low soft sky with delight every day
of the year. He teaches, as Nature herself teaches; we seem to move in
his books as though they were the fields and the woods, and there the
flowers blow and the birds sing. It is not so much that his observation
is extraordinarily wide and accurate, but that we see with his eyes,
hear with his ears, and the phenomena, beautiful or wonderful, which he
describes, we experience too, and because of him with something of his
love, his interest and carefulness. What other book ever written upon
Natural History can we read, who are not Naturalists, over and over and
over again, and for its own sake, not for the myriad facts he gathered
through a long lifetime, the acute observation and record of which have
won him the homage of his fellow scientists, but for the pure human and
literary pleasure we find there, a pleasure the like of which is to be
found nowhere else in such books in the same satisfying quantity, and
at all, only because of him.
And so on the next morning the first place I went to see was The Wakes,
the house where this great and dear lover of England of my heart lived,
dying there in 1793, to lie in his own churchyard, his grave marked by
a simple headstone bearing his initials "G.W." and the date. In the
church is a tablet to him and his brother Benjamin, who has also placed
there in memory of him the seventeenth century German triptych over
the altar. But he needs no memorial from our hands; all he loved,
Selborne itself in all its beauty, the exquisite country round it, the
hills, the valleys, the woods and the streams are his monument, the
very birds in their songs remind us of him, and there is not a walk
that is not the lovelier because he has passed by. Do you climb up
through the Hanger and admire the beeches there? It is he who has told
us what to expect, loving the beech like a father, "the most lovely of
all forest trees whether we consider its smooth rind or bark, its
glossy foliage or graceful pendulous boughs." Do you linger in the
Plestor? It is he who tells you of the old oak that stood there, and
was blown down in 1703 "to the infinite regret of the inhabitants and
the vicar who bestowed several pounds in setting it in its place again;
but all this care could not avail; the tree sprouted for a time then
withered and died." Or who can pass by Long Lythe without remembering
that it was a favourite with him too. For he loved this place so well,
that as Jacob waited for Rachel so he for Selborne. He had been born
there, where his grandfather being then vicar, aged seventy-two years
and eleven months, he was to die in 1720. He went to school at Farnham
and Basingstoke, and then in 1739 to Oriel College, Oxford, where in
1744 he was elected to a Fellowship. Presently benefice after benefice
was offered him but he refused them all, having made up his mind to
live and die at Selborne. Selborne must then have been a very secluded
place, the nearest town, Alton, often inaccessible in winter one may
think, judging from the description Gilbert White gives of the "rocky
hollow lane" that led thither, but it is perhaps to this very fact that
we owe more than a few of those immortal pages ever living and ever
new. Since he was cut off from men he was able to give himself wholly
to nature. He is less a part of the mere England of his day than any
man of that time; he belonged only to England of my heart. Yet the
events of his time, though they touched him so little, were neither few
nor unimportant. The year of his birth was the year of the South Sea
Bubble. When he was a year old the great Duke of Marlborough died. His
eighth birthday fell in the year which closed the eyes of Sir Isaac
Newton. He was twenty-five in the "forty-five," when Prince Charles
Edward held Edinburgh after Preston Pans. He saw the change in the
calendar, the conquest of India by Clive, the victory and death of
Wolfe at Quebec the annexation of Canada, the death of Chatham, the
loss of the American Colonies, the French Revolution. And how little
all this meant to him!
But anything connected with Selborne interested him, and he wrote of
and studied its "antiquities" as well as its "natural history." Nor
were these antiquities so negligible as one might think. In his day the
church was still an interesting building, and he has left us an
interesting account of it. But he does not forget to tell us, too, of
the Augustinian Priory of Selborne, that was founded in 1233 and stood
to the east of the village, the way to it lying through his beloved
Long Lythe, and the site of which is now occupied by Priory Farm, a few
ruins remaining. Nothing, indeed, that concerned his beloved village
was to him ungrateful. It is, without doubt, this careful love of his
for the things that were his own, at his door, common things if you
will, common only in England of my heart, that has endeared him to
innumerable readers, many of whom have never set foot upon our shores
and would only not be utter strangers here if they did, because of him.
Such at least is the only explanation I can give of his immortality,
his constant appeal to all sorts and conditions of men.
Day by day as I wandered through the lanes and the woods that he had
loved with so wonderful and unconscious an affection, in a repose that
we have lost and a quietness we can only envy him, I tried to discover,
I tried to make clear to myself, what it really is that on a dull
evening at home, in a sleepless night in London, or in the long winter
evenings anywhere, draws me back again and again to that curious book.
But even there in Selborne the secret was hidden from me. In truth one
might as well inquire of the birds why they delight us, or of the
flowers why we love them so; for in some way I cannot understand
Gilbert White was gently at one with these and spoke of them sweetly
like a lover and a friend having a gift from God by which he makes us
partakers of his pleasure.
And so spring drew to a close as I lingered in Selborne, for I could
not drag myself away. And when, at last, I determined to set out, the
Feast of St John was already at hand, so that I made haste once more
across the hills for Winchester on my way to Old Sarum and Stonehenge,
where I would see the sunrise on midsummer morning.
End of Project Gutenberg's England of My Heart--Spring, by Edward Hutton