CRANBURY AND BRAMBRIDGE
GREAT changes began at the Restoration. Robert Maunder became vicar of
Hursley in 1660, on whose presentation is unknown; but that he or his
curate were scholars is probable, since the entries in the parish
registers both of Hursley and Otterbourne begin to be in Latin. Cranbury
had passed from Dean Young to his brother Major General Young, and from
him to his daughter, the wife or Sir Charles Wyndham, son of Sir Edmund
Wyndham, Knight Marshall of England and a zealous cavalier. Brambridge,
closely bordering on Otterbourne, on the opposite side of the Itchen,
though in Twyford Parish, was in the possession of the Welles family.
Brambridge and Otterbourne are divided from one another by the river
Itchen, a clear and beautiful trout stream, much esteemed by fishermen.
In the early years of Charles II. a canal was dug, beside the Itchen, for
the conveyance of coal from Southampton. It was one of the first formed
in England, and for two hundred years was constantly used by barges. The
irrigation of the meadows was also much benefited, broad ditches being
formed—“water carriages” as they are locally called—which conduct the
streams in turn over the grass, so that even a dry season causes no
drought, but they always lie green and fresh while the hills above are
burnt brown.
Another work was set in hand during the reign of Charles II., namely the
palace he designed to build in rivalry of Versailles. Sir Christopher
Wren was the architect. The grounds were intended to stretch over the
downs to a great distance, and on the highest point was to stand a
pharos, whose light would be visible from the Solent. Fountains were to
be fed from the Itchen, and a magnificent palace was actually begun, the
bricks for it being dug from a clay pit at Otterbourne, which has ever
since borne the name of Dell Copse, and became noted for the growth of
daffodils. The king lodged at Southampton to inspect the work, and there
is a tradition (derived from Dean Rennell) that being an excellent
walker, he went on foot to Winchester. One of his gentlemen annoyed him
by a hint to the country people as to who he was, whereupon a throng come
out to stare at him, at one of the bridges. He escaped, and took his
revenge by a flying leap over a broad “water carriage,” leaving them to
follow as they could.
His death put an end to his design, when only one wing of the building
was completed. It was known as “the King’s House” and was used as
barracks till 1892, when it was unfortunately burnt to the ground.
Boyat, or Bovières, as it once was called, had been a “hundred,” and was
probably more of a village than at present, since up to 1840 there was a
pound and stocks opposite to the single farm-house that remained. The
lands stretched from the hill to the river, near which was a hamlet
called Highbridge, just on the boundary between Twyford and Otterbourne.
Here was an endowed Roman Catholic chapel, a mere brick building, at the
back of a cottage, only distinguished by a little cross on the roof.
There is reason to think that a good many dependants of the Brambridge
family lived here, for there are entries in the parish register that
infants had been born at Highbridge, but the curate of Otterbourne could
not tell whether they had been baptized.
A new parchment parish register was provided in 1690, and very carefully
kept by the curate, John Newcombe, who yearly showed it up to the
magistrates at the Petty Sessions, when it was signed by two of them. A
certain Augustin Thomas was a man of some property, comprising a house
and two or three fields, which were known as “Thomas’s Bargain,” till one
was used as a site for the Vicarage. Several surnames still extant in
the parish are found in the register, Cox, Comley, Collins, Goodchild,
Woods, Wareham—Anne and Abraham were the twin children of John and Anne
Diddams, a curious connection with the name Didymus (twin), which seems
to be the origin.
There must have been extensive repairs, if such they may be called, of
the church, probably under the influence of Sir Charles and Lady
Wyndham—for though Cranbury House stands in Hursley parish, it is so much
nearer to Otterbourne that the inhabitants generally attend the church
there,—and two huge square pews in the chancel, one lined with red baize,
the other bare, were appropriated to Cranbury, and might well have been
filled by the children of Sir Charles and Dame James his wife—Jacoba in
her marriage register at Hursley—for they had no less than seventeen
children, of whom only five died in infancy, a small proportion in those
days of infant mortality. The period of alteration is fixed by a great
square board bearing the royal arms, with the initials W. and M. and the
date 1687. No notice was taken of the Nassau shield, and indeed it must
have been put up in a burst of enthusiasm for the glorious Revolution,
for the lion, as best he can be recollected, had a most exultant
expression, with his tongue out of one side of his mouth.
The black-letter Commandments on the chancel arch were whitewashed out,
and a tablet in blue with gold lettering erected in their stead on each
side of the altar. The east window had either then or previously been
deprived of all its tracery, and was an expanse of plain glass with only
a little remains of a cusp at the top of the arch. The bells were in one
of the true Hampshire weather-boarded square towers, of which very few
still exist in their picturesqueness. There were the remains of an old
broken font, and a neat white marble one, of which the tradition was that
it was given by a parish clerk named David Fidler, and it still exists as
the lining of the present font.
Sir Charles Wyndham died in 1706, his wife in 1720. A small monument was
raised for them in Hursley Church, with an inscription on a tablet now in
the tower, purporting that the erection was by their daughters, Frances
White and Beata Hall.
Frances was married to a man of some note in his day, to judge by the
monument she erected to his memory in Milton Church, near Lymington,
where his effigy appears, an upright figure cut off at the knees, and in
addition to the sword in his hand there is a metal one, with a blade
waved like a Malay crease, by the side of the monument. The inscription
is thus—
THOMAS WHITE Esq., son of
IGNATIUS WHITE Esq. of Fiddleford in Dorsetshire.
He served three kings and Queen Ann as a Commander in the guards, and
was much wounded. He was in the wars of Ireland and Flanders.
He had one son who dyed before him. He departed this life on the
17th of February in the year 1720.
This monument was erected by his widow Frances, one of the daughters
of Sir Charles Wyndham, in the county of Southampton.
Mrs. White thus lost her husband and her mother in the course of the same
year. Her brother sold the Cranbury property to Jonathan Conduitt,
Esquire, who was a noted person in his day. He married Catherine Barton,
the favourite niece and adopted daughter of Sir Isaac Newton. It may be
remembered that this great man was a posthumous child, and was bred up by
his mother’s second husband, Barnabas Smith, Rector of North Witham,
Lincolnshire, so as to regard her children as brothers and sisters.
Hannah Smith married one Thomas Barton of Brigstock, and her daughter
Catherine (whose name mysteriously is found as suing for the price of
property sold to Charles II. for the site of the King’s house at
Winchester), lived with Sir Isaac Newton, was very beautiful, and much
admired by Lord Halifax for her wit and gaiety. It was even reported
that she was privately married to him, but this of course was mere
scandal, and she became the wife of Jonathan Conduitt, educated at
Trinity College, a friend and pupil of Newton, who had for many years
assisted in the harder work of Master of the Mint, and wrote an essay on
the gold and silver coinage of the realm. He was member of Parliament
for Southampton. Sir Isaac made his home with his niece and her husband
till his death in 1727, when Mr. Conduitt succeeded to his office as
Master of the Mint, and intended to write his life, but was prevented by
death in 1737. Among the materials which Mr. Conduitt had preserved is
the record of Newton’s saying, “I do not know what I may appear to the
world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the
sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble
or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all
undiscovered before me.”
A very curious relic of Sir Isaac survives in the garden at Cranbury
Park, viz. a sun-dial, said to have been calculated by Newton. It is in
bronze, in excellent preservation, and the gnomon so perforated as to
form the cypher I. C. seen either way. The dial is divided into nine
circles, the outermost divided into minutes, next, the hours, then a
circle marked “Watch slow, Watch fast,” another with the names of places
shown when the hour coincides with our noonday, such as Samarcand and
Aleppo, etc., all round the world. Nearer the centre are degrees, then
the months divided into days. There is a circle marked with the points
and divisions of the compass, and within, a diagram of the compass, the
points alternately plain and embossed.
There is no date, but the maker’s name, John Rowley, and the arms of Mr.
Conduitt, as granted in 1717. Quarterly 1st and 4th Gules, on a fesse
wavy argent, between three pitchers double eared or, as many bees volant
proper.
2nd and 3rd Gules, a lion rampant argent between six acorns or. Impaling
argent 3 boars’ heads sable for Barton.
Crest—Two Caducean rods with wings, lying fesse ways or. Thereon a
peacock’s head, erased proper.
The motto—“Cada uno es hijo de sus obras.” “Each one is son of his
deeds”—translates the Spanish.
The 1st and 3rd quartering belongs to the old family of Chenduite, from
which Jonathan Conduitt may have been descended. Probably he could not
prove his right to their Arms, and therefore had the fresh grant.
Mr. Conduitt died in 1737, leaving a daughter, whose guardians sold
Cranbury to Thomas Lee Dummer, Esquire, from whom it descended in 1765 to
his son of the same name.
Catherine Conduitt married the son of Viscount Lymington, afterwards
created Earl of Portsmouth.