Carolyn Hughes
Showing posts with label Carolyn Hughes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carolyn Hughes. Show all posts

“As thou art, so once was I” by Carolyn Hughes

I've been delving once more into the history of plague in the fourteenth century, in preparation for writing the fourth book in my novel series, the Meonbridge Chronicles. In my reading, I came across a reference to the story of “the three living and the three dead”, and to the images of these unhappy characters that abound in European churches, including many in England. I’ve known about this trope for years, but I was prompted to revisit briefly what I had read before about the effect of the Black Death on art in Europe, simply out of fascination! I apologise in advance that this is not going to be a very cheery little piece!

There are three types of art that I am looking at in this context: images of the “three living and three dead”, in manuscripts and on church walls throughout Europe; cadaver or memento mori tombs, and portrayals of the danse macabre or Dance of Death.

The three living and the three dead
The three living and three dead was a common theme in paintings prior to the arrival of the Black Death in the mid fourteenth century (1348-50 in the UK). But it seems that, after the Black Death, the images became even more plentiful and more shocking and realistic in their presentation. 
The British Library blog tells us a little more about the Three Living and Three Dead trope. The tale was clearly commonplace in Europe, especially in France and England, and dates back at least to the 13th century.  The basic story is that three wealthy young men are out hunting when they meet three corpses, in various states of decay but which can nonetheless talk, and they remind the young men of the transience of life and the need to mend their dissolute ways.
This page from the early 14th century Psalter of Robert de Lisle, from East Anglia, which is held in the British Library, has three kings meeting the three corpses, and underneath are lines from an Anglo-Norman poem Le dit des trios morts et trios vifs. Some of the words are familiar enough: “I was well fair” (Ich wes wel fair) say the corpses, and “Such shall you be” (Such schel tou be). We will meet these sentiments again.
By “De Lisle Psalter”. British-Library-Arundel-127.
[Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
And here is similar image, from the manuscript of the Roman de la Rose, held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France:
By Variés XIIIe (BnF Ms 378 Roman de la rose).
[Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons] 
I am struck by how, in both these manuscripts, the corpses look so very cheerful, as if they are saying “yah sucks to you”!
An Italian fresco in the Camposanto Monumentale in Pisa, painted by Buonamico Buffalmacco probably in 1338-39, roughly a decade before the Black Death spread across Europe, shows The Three Dead and the Three Living, as well as the Triumph of Death, the Last Judgement, and Hell. It is a bit more serious in tone than the two manuscripts. A group of youths are enjoying themselves in the garden while angels of Death collect corpses over their heads. The painting is thought to have inspired the setting of Boccaccio’s Decameron, written a few years after the Black Death and, apparently, Buffalmacco himself is depicted in three of the Decameron’s stories as a merry prankster. How very curious!
Fresco by Buonamico Buffalmacco in Pisa.
[Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
Images of the three living and three dead abound on church walls throughout Europe, including many in England. Of the English examples, I’ll show two, both 14th century and both from Norfolk: one from the church of St Margaret and St Remigius in Seething, and another from St Andrew’s Church in Wickhampton.
Part of the mural in Seething.Evelyn Simak / The church of SS Margaret and Remigius,
in Seething - Three Living and Three Dead - CC BY-SA 2.0.

Part of the mural in Wickhampton.
By David from Colorado Springs, United States
(St Andrew’s church Wickhampton Norfolk).
[CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons]
Again, how very cheerful those grinning corpses are, presumably having a huge laugh at the expense of the living!

Cadaver tombs
Much less jolly-seeming, however, are the cadaver or memento mori tombs, which became popular, if that can be the right word, in the 15th century. An understanding of the inevitability of death and the ultimate futility of wealth, power or beauty is depicted clearly in the gruesomeness of their sculptures.
A cadaver tomb is a type of gisant, a recumbent effigy tomb, which has an effigy of a decomposing corpse, often shrouded and sometimes complete with worms, either on its own or together with an effigy of the living (in a “double-decker” tomb). Memento mori (“remember (that) you will die”) is a medieval reflection on the vanity and transience of earthly life. 
The “before” and “after” images of the deceased on these tombs are reminiscent of the three living and the three dead.
Cadaver tombs were of course only for high-ranking people because one had to be rich to afford to have one made, and powerful enough to be allotted space for it in the church. Which is rather ironic given the nature of the memento mori premise...
Examples in England include the tomb and effigy of John FitzAlan, 14th Earl of Arundel, who died in 1435, in the Fitzalan Chapel at Arundel, West Sussex, which I have seen. The sculpture of the corpse is hideously realistic.
The Earl of Arundel’s tomb. By Lampman.
[CC BY-SA 3.0, from Wikimedia Commons]
Another example is this one in Fyfield Church in Essex, of John Golafre (died 1442), an English courtier and Member of Parliament. Again, the cadaver sculpture below his armoured effigy is one of the more realistic products of this macabre late-medieval tradition.
John Golafre’s tomb in Fyfield. By William M. Connolley.
[CC BY-SA 4.0, from Wikimedia Commons]
John Baret, a wealthy burgess from Bury St Edmunds, Norfolk, who died in 1467, doesn’t have a “living” effigy on his tomb, but just a cadaver, and again horribly realistic. And, grimly, the inscription says: “Miserable one, what reason have you to be proud? Soon you will be as we / a fetid cadaver, food for worms.” Indeed!

Danse macabre
That Death is contemptuous of rank and wealth was an egalitarian message that found further expression in late medieval Europe with the images of the danse macabre or Dance of Death. The message of these paintings, on walls and on canvas, is the same: what point is there in wealth, power, gentle birth, beauty etc etc, when the end is the same for all? This populist theme of Death as the Great Leveller was taken up everywhere in 15th century art.
In a late medieval poem, Disputacione betwyx the Body and Wormes (c1440), the poet has seen a cadaver tomb of a young noblewoman, her effigy shown as both “living” and “dead”. In his reflection upon her death, the poet has Worms argue with the Body that their role is not to consume her once fresh Body “with ane insaciabylle and gredy appetyte”, but in fact to devour her rotting flesh quite selflessly, generously even! As “we hafe to do”, the Worms say, “with alle that wer myghty”, just as the young woman herself once was. 
In the danse macabre images, one or more personifications of Death summon representatives from all walks of life to dance to the grave. A splendid example of this is a mural in a church in Hrastovlje, Slovenia, painted at the end of the 15th century. It shows men and women of every rank and station being led, again by grinning skeletons, towards a grave. (I have had to chop this image in half to enable you to see it moderately clearly...)
Mural in Hrastovlje, Slovenia. Top: Left half; Bottom: Right half.
National Gallery of Slovenia.
[Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
The leftmost section of the Hrastovlje mural. 
Bibliofil at cs.wikipedia [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY-SA 2.5, from Wikimedia Commons]
Edward of Woodstock (the Black Prince) was the eldest son of Edward III, but died before his father and so it was his young son, Richard II, who succeeded to the throne. Nonetheless, Edward was revered as one of the most successful English commanders of the Hundred Years’ War, and was thought by his contemporaries to be one of the greatest knights of his age.
Despite, or perhaps because of, his elevated status, Edward evidently thought it right to show humility in death. He died of dysentery (perhaps) in 1376, and was buried with great state in Canterbury Cathedral.
The tomb of the Black Prince, in Canterbury Cathedral. By Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD.
[CC BY-SA 3.0, from Wikimedia Commons]
But his epitaph, inscribed around his effigy, includes these humble, knowing, lines:

Such as thou art, sometime was I.
Such as I am, such shalt thou be.
I thought little on th’our of Death
So long as I enjoyed breath.
On earth I had great riches
Land, houses, great treasure, horses, money and gold.
But now a wretched captive am I,
Deep in the ground, lo here I lie.
My beauty great, is all quite gone,
My flesh is wasted to the bone.

Sentiments that we have met before in this little review of the medieval art of death.
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The Meon Valley Railway - friendly, pleasurable, beautiful by Carolyn Hughes

Last month’s blog looked at the literary and historical associations of the route along which the Meon Valley Railway once ran, many of which associations referred to people and times well before the railway actually existed. This month, I am going to relate a little more about the railway itself, and the purposes it served during its brief half-century lifespan.
Route of the MVR, adapted from
the map in R.A. Stone’s book,
 The Meon Valley Railway, 1983,
Kingfisher Railway Productions.

Agriculture and horticulture

As might be expected in such an agricultural region, a good deal of non-passenger traffic for the Meon Valley Railway (MVR) came from shipping farm produce. In this part of Hampshire, the produce included watercress, fruit (especially strawberries and apples), milk and cattle. The London & South Western Railway (LSWR) put on special market-day trains, with both passenger carriages and livestock cars, that allowed farmers to accompany their livestock. There were local “pick-up/set-down” goods services all along the line, which called at every station to deliver and pick up any waiting goods.
Watercress has been grown in Hampshire for centuries. The area’s geology, with its chalky downlands, cut by clear chalk streams, provides perfect growing conditions. Apparently, in the 1800s, working people often ate watercress sandwiches, collecting the wild leaves themselves from rivers and streams. Watercress had a reputation as a panacea for everything from lethargy to baldness, scurvy and even freckles. Its popularity led to watercress farms being established throughout Hampshire. It was grown in gravel beds over which ran a constant flow of water from the mineral-rich springs fed by rainwater leaching through the chalk.
The commercial viability of Hampshire watercress received a boost in 1865, when a new railway line was opened between Alton and Winchester, connecting at each end with the existing LSWR line. The new railway was called the Mid-Hants Railway, although in time it became known as the Watercress Line, because it transported so much Hampshire watercress to London’s Covent Garden Market. One of the line’s principal stations was at Alresford, which was essentially the “watercress capital” of Hampshire. But watercress was also grown in the Meon Valley, at Warnford – in beds that are still actively producing watercress – and, when the MVR was built, it connected with the Mid-Hants railway at Alton, providing a fast route to London for the Meon Valley watercress growers. The Watercress Line is now a heritage railway.
Watercress beds at Warnford Photo © Tony Grant / cc-by-sa 2.0
The lower half of the MVR line ran through an extensive market gardening area. Strawberry growing was a very important industry for the area during the late 1800s to mid 1900s. An area just north of the Solent, around Titchfield and Fareham, bounded by the rivers Meon and Hamble, proved ideal for strawberry growing, the rather poor stony soil suiting the shallow-rooted plants, and a warm prevailing wind from the Solent reducing the risk of frost in the critical flowering weeks. In 1889, a LSWR station was built at Swanwick, a little to the north-west of Titchfield, specially to serve the local strawberry industry. In the late 1800s, the area produced as many as 7,000 tons of strawberries each year. During the weeks of the strawberry harvest, Swanwick station became one of the busiest stations on the south coast with the box vans of the “strawberry special” trains heading off to Covent Garden and across the country. But, while Swanwick was perhaps the focal point for the transport of strawberries, “strawberry specials” were also run on the MVR, with whole trains of strawberries being loaded at Mislingford and Wickham.
In the mid 1800s, the owner of the manor of Wickham, which included an area of the Bere Forest, built a settlement of houses for his forestry tenants, each house having an acre of land, at a place that was then, and still is, called Hundred Acres. The tenants found that the area was very suitable for growing fruit, and in particular for the production of early strawberries, and a few years later strawberries began to be grown there commercially. Initially the fruit was taken to Fareham station, six miles away, for onward transport to the London market and elsewhere. But the viability of the enterprise improved even further when the MVR was opened with a station at Wickham, only two miles from Hundred Acres.
It was in the 1960s that competition from imported fruit began to drive many producers out of business, and by the 1980s strawberry-growing as an industry in Hampshire was essentially over.
Strawberry fields in Hampshire
In the early days of the railway, all the MVR stations would have seen farmers bringing their milk in churns by horse and cart for despatch to the dairy at Portsea Island, in special milk vans attached to the normal passenger services. Livestock too travelled frequently on the line, to and from markets at Alton and Fareham. West Meon station was apparently the scene of the livestock of entire farms arriving by rail from such far away places as Cumberland and Northumberland, the farmers having hired special trains for the purpose. This must have been quite a sight!

Wartime use
With each outbreak of the two world wars, for the MVR, as for most railways, traffic increased, with the passage of troop trains bound for the docks and France. A box van was added to all MVR trains to cater for extra parcels and troops’ luggage.
In 1940, the MVR line received some attention from the German bombers. Droxford Station was hit and two railway workers' cottages were demolished. Bombs were dropped either side of the line at Soberton although they missed the track, but West Meon tunnel was also targeted and a stretch of track was damaged. Apparently, desperate telephone calls were made after this attack, in an attempt to stop the train coming down the line from Alton, and what might have been a serious accident was avoided. 
However, the MVR did have an important role in the Second World War. During the build-up to D-Day, men and equipment had to be moved to the south of England, and large numbers of tanks were moved by rail to Mislingford  goods yard, from where they were then dispersed to local lanes and fields for temporary storage. Mislingford was also the site of a temporary wooden platform to serve the large number of Canadian troops who were encamped in the Forest of Bere.
The remains of the Mislingford goods yard.
Public domain.
I have mentioned this before, in a previous History Girls post, but I will repeat a little anecdote about Mislingford. The old loading gauge at Mislingford still stands (if nowadays much hidden by vegetation) on what is now the Meon Valley Railway trail (which follows the old railway from West Meon to Wickham), so you can pass by it as you walk the trail. I’m not really a particularly mystical person, but I have occasionally sensed a “something” at this spot… The ghosts perhaps of those D-Day soldiers disembarking from the trains? The clanking of those tanks being unloaded from the trains? There is actually a timber yard close by, so maybe it has only ever been the rumble of machinery and the sound of workmen’s voices that I’ve heard…? Or maybe not…
But the railway’s most famous wartime role came in June 1944, when the War Cabinet met Allied leaders in a special train parked at a heavily guarded Droxford station. When the train arrived, in it were just the British prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill, and the prime minister of South Africa, General Jan Smuts. Next day they were joined by Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, and Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour, who arrived by car. And, the following day, the prime ministers of Canada, New Zealand, and Rhodesia came too, and Dwight Eisenhower, the president of the United States, drove across from his nearby base at Southwick House. They were there to discuss the D-Day invasion.
Although the meeting was officially kept secret from Droxford residents, it seems that Churchill had chosen the station because it was near the coast and to the Allied command centre at Southwick. But there was also some speculation that the site was thought particularly secure because the train could be largely hidden by overshadowing beech trees, and there was a deep cutting into which it could be shunted if it came under attack.
Anyway, in the evening of the final day of their meeting, the 5th June, Churchill’s train pulled out of Droxford station and returned to London. And, shortly after midnight the following morning, Allied troops attacked Pegasus Bridge and, soon thereafter, the American airborne landings in Normandy began.
Droxford Railway Station in 1968 By Lamberhurst
[cc-by-sa/4.0] from Wikimedia Commons

Decline and death of the railway

With all the early excitement and anticipation of what the MVR might bring to the region, and despite its obvious value to the local agricultural and horticultural community, the line never fulfilled its initial promise.
As early as the years following the First World War, there seemed to be little or no demand for passenger traffic. The hoped-for London through-traffic never materialised, and after only a few years the London to Gosport services were cut back. During the summer months, Sunday excursion trains to the sea ran down the line, originating from Ascot and Farnham, but, without sufficient normal, daily passenger traffic, the line never really prospered, becoming only a rural branch line and a Hampshire railway backwater. The tourist traffic to the resort area of Stokes Bay (near Gosport) also failed to grow, with steamers preferring the more established ports at Portsmouth and Southampton. From then on the MVR only handled regular traffic between Fareham and Alton, and it wasn’t long before it became clear that there was no need for a frequent train service. Cutbacks were already being made by 1922.
It does seem that insufficient effort was made to promote the railway's services, with cheap fares, convenient schedules and more publicity. But, as early as the 1920s, there was also increasing competition from road traffic, with more and more commercial vehicles making serious inroads into railway revenue by competing for the carriage of goods. This applied to all railways, not just the MVR: rail passenger travel, as well as freight traffic, declined everywhere. And all railways began to make cuts.
Yet there did remain a demand for the MVR from local farmers: sometime in the 1920s, the parishes of Corhampton and Meonstoke asked LSWR to provide a halt in Meonstoke to “assist the local farmers in the transport of milk etc to the towns”. The potential site of such a siding was marked by a short piece of rail set into the ground, but the siding was never built. However, though the section of rail remained in place until 1960, when it was discovered by a farmer cutting hay, and damaged his machinery. The rail was then presumably pulled up!
But the MVR was an early candidate for closure and, in 1955, passenger traffic was withdrawn completely and freight traffic reduced. Local people protested, but to no avail. However, when the National Farmers Union made a strong objection to the closure on the grounds that the line was much used during the busy sugar beet season, an enquiry was at least launched into their case. But the closure proceeded nonetheless.
And so, in February 1955, a mere 52 years after the MVR had opened, the Hampshire Chronicle reported its final day:
“On Saturday last, February 5th, the Meon Valley Railway closed, and the last public trains left Alton to travel “down” at 4.30pm and Fareham to do the “up” journey at 7.46pm.”
Passenger numbers rocketed in the final weeks of operation, as people took their final ride on the railway. That very last train was apparently full of people, many of them, the paper asserted, people who often “attended the last rites of dying railways”. Many local people also watched the train’s final journey from the fields beside the track and from the stations’ platforms.
This MVR closure was long before the “Beeching Axe” of the 1960s, when many well-used yet still “uneconomic” railways were closed. Although goods services did continue for a few more years on the MVR, with a once-a-day service from Fareham as far as Droxford, and a similar service from Alton as far as Farringdon, by 1968 both services had ended.
There does seem little doubt that, when the Meon Valley Railway was closed to passenger traffic, it had been shown quite clearly to be unsustainable as a passenger railway. Yet it was nonetheless held in some affection.
When, on 5th February, that final train arrived back at Alton station, the Hampshire Chronicle reported that:
“…the final obsequies are observed. The Meon Valley Railway – friendly, pleasurable, beautiful – had come to its end.” 
Trackbed of the Meon Valley Railway, Chawton, Hampshire,
looking towards the south. Next stop along this line would
have been the halt at Farringdon. cc-by-sa/2.0

For detailed information about the old railway in the Meon Valley, see The Meon Valley Railway by R.A. Stone, 1983, Kingfisher Railway Productions.
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"A lovely country, rich in literary and historical associations" by Carolyn Hughes

I have already written in the History Girls about the long defunct Meon Valley Railway (MVR), a feature of this lovely part of Hampshire that is often part of my daily walk, together with the River Meon itself and the remnants of a royal hunting ground, the Forest of Bere. All that is left of the line now is an 11 miles (17.5 km) stretch of woodland track on which you can walk (or trot or cycle) from Wickham through Droxford to West Meon. But when it opened the railway ran for 22.5 miles (36.2 km) between Alton and Fareham, in part following the course of the River Meon.

Route of the MVR, adapted from the map
in R.A. Stone’s book,The Meon Valley Railway, 1983,
Kingfisher Railway Productions.
The railway was authorised in 1896 and opened in 1903, making it one of the last railways of any size to be built to mainline standards in the United Kingdom. It was expensive to build – £400,000, which is the equivalent of about £51.2 million at today’s prices – and from an engineering perspective, very difficult, because of the nature of the terrain it had to cross. The stations were impressive, built out of brick in a mock-Tudor style, with Portland stone mullions and gables. The architecture included stained-glass door windows and tiled interiors. The lavatories were apparently housed in outbuildings styled like Chinese pagodas!

At its northern (Alton) end, the MVR joined with the Mid-Hants Railway to Winchester, the Alton Line to Brookwood (and, presumably thence to London) and the Basingstoke and Alton Light Railway. At Fareham it linked with the Eastleigh to Fareham Line, the West Coastway Line and the line to Gosport. But, although the MVR was intended to be part of a through route from London to Portsmouth, it never fulfilled that purpose.

When it opened, local residents and businesses apparently had high hopes for the new railway, and, in the early days, as well as taking passenger traffic, it was used extensively for shipping local agricultural and horticultural produce, about which I shall say more in next month’s post.

Unfortunately, the economies of the new railway were never fully viable and the expected London through-traffic did not adequately materialise and, in 1955, after only fifty years, passenger traffic was cut, and the line was closed altogether in 1968.

Nonetheless, when it was first in use, many local newspapers were greatly impressed by the line’s speed, the scale of its engineering works, the high standards of the stations and other structures, and the beauty of the scenery it passed through. Some papers wrote articles describing the route and its scenery in great detail, pointing out places of interest along the line, such as this snippet from the Hampshire Telegraph and Post, published in June 1903:
“The line passes through a lovely country, rich in literary and historical associations.”
And it goes on to mention some of those associations, which I thought a splendid idea, and so decided to elaborate on some of them.

Travelling south from Alton, the Telegraph’s first-mentioned “association” is Chawton, a mile or so from Alton. Chawton is of course where Jane Austen lived and wrote for the last eight years of her life. It was in those years that she published all her major works. The house where Jane lived is now Jane Austen’s House Museum. She moved to the house, which was owned by her brother Edward, with her mother and sister in 1809. Edward had inherited the Chawton estate from his wealthy adoptive family, the Knights, and offered the house rent-free for life to his mother and sister. Jane died in 1817.

Jane Austen’s House Museum By R ferroni2000 [CC BY-SA 4.0
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

The first stop on the MVR line is Farringdon Halt, and we are now in Gilbert White territory. Gilbert was a pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist, as well as a cleric. He remained unmarried and a curate all his life. Gilbert was born in 1720, in his grandfather’s vicarage at Selborne, a few miles to the east of Farringdon. He is best known for his writings about the village’s history, geography, climate and natural history in his Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. After going to university in Oxford, Gilbert was ordained, and was curate in several parishes in Hampshire and Wiltshire, including Farringdon, as well as Selborne itself on four separate occasions. After the death of his father in 1758, Gilbert moved back into the family home in Selborne, which he eventually inherited in 1763. In 1784 he became curate of Selborne for the fourth time, remaining so until his death in 1793.

Gilbert White’s house is open to the public, and also incorporates The Oates Collections, devoted to the remarkable Oates family, in particular, Frank Oates, a Victorian explorer, and Captain Lawrence Oates, who accompanied Scott on his ill-fated Antarctic expedition to the South Pole. Lawrence Oates is famous for uttering the heart-rending line, quoted in Scott’s diary:
“I am just going outside and I may be some time.”
Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates during the British Antarctic Expedition, ca 1911.
Reference Number: PA1-f-067-069-1, Alexander Turnbull Library.
By Herbert Ponting [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
In 1912, on the return journey from the Pole, the party were facing appalling conditions, including exceptionally adverse weather, a lack of food, injuries and frostbite. Oates’ feet were badly frostbitten and he was weakening faster than the others. Scott wrote in his diary on 5th March: “The poor soldier is very nearly done”. On 15th March, Oates suggested that the others should leave him in his sleeping-bag, but they refused. So he walked a few more miles that day but, on the morning of the next day, he walked out of the tent into a blizzard, and was never seen again. It was his 32nd birthday. Scott recorded in his diary:
“We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman”.
Behind the village rises Selborne Hill, topped by Selborne Common, a designated SSSI (site of special scientific interest), managed by the National Trust. These particular Hampshire hills are part of the series of steep-sided wooded hills known as ‘hangers’, because the ancient woodlands of beech, lime, yew and ash seem to hang from the high slopes. On the Selborne ‘Hanger’ is an extraordinary zig zag path, which is pretty steep. The top is 91 metres above the Selborne’s High Street from which there are wonderful views over the village and surrounding countryside.

The Zig Zag path up Selborne Hanger
cc-by-sa/2.0 © Hugh Craddock geograph.org.uk/p/777046

Of the village and its setting, Gilbert said:
“At the foot of this hill, one stage or step from the uplands, lies the village, which consists of one single straggling street, three quarters of a mile in length, in a sheltered vale, and running parallel with the hanger.”
A little closer to Selborne than Farringdon is Tisted station, serving the village of East Tisted, and then comes Privett. The station buildings of both Tisted and Privett survived the dismantling of the railway and were converted to private houses.

After Privett station comes West Meon, five miles from the site of the famous Battle of Cheriton of 1644, an important Parliamentarian victory in the English Civil War. The battle took place on 29th March and resulted in the defeat of a Royalist army, which threw King Charles I onto the defensive for the remainder of the year.

In the last week of March, 1644, the parish of East Meon was overrun by thousands (10000 or so?) of Parliamentary troops under Sir William Waller. 6,000 or so Royalists under Sir Ralph Hopton were camped on high ground, overlooking the Parliamentarians. (Stated numbers on either side vary but it does seem clear that the two sides were not evenly matched numerically-speaking.) There were skirmishes between rival patrols in and around the area, and on the 28th March, Waller withdrew, apparently via Vinnel’s Lane in West Meon, and marched to Cheriton, where he lodged himself at Hinton Ampner House, the home of Lady Stukesly, a Parliamentary sympathiser.

By 28th March, the Royalist forces were in Alresford and, thinking that battle might be engaged the following day, Hopton deployed his troops along Cheriton Lane, a road that ran along a ridge of high ground. The Parliamentarians were about a mile to the south.
Battle was engaged the next day, with the armies drawn up on opposite ridges with Cheriton Wood on higher ground to the east. At first, the struggle was for control of the Wood, but, later, fighting broke out around Hinton Ampner, and continued on both flanks throughout the day. At length the Royalists were forced down from their position and Hopton decided to retreat. It is thought that about 60 Parliamentarians were killed or injured, but as many as 300 Royalists.

Hinton Ampner house is managed by the National Trust, though it is a very different house from the one used by William Waller as his HQ, for it has been rebuilt a number of times since 1644. However, you can follow a walk from the grounds that takes you around the site of the battle and, if you stand at the bottom of the garden, you can look across towards where the battle raged, and a plaque….

This map, from the britishbattles.com website shows well the juxtaposition of the battle site and the house.

Battle of Cheriton 29th March 1644 in the English Civil War: map by John Fawkes https://www.britishbattles.com/english-civil-war/battle-of-cheriton/

An associate, although not a son, of West Meon is Thomas Lord, who played first-class cricket from 1787 to 1802, overall making 90 known appearances. He is best known as the founder, in 1787, of Lord’s Cricket Ground, in St John’s Wood, London. But it was to West Meon that Thomas retired, and he died there in 1832, and is buried in the churchyard of St John’s Church. There is a pub in West Meon named after him.

Another occupant of the churchyard of St John’s is Guy Burgess, the Soviet spy, whose family had lived in West Meon since 1924. Burgess died in Moscow in 1956, but his ashes were returned to England, and on 5th October 1963 were interred in the family plot.

Hereabouts, the countryside is also of great archaeological interest, for West Meon is just three miles north of Old Winchester Hill, confusingly perhaps 11 miles away from Winchester! At the top of the hill, which is about 650 ft high, is an Iron Age hill fort, within which are Bronze Age barrows, which date from 4500-3500 BC. The fort was probably built between 600 and 300 BC and abandoned around 150-100 BC. Old Winchester Hill is a SSSI and a National Nature Reserve. In March 2009, it became part of the South Downs National Park. The chalk downland is home to very many species of butterfly, and also several types of orchid, including fly, bee, frog and butterfly orchids, as well as the more common early purple, pyramidal, common spotted and fragrant orchids. I have myself seen very many both butterflies and orchids.

Old Winchester Hill is a wonderful place to walk and affords astonishing 360º views of the surrounding countryside, as far as the Solent and the Isle of Wight to the south. But on a chilly day, it feels wild and bleak, and it must have been a challenging place to live for those Iron Age ancestors of ours!

View to Old Winchester Hill from MVR Line trail near Meonstoke, Hampshire.
By Pterre [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
or CC BY 3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

After West Meon station, comes Droxford. I wrote about Droxford on The History Girls back in June, so I won’t repeat that here. But, as we have already had mention of Thomas Lord, I should not fail to mention also nearby Hambledon, only four miles to the south east.

Hambledon is home of the Hambledon Cricket Club, which started life in 1768 as a social club, but gained its fame for organising inter-county cricket matches from 1753-1781. By the late 1770s, it was the foremost cricket club in England. The club’s first ground at Broadhalfpenny Down is considered the “Cradle of Cricket”, although cricket as a sport predated both the club and the ground by at least two centuries. In 1782, the club had to move from Broadhalfpenny to Windmill Down, about half a mile away towards the village of Hambledon, because The Bat and Ball Inn, which is next to Broadhalfpenny Down (and well worth a visit for its wealth of cricketing history memorabilia), had been requisitioned by the military, although a couple of years later they moved again to another ground. Hambledon’s great days ended in the late 1780 when the cricketing world shifted its centre to London, and Thomas Lord’s new cricket ground was established as the home of the new Marylebone Cricket Club in 1787.

After Droxford, there is a halt at Mislingford, and then comes Wickham station. Wickham is another place I have written about for the The History Girls, so we will pass it by for now, except for looking at this postcard image of the station on the last day of passenger service on the Meon Valley Railway in 1955.

Wickham Station on the last day of passenger service in 1955.
Photo by Lens of Sutton
From Wickham, the line continues on to Fareham but, in 1907, a halt was built a few miles north of Fareham, at Knowle, to serve the village of Funtley and Knowle Hospital, which was opened in 1852 as the Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum, and became a psychiatric hospital that operated until 1996. The halt was little more than a platform and a shelter, yet became one of the first rural stations in Hampshire to be lit by electricity, taking its power from the hospital’s generators.

But for the area around Mislingford, Wickham, Knowle and Fareham, the arrival of the railway would provide support for the burgeoning fruit-growing industry. But more about this, and other commercial and operational aspects of the Meon Valley Railway, next month.
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