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The River Hamble
A History
By David Chun The History Press
Copyright © 2014 David Chun
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5226-2
CHAPTER 1
Part One
The Bishop's River: Bishop's Waltham to Botley
Around the Source
A river's mouth is self-evident. Its source is less easy to place, and may even be the subject of at least antiquarian speculation. The Hamble River is formed by the coming-together of two streams that flow from the west and east of Bishop's Waltham, and which are shown as a neat snake's tongue on John Blaeu's map of 1645. It is helpful that the stream that flows from the west of Bishop's Waltham is fixed by the minor place name of Northbrook, probably meaning 'north of the brook', because this section of the river, now dried up as a result of water abstraction, is normally taken as the source of the Hamble. The 1840 tithe map for Bishop's Waltham shows a continuous area of water having its origin at Water Lane Farm and flowing south first down one side of Water Lane before entering a culvert and continuing down the other side.
Arguments about the precise source of the river aside, it can be said with confidence that the Hamble originates in the spring line that marks the transition from the chalk downland to the clay land of the valley, and there is a welter of springs and wells in this area as well as watery place names: Water Lane, Northbrook and two fields called Spring Close. Northbrook stream flows into the Bishop's Waltham pond and, on emerging on the southern side, is joined by another small watercourse, historically called the Lord's river. This was, it seems, a 12th-century diversion of the main stream to take water into the moat of Bishop's Waltham Palace. About half a mile downstream from the Palace ruins, the stream is augmented by another large stream that flows from Wintershill to the west. A similar distance further on it is joined by its main easterly branch that rises at The Moors, a wetland area of carr, woodland and pasture that has been a nature reserve since 1994 – and we are now on the Hamble proper.
Nearly the whole of the river valley between Bishop's Waltham to the tidal limit at Botley was historically under the sway of the Bishops of Winchester who, since 904, were lords of the manor of Bishop's Waltham. From Domesday Book we know that there was a 'park for wild animals', one of only 35 hunting parks recorded in the whole survey. This park covered 1,000 acres and large sections of its enclosure, called the Park Lug, survive. This large earthen bank and ditch would have been surmounted by a stout wood fence (the pale) to contain the deer. It seems that the park would have been compartmentalised – into a Great Park and Little Park – so that, as the Pipe Rolls record, two species of deer, the red and the fallow, could be kept in it.
This park would have dominated the landscape to the south-west of Bishop's Waltham for over six hundred years. Within the park pale, a substantial feature in its own right, we can envisage a mixed landscape of trees and grassland. The presence of wooded areas is attested to by the felling of timber in the park in 1355-6 for building work at Wolvesey Palace, another of the episcopal residences. There is a reference in 1352-3 to pigs being driven from East Meon to the park to feed on beech mast there, but there were also open areas, called launds, where the deer would have grazed. The presence of the Hamble River and its tributary streams within the park meant that there was an ample supply of water for the deer and it was not necessary to have man-made ponds. It also explains how, in 1248, Jordan the Hunter was, as is recorded, able to catch two otters there.
The park, once an important part of the medieval economy, though as much a venison farm as a hunting area, had become an anachronism by the 17th century. It was disparked in 1663 and converted into farmland. It is likely that Tangier, the name of one of the farms on the site of the original park, takes its name from the coastal city in North Africa, which had been captured in 1661 by Charles II's forces. The older use of the land survives in the name Lodge Farm, perhaps the site of the Keeper's house.
Though the park has gone, another part of the medieval landscape survives, albeit in a diminished form. The palace pond, now divided into two by the construction of the Bishop's Waltham bypass in the 1960s, was the Bishop's Great Pond formed by impounding the Hamble. This pond and the Lower Pond, which was just to the south of the present pond, supplied such fish as pike, tench and roach for the bishop's table and, during a period when the bishopric was vacant, for that of King Henry III. The fish were caught by the bishop's fishermen with the assistance of a seine net and rowing boat. Lower Pond had been drained by 1777, converted into meadows called Flowces and Penstock; the latter meaning 'a sluice', the former may also refer to the former use, or at least the wetness of the ground. The Great Pond was still valued as a fishpond long after the Lower Pond had been drained, being leased out for this purpose by later bishops.
This part of the valley did not just support vert and venison and provide fish; it also, as will be seen from the next chapter, drove the various mills along this part of its length. Also, in later centuries at least, its waters were allowed to overflow and enrich farmers' fields. The mills have now stopped working, or disappeared altogether, but the character of the valley here is still agricultural, given over largely to pasture for livestock but interspersed, in the summer of 2006 at least, with a few fields of maize and sunflowers. The river is an almost nondescript feature, at least until it is reinforced from the discharge from the sewage treatment works at Brooklands, but there is – something of a rare survival in the modern countryside – a ford just upstream from the works. A railway branch line was made between Botley and Bishop's Waltham through this quiet farmland in the 1860s. Although to some extent the railway helped the development of industry around Bishop's Waltham, it lasted less than a hundred years; the line ceased to carry passengers in 1933 and goods in 1963.
But even in this quiet rural backwater there are, as in most parts of this small country, at least peripheral reminders of the wider history. St Willibald (c.700-87?) set off from Bishop's Waltham on his pilgrimage to Rome and subsequent travels in the eastern Mediterranean, sailing from the mouth of the Hamble in 720. As a child he was entrusted to the care of Abbot Ecgwald, at an otherwise unknown monastery at Bishop's Waltham. He later carried out missionary work in Germany, where the structures of the church were weak and the people had lapsed into apostasy, and he later became Bishop of Eichstätt. We can try to imagine that last journey along the wooded valley – he appears never to have returned to England – to embark at the haven.
Another cleric, Gilbert White (1720-93) is not remembered as a churchman but as a naturalist. He was curate at Durley from 1753, but only held the position for a year and a half and appears to have spent little time there. He had lodgings in the vicarage and commuted between Durley and Selborne on his horse, Mouse. He appears to have left no record of the countryside of the area, only mentioning in The Natural History of Selborne the Waltham Blacks, who killed and stole the Bishop of Winchester's deer in Waltham Chase in the 1720s. According to White, no young person was possessed of manhood or gallantry unless he was a 'hunter', though recent research suggests that the Waltham Blacks were motivated by more than a sort of 18th-century machismo or even just animus towards the bishop. Bishop's Waltham was James II's 'little Green Town', which was bedecked with greenery when he travelled through it to signal the townspeople's loyalty to the Stuarts. And it has been suggested that Bishop's Waltham may have been a hotbed of Jacobitism and the Waltham Blacks rebels, or at least sympathisers, to the Jacobite cause.
The name of Frenchman's Bridge, which carries the Botley to Bishop's Waltham road across the stream that flows in from the Moors, reminds us of a more wide-ranging conflict. This bridge marked the southern limit to which Napoleonic prisoners of war could walk during the daylight hours – a curfew was imposed. A number of these prisoners of war, officers on parole, were quartered in Bishop's Waltham between 1793 and 1815, their number including Admiral Villeneuve, the commander of the French fleet defeated by Nelson at Trafalgar. He was, according to William Cobbett, 'poorly lodged, barely attended and not in good health'. Villeneuve initially resided at The Crown and later at Vernon Hill House, just to the north of Bishop's Waltham, which had once been the home of Admiral Edward Vernon, who had captured the Spanish fortress of Porto Bello in 1737. It seems somewhat surprising that large numbers of French prisoners of war, over a hundred at a time, should be kept such a short distance from the coast and the Portsmouth military-industrial complex. Indeed, in 1793 Lord Grenville, in response to a letter raising concerns about this from his brother the Marquess of Buckingham, conceded that, 'the prisoners on parole at Waltham ought to be ordered to a more inland quarter, for five miles from Gosport is surely too near our arsenal.' Nonetheless, French prisoners continued to be housed at Bishop's Waltham until 1812.
The Valley of the Mills
In an article that appeared in Yachting Monthly in 1912, and which will be mentioned further in a later chapter, a Commander C.E. Eldred RN described the estuary. The redoubtable Commander Eldred also took an interest in the river above Botley, recounting how 'fatal curiosity' caused him to take a bicycle and see whether the river there might be navigable by a small craft such as a light Canadian canoe. In this he was to be frustrated. Baffled in his attempt to follow the stream by railway embankments, barbed wire fences around strawberry fields and woods with a jungle of undergrowth, he eventually got to Durley Mill. 'Its weather boarding, hung with thick Virginia creeper, its red tiles coated in patches with green moss, the wooden hood of an old malt kiln, and the black punt tied up to a sloping garden full of bright flowers and apple trees, afforded colour enough for a dozen pictures ...' The miller's wife having assured him that it would not be possible to come up to the mill from Botley, he was 'inclined to count this as the successful termination of my exploration'.
Eldred's conclusion was fitting, for the river above Botley was, in historical terms and in the still-born 1665 Navigation Act, the subject of the next chapter notwithstanding, always more about water power than navigation. A water mill might only produce two to five horse-power – but this was not insignificant in the economy of the Middle Ages, when sources of power were limited. And as Geoffrey Grigson reminds us, there is a whole vanished folklore about mills and millers, 'those once prime figures of envy and blame in English country life' of whom it was said 'hair grows in the palm of an honest miller'. He mentions the clacking sound of the mill stones; if they were turning swiftly, they were saying: 'For prof-it, For prof-it, For prof-it'. If, though, they were turning more slowly, the message was sadder: 'No ... prof-it, No ... prof-it, No ... prof ... it', grumbled the stones. Such sounds would been frequently heard in this part of the valley, a distinct aural presence in the pre-industrial countryside. Although they were not all functioning at the same time, there were at least six mills on the stretch of river between Bishop's Waltham and Botley, and most have medieval origins.
One of the oldest is the mill at Botley. The present building dates from only the mid-18th century, but this is probably the site of one of the '2 mills rendering 20s' mentioned in Domesday Book. In 1536 it was let to a Thomas Everard at an annual rent of £4; the tenant was to repair the landings, cogs, runs, floatboards, trundle-heads and boxes. As we shall see, consideration was given to converting it into an iron-mill in the 17th century, but nothing came of this and it has remained a corn-mill throughout its history. Botley Mill ceased to function as such in the 1990s and is now being gradually converted into a museum of milling by its owners, the Appleby family. In the 20th century, it ceased to be driven by water power, but instead successively by gas, oil and, from 1971, by mains electricity. The reason for this was that the abstraction of water at Bishop's Waltham for the public supply had reduced the river's flow. It was not a new problem. In a letter dated 3 February 1742, the Duke of Portland's steward, Clement Walcot, wrote to the Duke's attorney:
Botley Miller claims for want of water and says Mrs Clewer who lives near two miles up the stream, has meadows which she waters from the main stream, he and two other millers says her watering the said meadows takes up one third part of the water which should come down to the mills, and is prejudice to all the mills. I went with Mr Fielder and called on Mrs Clewer who had the Bishops Woodward to go with us and see how it was, and found at the upper end of the meadows hatches locked down to prevent any one drawing them, which hatches stops the river from running down the antient course and so turn the water into back carriages to water the meadows, and what water goes off the meadows runs into the main river the lower end thereof, which is about a mile and a half before it comes to Botley Mill. Now between Botley Mill and the said meadows are two mills, one a corn mill, belonging to Durly Parish, which is but a little distance from the meadows and below that is a Paper Mill, which is above a mile from Botley Mill. I beg the favour of you to let me know whether at the time as all rivers and springs are so very low, Mrs Clewer can properly make use of the said water by turning it out of its course into her meadows to the prejudice of the said mills tho' it vents itself into the main river after it has left her meadows. Mr Clewer in his lifetime made use of the water as she now does but i am informed he never used to do it when water was so very low.
It is an interesting passage that is worth quoting in full. There does not appear any further mention of the Botley miller's complaint in the correspondence and probably it was resolved satisfactorily. It may have just been the combination of a particularly dry winter and the inexperience of Mrs Clewer in relation to such matters. Her husband – presumably the son of the Mr Clewer referred to – appears to have been incapacitated at this time; he died later the same year, probably from smallpox. It is particularly interesting for the evidence of water meadows on the Hamble and for the reference to the mills. The paper mill mentioned was Frog Mill, which stood on the eastern bank of the river, where it was reputed the paper for the Morning Post was manufactured. There is evidence of there being a paper mill there in the early part of the 17th century, and its history has been traced over three hundred years, but it does not seem to have been known as Frog Mill until the early 18th century. By 1862, the property is described as a 'Cottage and old paper Mill long since disused'. It seems that the mill buildings were largely pulled down at the end of the 19th century; the remaining part, to which there is no public access, owing its survival to use as a barn.
Moving upstream, the next mill is Durley Mill, which Commander Eldred found so picturesque, and which is on the western bank. It is probably one of the 'three mills rendering 17s. 6d.' mentioned in Domesday Book as belonging to the manor of Bishop's Waltham, the parish of Durley being historically part of Bishop's Waltham manor. There appears to be some confusion between Durley Mill and Frog Mill because a family called Frogge were tenants of the former in the 12th century. The 1693 Rental of Bishop's Waltham lists a separate mill called Paper Mills, but this is in the Curdridge tithing; Durley Mill is almost certainly the Frogmylle referred to in the Durley tithing. This fits with the topography. If the Froggmylle of the 1693 Rental had been Frog Mill, it would have been listed under the Curdridge tithing. Frogmylle is listed in the Pipe Rolls of the bishopric for 1301-2, when it was let for a year at 8s. Durley Mill continued to function until 1965, though by then it was oil-powered. Like the mill at Botley, it had been affected by the abstraction of water at Bishop's Waltham. A decade later it had been converted to a private house, though the single breastshot wheel was still in place, as were the sluices and eel traps, and the embanked mill stream still stood at its working level. Another survival was a bell, driven by a miniature waterwheel, which warned the miller when the water was too high in the leat.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The River Hamble by David Chun. Copyright © 2014 David Chun. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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