Round about Old Christchurch.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue VIII, 19 February 1898, Page 214

Round about Old Christchurch.

By

HINE RAWEI, Waikouaiti.

FTI HE river Avon, famous in all history and to-day for its fine salmon fishing, gyrates southwards with almost the regularity of a corkscrew from the ancient city and County town of Salisbury, till it is intercepted just before reaching the sea by the vagabond Stour, which has wandered across the County of Dorset. And just at the point of junction, like a nest in the hollow of a branch nestles old Christchurch, its well preserved Cathedral looking calmly on the meeting of two rivers, the Avon and Stour, as they placidly glide on their way to the ocean, like fond lovers who have waited long for marriage, but now walk side by side

with eyes fixed on the desired end. A couple of miles further on these streams unite in the little harbour, flowing thence into Christchurch Hay and the turbulent English Channel. The old Saxons originally christened the place ‘Twynham,’ or the town between the two rivers, and how it came to be called Christchurch is a story which should interest New Zealanders, as it illustrates the tenacity of old English legend and superstition. The priory wfs founded by Edward the Confessor, but Bishop Flambard, the Chancellor of William Rufus. and a builder of some repute, had no more liking for Saxon architecture than for Saxon manners, and while Dean of Christchurch he rased the Saxon structure and began a new Priory and Cathedral. The story runs that he chose as his site an adjoining eminence, and decided that the sacred edifice should lie known as the Church of St. Catherine, a name which still adheres to the hill on which he proposed to erect it. But according to local tradition a miracle frustrated the good man’s

intentions, and completely upset all arrangements. It is said that stones for the building were imported from quarries in the Isle of Wight and Isle of Purbeck, but as fast as these were placed in position on St. Catherine’s Hill, unseen hands removed them each night to the site of the present Church. It is not related how long the Dean resisted this ghostly interference with the work, but ultimately he decided to abandon his plan for the erection of the Church on St. Catherine’s Hm, and he caused the foundations of the Church to be laid on their present site. And now a second wonder is recorded. Amongst the builders employed was a mysterious craftsman of marvellous skill, and during the hours of toil this individual laboured unceasingly, but was

never seen during meal times, and never claimed wages. On one occasion a large and heavy oak beam that was to be fitted into the roof was found to have been cut much too short, and the Dean was exceedingly angry in consequence; but before the work began next morning the strange carpenter had actually stretched the beam to the required length and placed it in position. If my readers do not believe the story they may go to old Christchurch and view the identical piece of timber, which is now on exhibition in the Clerestory of the Lady Chapel. This miraculous interposition is said to have caused the Dean to alter the name of the Church, and Christchurch it has remained to this day. The Church .as given its name to the town, although every Hampshire man knows that the original name of the place was Twynham. Of the Church itself, and the Augustinian Priory at Heron Court more could be said than I have time to recount, or New Zealand readers would care to know. The nave, which is

part of the original design and execution of Dean Flambard, is 118 feet long by 58 feet wide, and consists of seven bays, and these noble proportions may be sought for in vain in other English Cathedrals. A curious feature is that the groining oegins some feet below the path of tne Clerestory, a feature which is only found, I am told, in one other Norman Chureh in England, and that is the Cathedral at Durham, also designed by Flambard, when preferred from the Deanery of Christchurch to the See of Durham. Curiously, Flambard did not live to see either Clerestory completed, so that his successors appear to have had sufficient respect for his memory to complete his peculiar plan. The roof of Christchurch was originally very loPy, but it has undergone much alteration, and the present timbers of the roof were probably placed in position about the —te of the Battle of Crecy, and may claim contemporary life with that oak whose pride of race has been rendered vocal by the poet in the lines: —

In my great grandsire’s trunk did Druids dwell; My grandsire with the Roman eagle fell; Myself a sapling when my father bore The hero Edward to the Gallic shore. The nave of the church was for the congregation. A richly carved stone screen ‘seven feet thick’ separates the priory stalls and the high altar from the gaze of the laymen. Mass was performed in the nave, where a piscina still remains to mark the position of the altar. The screen is considered a magnificent piece of 14th Century carving, and it must have been a beautiful lesson in stone before Henry VIII.'s emissaries carried away and broke up the images which filled the now vacant niches. The great thickness of this remarkable screen affords room for a flight of stairs by which the priest ascended to read the gospels and epistles from the top during High Mass. If we open the small doorway in the centre of the screen we may pass through to the Prior’s stalls, quaintly carved i'n solid oak; these were added about the end of the fifteenth century. Here are the ‘nodding seats,’ contrived so

that the monks who occupied them might rest but not fall asleep during the chanting of the Psalms. So long as the chorister sat bolt upright, the seat afforded some slight support, but should his drowsy head fall forward, the seat would reverse and awaken him by throwing him forward upon the desk. Among the carvings of these stalls there is a striking likeness of the hunchbacked Tudor King Richard 111. Another quaint carving, which suggests that the designermust have been of a sarcastic turn of mind, represents a fox preaching to a large flock of geese. THfe reredos (see illustration) dates back to 1380, and is peculiarly interesting. It represents the Stem of Jesse, who is carved recumbent and life size, over the altar, and from whom the Stem branches through figures of King David and King Solomon to our Saviour, through figures representing the 28 generations mentioned in the genealogy in the first chapter of the New Testament. Close by is a small but elaborately carved chapel, executed by

Terregiano for a Countess of Salisbury, lady of the Manor of Christchurch, who was beheaded for treason by Henry VIII. The pavement in front of the altar shows the hollow places from ’which, to the disgrace of the custodians of the church be it said, the brass memorial tablets have been stolen. There are now living in Hampshire to-day several persons who can recollect seeing these brasses in the pavement; but though they eseaped even the fury of the vandals of the Reformation (the church was not injured by Cromwellians), they have been stolen in the nineteenth century by some collector whose zeal for acquisition outwighed his reverence for the subjects of his collection. Behind the grand altar is the Lady Chapel, the Holy Table being formed of one magnificent slab of Purbeck marble. Very beautiful and interesting are the consecration crosses, which are doubled, showing that the table was twice consecrated. There are five of these double crosses, one in the centre and one at each corner. In the Lady Chapel are the

old colours of the Hampshire Volunteers who shouldered the musket out of pure patriotism as an answer to Napoleon the Great, when he mustered his army at Boulogne, just as the present foree of British Volunteers first took up arms when the colonels of Napoleon the Little threatened to lead an army to London to violate the right of asylum of political refugees. Near at hand lies the effigy of an ancestor of the Tichborne family. All that we are told of this recumbent stone soldier is the inscription, ‘He was a great warrior and fought in the Wars of the Roses.’ I regret to say that even the effigy of this warrior has not eseaped the vulgar ambition of the excursionist, and there are scores of people who can claim the shameful distinction of having carved their initials on the helpless memorial of a brave man, who in his day inspired respect in mail clad foeman. I ought to mention the much discussed leper window on the south side of the church. Among the many relies of the Crusades in England none are more salient than the old hospitals for those who brought here, or caught here, this scourge of the East. The leper window is a little eyelet in the wall through which the sacred wafer was projected by the priest to his unclean communicants. Whether this eyelet at Christchurch was used for such a purpose is a subject of controversy. The walls of the old chureh are decorated, in questionable taste, with slabs of white marble, in memory of soldiers and sailors, who have died in service during the

present century. Gue of these commemorates an officer in a Highland regiment, and bears the inscription in Gaelic, ‘Cuimhne air an T-sonn nach maireann.’ (To the memory of a brave soldier who is no more.) The presence of this inscription on the walls of a church, erected by people at almost continuous war with the Scots, points the lesson that nations, like friendships, are built upon comlike friendships, are built upon common oblivion as well as commno recollections. To-day the descendants of the turbulent Scots are remarkable amongst the best citizens of this Southern County of Hampshire. At the west end of the church is the great window, illustrating the Te Deuni, a fine piece of work, but like all the other windows, glazed with modern glass, which is but a pale imitation of those glorious colours. still preserved in some windows of English Cathedrals, which leap into life in the summer sunshine, and tell us that the ancient craftsmen had a skill that those of to-day cannot attain to. The secret of the old stained glass has gone back to the recesses of nature, only to be re-discovered by some happy explorer of the future who will give a life time of loving, patient research and persistent experiment. At the west end of the church is a wonderful sculpture of the finding of the body of the poet Shelley, who was drowned by the upsetting of a boat in the Bay of Spezzia. The monument in white marble shows the drowned body of the poet, supported by his wife. Seaweed clings to the body. A large piece of rock

ami the hull of a boat complete the marine suggestion. The body of Shelley was cremated by his friends, Byron and Leigh Hunt, as he desired, at Rome, and his heart was buried by the side of Keats, in the Protestant cemetery there. The monument was intended to be erected in St. Peter’s Church, Bournemouth, where some of his family are entombed, but the rector refused to admit it, having regard to what he considered to be the dangerous free-thought of the poet’s verses. On the monument are inscribed the poet’s own lines from the ‘Adonais’: — He hath outsoared the shadow of our night, Envy, and calumny, and hate, and pain, And that unrest which men misscall delight. Can touch him not, and torture not again. From the contagion of the world’s slow stain He Is secure; and now can. never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain; Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn. With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. On leaving the cool and sombre old building and returning to the brilliance of . warm English June day, standing by the crumbling wall that overlooks the sedgy river, I look once more upon the grand old pile and try to trace its history, "as generation after generation added to its fabric, and as many who have ceased to worship, passed away in the quiet church yard, and I recognise the sturdy determination of those old churchmen. whose building motto was ‘Whatever falls, this house of God shall stand.’

The village, I should say the town, of Christchurch (for it has a mayor and corporation), is just a delightful old English village, such as may be seen in every county. It was important enough in its day. It had seven tithings. It had a charter to hold a fair, granted by Henry 111., when there was some kind of fortification called a castle, long since disappeared, leaving only the ruins of a keep. In 1572 it was made a Parliamentary Borough, a distinction it still titularly holds, but only by including the much larger and quite modem town of Bournemouth, some four miles to the west of it. It still enjoys separate municipal government, and rejoices in its own mayor and corporation. Rather singularly, the old town of Christchurch is distinctly Liberal in its political opinions, while the more modem Bournemouth is as distinctly Conservative. At the last election the Liberal candidate for the united boroughs escaped election by about 60votes. This gentleman, by the way,, is the Hon. T. A. Brassey, son of the Governor of Victoria. I should mention here that tithes to a considerable amount are paid, but these go to the lord of the manor, Lord Malmesbury, who is styled the ‘lay rector.’ The ‘living’ of Christchurch is now worth only £26 a year, so that no poor parson can be appointed. The lay rector has a magnificent seat at Heron Court, which he throws open oceassionally to the public, and when the rhododendrons are blooming Heron Court is a dream of radiant colour. Close by Christchurch is Juniper’s Common, a place much frequented by gipsies. It is known best for the tradition that Sir Walter Tyrell, after he had shot William Rufus, galloped out of the New Forest, and at Juniper’s Common he hack his horse’s shoes reversed to prevent traces of his flight. I would mention here that King Rufus’ stirrup is still preserved,, and the stirrup is the badge of theCounty, the Hampshire regiments, regular and volunteer, wearing a stirrup on the collars of their tunics. There is still a stone in the NewForest, now protected by an iron casing, to mark the spot- where King William 11. fell, and there is still a family there of the same name as the charcoal burner, Purkiss, who is said to have conveyed the King’s body in his cart to Winchester, the then capital of England. This New Forest is all That remains of the great forests of England. Originally 50 miles square, it contains still 70,000 acre's, the property of the Crown. In the depths of this forest you may still find the perfect wilderness of nature. You may follow devious streams under the shade of hugely branching trees, and stand shoulder deep amid luxuriant ferns, or you may emerge into pleasant, dreamy glades of perfect solitude. Much to be desired is a day spent in murmuring stillness of this grand old forest. There is a legend that the shade of the Red King still hunts with ghostly retinue in the forest, possibly prompted by the statement in the old account of the King’s death that ‘the stag he was following, when struck by the assassin’s bullet, was none other than the foul fiend.’ At Minstead live the family of Purkiss, still owning one cart and one horse, and, so they say, has every generation of Purkiss had this possession and no more since the days of the Red King. At Minstead there is only one hostelry, much frequented by day trippers and bean feast parties, which bears the sign of ‘Ye Triistie Servante,’ and the motto. ‘Manners Maketh Man,’ a copy of a celebrated figure in tv inchester School. The figure is interesting in these days of social upheaval, as it indicates what was expected from man to master in the ‘good old days.’ The figure has a donkey’s head, a pig’s snout padlocked, a stag’s feet: and the lines run: — A trusty servant’s portrait would you see? This emblematic figure still survey. The porker’s snout not nice In diet shows; The padlock shut, no secret he’ll disclose. Patient the ass. his master’s wrath to bear; Swiftness on errands the stag’s feet declare ; Loaded his left hand, apt to labour saith: The vest his neatness, open hand his faith: Girt with his sword, his shield upon his arm. Himself and master he’ll protect from harm. Near the New Forest is Beaulieu, an old Cistercian abbey, which was demolished by Henry VIII., that, the materials might be used in the erection of Hurst Castle to protect the

entrance to Southampton \Vater. It is now the property of Lord Montague a grandson of the Dune of Buccleugh. Winchester and Salisbury, two charming old towns, which the writer visited on several occasions, with their wonderful cathedrals, are within easy distance. Winchester shows the greatest complication of architecture in England, Salisbury the simplest. Winchester is the richest See in the country. It is recorded by Fuller that a pre-reformation Bishop said ‘Canterbury is the higher rack, but Winchester is the better manger;’ meaning, says the historian, that ‘though Canterbury is graced with a higher honour, the revenues of Winchester are more advantageous to gather riches thereon.’ But as I am writing of Christchurch I ou'ght not to conclude without reference” to the remarkable town of Bournemouth which has sprung up within half a century, by its side. Fifty years ago the father of the present Lord Malmesbury records that he shot a blackcock on the site of St. Peter’s Church in Bournemouth. Then, the only building was a wayside inn, on the road from Poole" to Christchurch, and people came to shoot snipe and wild duck. Traces of this sport sti.l linger around the ‘coy’ or ‘decoy’ pond whose name indicates its original purpose. Even thirty years ago the freehold of the Tregoniiel Arms was offered for £ 500. To-day it bears palatial shops, where the mirrors reflect the beauties of the pleasure gardens, arranged by the Corporation at vast expense, on the site of the peat bog drained by the little Bourne stream ( across which little town bred boys leap in ver y joy of escaping from deserts of bricks and mortar to an oasis of green-sward and flower beds). Bournemouth is still spreading, on the East to Boscombe, on the West to Westbourne, although Branksome, a continuation on the West, is outside the municipal and county boundaries, which march together. Its population is over 40,000, and it is hoping that at the next census it may reach 50,000, when it will be entitled to the priveleges of a County Borough, its Municipal Corporation then becoming a County Council, and the town claiming its own educational grant (consisting of the excise receipts within the borough), without the interference of the Hampshire County Council sitting at Winchester. The praises of Bournemouth have been sung so often that I will not repeat them. I will merely ask my readers to stand (in imagination) on the central (Bournemouth) pier for a moment. On the East lies Christchurch, Lymington and the Isle of Wight with the Needles rocks marking the passage up the Solent to the port Southampton, and the naval station at Portsmouth. Even as we look we may see a huge mail steamer from the Cape of Good Hope, the West Indies, the Brazils, America or Australasia (for the North German Lloyd boats call here) making for the mouth of the channel. On the East lies the snug little harbour of Poole, further away the Old Harry rocks that hide Swanage, and just in sight are Weymouth and Portland. Bournemouth keeps up its own municipal orchestra at a cost of £ 5,000 a year, and it is contemplating an expenditure of £BO,OOO on the undercliffe or overcliffe drive. There is very little poverty, or at any rate apparent poverty, in this happy evergreen valley. The Corporation employs a large number of workmen, and , lets out as few contracts as possible. The Lord of the Manor, Sir George Meyrick, has grown with the place, and he has given the town a large expanse of ground for golf links. He is not the richest man, or the largest proprietor of land in the town. This distinction rests with Mr Cooper-De«an, who for many years worked as a carpenter, until a relative left him the Bournemouth property. He is said to bear the burden of his wealth modestly, and is still approachable by his former fellow workmen. Reader, let me conclude this fragmentary article by saying that one of my most pleasant recollections of an extended tour through England, Scotland and Wales was a visit to Gid Christchurch.