Wherwell ... by an outsider

Wherwell ... seen by an outsider ... and a Northcountryman at that

For some years now it has been customary for this Sports and Fete Programme to be in the form of an Anthology - a collection of bits and pieces about the history of WHERWELL. The contributions to it have been written by residents of this distinctive Hampshire village. It is difficult to say how long one must live in Wherwell to qualify; for the Anthology in the past has included reminiscences by native villagers as well as contributions by well-established newcomers in a community whose population number has hardly changed over the centuries. It is therefore a break with tradition for this year's programme to be including this article by a complete outsider ... and a North countryman at that. For him it is also a considerable privilege to be invited to do this in a year which happens to be the 1000th anniversary of the foundation of the long-vanished Wherwell Abbey in the year AD. 986.

 

The River Test is the heart of Wherwell and probably accounts for its existence in Anglo-Saxon times. There is no evidence of any Roman settlement, although the Roman road from Venta Belgarum (Winchester) on its way to Mildenhall and thence to Corinium (Cirencester) passed within a mile of it. The road was not a military road but was an important trade route from the Channel ports. The first 6V2 miles from Winchester (83420) is still a very recognisable Roman road. After crossing the A30 (also a Roman road), it now turns sharply to the left on its way to Wherwell, leaving the original to become a cart-track at Moody's Down. Thence, it must have crossed the Test on a line that forms the western boundary of Hardwood Forest where stands 'The Monument', a silent Victorian witness to a murder there in Saxon times. So far as is presently known, no Roman fragments have been found at Wherwell apart from a small anvil, believed to be Roman 'and probably part of a Roman engineer's equipment.

 

The Test valley is an appealing novelty to the North countryman. He is accustomed to the stony rattling 'becks' of the Dales, the moors, the Lake District. A silent, variably moving stream with a chalk-based and mossy foundation is outside his experience; and so, when he goes 'down South' for a fortnight's holiday in the New Forest, he probably gets out his AA Touring Guide and makes his way to Wherwell. He finds it variously described as 'picturesque' ... 'timbered and thatched cottages' ... 'its once-famous Abbey completely vanished' ... and he decides to try it. He will then discover that the charm of Wherwell lies not in its vanished history from which all visible relics are' no more, but in its leafy street, its contours, with the hill looking down upon him, if approaches from the south, its cottages, its river - and probably a romantic sense that what he is looking at is fairly unchanged over many centuries; and it is peaceful So: how did it all start?

 

It is probably true to say that the average Englishman remembers very little about what he was taught at school about Anglo-Saxon England. With a smattering of knowledge of a Roman occupation behind him and a timetable ahead of him that begins with 1066, he looks, if at all, on his Anglo-Saxon-Danish forebears in a coagulated mass of darkness, illuminated here and there by the Alfred Jewel and the Lindisfarne Gospels. But it is difficult for him to think of the sun shining .

 

Yet, It was in this period of history that WHERWELL ABBEY was born, one thousand years ago. The tale of its foundation reads like a Biblical story in parable and it is also the basis of material for any TV scriptwriter who is looking for a bloodthirsty plot. It might, for example, be narrated as follows:

King sends Pal to appraise Maiden with view to marriage. Pal inspects, finds her beautiful, does not tell parents why he has come. Reports back with a lie that Maiden is ugly; marries her himself. King, tipped of, goes to visit Pal and wife. Pal is troubled; tells wife to make herself look ugly. Wife, however, tarts herself up and King falls in love with her. Conceals his anger, invites Pal to go hunting with him and stabs Pal in back. (See 'Monument') For King, read EDGAR; for Pal, AETHELWOLD; for Maiden, AELFRIDA.

 

This EDGAR, known as the 'Peaceable', must have been quite a lad. He had had a go earlier on at finding a wife: had asked Auntie Wenflede about a lass called Wilfreda who was in a nunnery in Hilton. Auntie asks her to come and stay with her at her house at WHERWELL because she has been ill and could do with a change of air. Girl is told to dress and come down to dinner; finds herself sitting next to EDGAR who offers her riches, titles, etc. if she will become his Queen. Doesn't like the look of him, says she has a headache, retires to her room. King, not sure where he stands, orders soldiers to be put outside her room. She comes out, tells soldiers she wants to go to the 100, takes off her finery and escapes via a drain; is put up by a poor woman in a hovel in the village who assumes her to be a beggar; manages to get back to Wilton.

 

EDGAR finds wife, Ethelfled; produces son called Edward. Wife, Ethelred, dies ('I. EDGAR remarries ALFRED (see above) who produces son, Ethel red. Edward is therefore her stepson. Dad dies, 975. EDWARD (THE MARTYR) succeeds. Mum does not like this and wants her own ETHELRED as King; thus, after poor Edward has been King for only four years - and only 17 at the time - AELFRIDA has him murdered at Corfe Castle, so that ETHELRED ('the unwise one' ... UNREADY) - her only son - could succeed and he becomes King in 979. He was only 10 at the time, but he was not very good at it either, even later on. AELFRIDA seems also, 'having no whip', says the Chronicler, to have been bad-tempered enough to beat him with candles when he wept for the death of his stepbrother, such that he suffered from candlephobia for the rest of his life. She then arranges for the Abbot of Ely to be murdered. For reasons unknown, she then repents and founds WHERWELL ABBEY from Benedictine Nuns; dies in 1002 and ETHELRED endows the Abbey with wealth. A remarkable tale, is it not?

Once established, the Abbey was more than just a religious house for contemplation and retirement. The Abbess was the Lady of many Manors. She discharged all the business of their management, gave hospitality to travelers and held the Abbey as a sanctuary or place of refuge. Edward the confessor’s Queen was at one stage exiled there. In King Stephen's reign, when there was war between him and Matilda, his troops attacked a body of Matilda's men in 1141 when they were defending the crossing of the Test of Wherwell. The guards fled into the Abbey, which was set on fire. Matilda's men were slain and the nuns driven out, shrieking, while Matilda herself was being defeated down the road at Stockbridge.

This date certainly seems to suggest that the big House, curiously called The Priory, is a 17th century building. at least in origin; but it seems that no official record of its date can be found.

 

1649, however, marked the end of the Civil War, with the execution of Charles I. In the years when it was going on - from 1642, Wherwell has its place. Andover, Oxford. Winchester were Royalist centres. One of the functions of their forces was to intercept arms and to interfere generally with the trade routes in and out of Parliamentary London. In 1642 part of Sir William Waller's Parliamentary Army met some of Lord Grandison's Royalist regiments near Wherwell. After half an hour, despite a brave fight, the Royalists had to make a retreat to Winchester. Nearly all were captured, including a brigade of horse. of whom only the officers were retained, the other ranks being disarmed and set away to make their own way back to Oxford.

In the following year, Sir William Ogle, Royalist, reported that the High Sheriff of Southampton "with some other gentleman, was in danger at Andover, even though Lord Gerard was there with six score horse". The Royalists must have retired and Andover was subsequently searched and yielded 'four loads of match, two barrels of powder, with some fifteen muskets'. Later in the evening, it is reported, the horse mustered on the hill next to Wherwell where they refreshed themselves till 11 pm, and marched to Winchester at midnight.
 
Finally, as concerns the Civil War, there is a piece of folklore, legend or superstition even which says that "When Oliver Cromwell was fighting the Stuarts, he fired some cannon balls at Wherwell Priory .... " (presumably therefore at the newly built house). Some of the balls fell short of range and one is said to have descended the chimney of the White Lion Inn at the foot of the hill - a rather improbable trajectory? - and another at the door. In 1951, the then landlord of the White Lion said that two cannon balls, supposed to date from the time of Cromwell had been in the house until recently, one in the public bar, the other outside the door. It seems that an American G.!. took one of these home as a souvenir.

The life of the branch railway was short, however. Trains stopped running between the wars and the line itself was pulled up after the war of 1939-45. The Station is now a private house and its back-garden, along with those of modern bungalows that lie under the lee of brick retaining wall built by the L.S.W. to stop the earth from the ridge falling on to the track is where the trains once ran. On the Longparish side of the bridge is to be seen the deep cutting which must have blanketed most of the sound of the trains. This cutting is now preserved as a wild flower area, thanks to the purchase of a quarter of an acre of the line by a late resident of the village.

What impact the coming of the railway had on Wherwell it is hard to imagine, but it did allow - in this century a fishmonger with a pony and trap to collect his supplies daily from Fullerton Junction, while eels from the Test could be boxed - perhaps just one or two - and be in Billingsgate market, still alive, the following morning.

The railway now, like the Abbey before it, has vanished as though it had never been. The last word comes from Thomas a Kempis, a man who was alive when the Nunnery was flourishing:

Sic transit gloria mundi.

William Halstead