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Old Times at Otterbourne By: Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901) |
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{Picture from title page: p1.jpg} Old Times
at Otterbourne.
BY
CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. [SECOND EDITION.] Winchester:
WARREN AND SON, PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS, HIGH STREET. London:
SIMPKIN AND CO., LIMITED, STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
1891
Old Times at Otterbourne.
Not many of us remember Otterbourne before the Railroad, the Church, or
the Penny Post. It may be pleasant to some of us to try to catch a few
recollections before all those who can tell us anything about those times
are quite gone. To begin with the first that is known about it, or rather that is
guessed. A part of a Roman road has been traced in Otterbourne Park, and
near it was found a piece of a quern, one of the old stones of a hand
mill, such as was used in ancient times for grinding corn; so that the
place must have been inhabited at least seventeen hundred years ago. In
the last century a medallion bearing the head of a Roman Emperor was
found here, sixteen feet beneath the surface. It seems to be one of the
medallions that were placed below the Eagle on the Roman Standards, and
it is still in the possession of the family of Fitt, of Westley. After the Roman and British times were over, this part of the country
belonged to Wessex, the kingdom of the West Saxons, of which Winchester
was the capital. Lying so near the chief town, which was the Bishop's
throne, this place was likely soon to be made into a parish, when
Archbishop Theodore divided England in dioceses and parishes, just twelve
hundred years ago, for he died 690. The name no doubt means the village
of the Otters, and even now these creatures are sometimes seen in the
Itchen, so that no doubt there were once many more of them. The shapes
and sizes of most of our parishes were fixed by those of the estates of
the Lords who first built the Church for themselves and their households,
with the churls and serfs on their manor. The first Lord of Otterbourne
must have had a very long narrow property, to judge by the form of the
parish, which is at least three miles long, and nowhere a mile in
breadth. Most likely he wanted to secure as much of the river and meadow
land as he could, with some high open heathy ground on the hill as common
land where the cattle could graze, and some wood to supply timber and
fuel. Probably all the slopes of the hills on each side of the valley of
the Otter were covered with wood. The top of the gravelly hill to the
southward was all heather and furze, as indeed it is still, and this
reached all the way to Southampton and the Forest. The whole district
was called Itene or Itchen, like the river. The name meant in the old
English language, the Giant's Forest and the Giant's Wood. The hill to the north was, as it still remains, chalk down. The village
lay near the river and the stream that runs into it, upon the bed of clay
between the chalk and the gravel. Most likely the Moathouse was then in
existence, though a very different building from what it is at present,
and its moat very deep and full of water, serving as a real defence.
There is nothing left but broad hedge rows of the woods to the
north east, but one of these is called Dane Lane, and is said to be the
road by which the Danes made their way to Winchester, being then a
woodland path. It is said that whenever the yellow cow wheat grows
freely the land has never been cultivated. There was a hamlet at Boyatt, for both it and Otterbourne are mentioned
in Domesday Book. This is the great census that William the Conqueror
caused to be taken 1083 of all his kingdom. From it we learn that
Otterbourne had a Church which belonged to Roger de Montgomery, a great
Norman baron, whose father had been a friend of William I. Well for the parish that it lay at a distance from the Giant's Wood,
where the King turned out all the inhabitants for the sake of his "high
deer," making it the New Forest. He and his sons could ride through down
and heath all the way to their hunting... Continue reading book >>
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