John Keble's Parishes: A History of Hursley and Otterbourne

lay, diversified by gravel and sand, and with an upper deposit of peaty, boggy soil

to the growth of woods. Fossils of belemnite, cockles (cardium), and lamp-shells (terebratula) have been found in the chalk, and numerous echini, with the pentagon star on their base, are picked up in the gravels and called by the country people Shepherds' Crowns-or even fossil toads. Larg

chor on shallow waves, when the cockles sat "at their doors in a rainbow frill," and the belemnites spr

near the river, for unfortunately these were disinterred before the time when diggers

John Thorp, began to search the barrows on the left hand side of the high road from Hursley to Southampton, and found all had been opened in the centre, but scarcely searched at all on the sides. In July they found four or five urns of unbaked clay in one barrow-of early British mak

Belgarum, as the Romans called Winchester) and Sorbiodunum (Old Sarum). It can still be traced at Hu

hich was dug up by a labourer at Otterbourne, in the course of making a new road. He thought it one of the plates carried on the Roman standards of the ma

bited; but the trees and brushwood or heather of the southern country would have joined the chalk downs, making part of what th

by a grant of Oynegils, first Christian King. Milner, in his History of Winchester, wishes to bestow on Merdon the questionable honour of having been the place where, in the year 754, the West Saxon King C

ourne, and even the hundred of Boyate or Boviate, as it is in the book, appear there. It had once belonged, as did Baddesley first, at first

Ytene became the New Forest. Probably the king was able to ride over down, heather, and wood, scarcely meeting an enclosure the whole way from Winchester; and we can understand his impatience of the squatters in the wilder parts, tho

s's wood-cart from Minestead to Winchester for burial in the Cathedral, along a track leading from Hursley to Otterbo

Fawley; and the village is situated on the turnpike-road leading from Winc

the north; Farley on the north-west; Michelmersh and Romsey on the west; Baddesley,

tained 10,590 acres of land, of which 2600 were in common, 372 in roads and lanes

and fields adjoining, it consists principally of sand or gravel. Towards the west, it is entirely covered with wood, not in general bearing trees of large size, but some beautiful beech-trees; and breaking into peaty, boggy ground on the southern side. The northern side is of good rich loam, favourable to the growth of fine trees, and likewise forms ex

long and narrow, touching on Compton and Twyford to the north and north-west, on

tterbourne Church a very rude fresco came partially to light. Traced in red was a quatrefoil within a square, the corners filled up with what had evidently been the four Cherubic figures, though only the Winged Ox was clearly traceable. Within the quatrefoil was

with bold round mouldings and deep hollows. Two corbels supporting the horizontal drip-stone over the west window were also clear and sharply cut; and the doorway on the south side h

ditch below having a stockade of sharp stakes. In the middle of the enclosure a well was begun, which had to go deeper and deeper through the chalk, till at last water was found at 300 feet deep-a work that must have lasted a year or more. Around the well, leaving only a small courtyard, were all the buildings of the castle meant for the Bishop's household and soldiers. The entrance to it all was probably over a drawbridge across the great ditch (which, on this side, was not less than

s retainers, and he could not command the country from it, except towards the south; therefore his next work was to make an embankment and the ditch on the o

ich yet remains), and divided from it only by the great ditch. On either side of the tower-cutting the embankment across, therefore, at right angles-was a little ditch, spanned by a drawbridge, which, if the defenders thought it necessary to retire to the tower, could at any time be raised (the foundations of the tower and the position of the ditches can still be distinctly traced). Supposing, further, that it became impossible to hold the tower, the besieged could retreat into the main body of the castle by means of another drawbridge acr

avoured to obtain that Winchester should be raised to the dignity of a Metropolitan See. It does not appear that all his elaborate defences at Merdon were ever called into practical use; and when his brother, King Stephen, died in 1154, he fled from England, and the young Henry II. in ange