Exploring the History of Lee-on-the-Solent

W Green John

Description

Walking around Lee-on-the-Solent provides tantalising glimpses into its past - whether it's the balconied Victorian buildings in Pier Street, the Art Deco frontages above the shops in Marine Parade West, the airfield with its gliders soaring peacefully overhead, the hovercraft museum, the sight of yachts on the sparkling waters of the Solent, or the lengthy list of names on the War Memorial. And perhaps you remember, or have heard talk of, the Tower with its ballroom and cinema, the Pier Hotel in its heyday, and the outdoor swimming pool?But what's the real story behind the history of Lee-on-the-Solent? Whether you are a resident or a visitor, you are bound to discover something new in this fascinating account. Why would Isle of Wight monks build a windmill at Lee? Why would you have needed the help of the baker's boy if you wanted to get a train at Elmore Halt? What was on offer at Bulson's Stores and Pleasure Retreat? Why was a rainstorm so popular at the Anglican church? Why did the last two Englishmen to fight a duel choose Browndown as the venue? What made prefabs the envy of many residents? And why was a patch of grass in the wildgrounds always tended in the shape of a cross? You'll find the answer to these questions and many more in Exploring the History of Lee-on-the-Solent.Best of all, you'll discover why you should raise a glass to John Robinson, the Victorian entrepreneur without whom Lee-on-the-Solent would surely not exist.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Hampshire

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 07 août 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909183322
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Title Page
EXPLORING THE HISTORY OF LEE-ON-THE-SOLENT
by John W Green and Robin A Money



Publisher Information
First published in 2013 by Chaplin Books
Chaplin Books
1 Eliza Place
Gosport PO12 4UN
Tel: [phone]
www.chaplinbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2013 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2013 John W Green and Robin A Money
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder for which application should be addressed in the first instance to the publishers. No liability shall be attached to the author, the copyright holder or the publishers for loss or damage of any nature suffered as a result of the reliance on the reproduction of any of the contents of this publication or any errors or omissions in the contents.



Acknowledgements
While the vast majority of this work is the result of own our joint research from a wide variety of documentary records within the public domain, we would like to record our thanks and appreciation to the following people in particular:
Malcolm Fare of the National Fencing Museum at Hanley Swan near Malvern for his efficient and generous help in providing the photograph of Charles Edmund Newton-Robinson and his team-mates at the 1906 Intercalated Olympic Games.
Evelyn Love, secretary of the Lee-on-the-Solent Women’s Institute, for kindly allowing us access to the branch archives and comprehensive photographic records. Without her most friendly co-operation and enthusiasm in dealing with our request we would never have been able to include the all-too-brief account of the branch nor any of the splendid pictures relating thereto.
Bob Russell, secretary of the Lee-on-the-Solent Working Men’s Club, for kindly giving up his time to meet with us to discuss the Club’s history as well as taking the trouble to show us the Club’s historic artefacts.
... and last, but by no means least, our long-suffering wives who have endured what must have seemed to have been an interminable period ‘playing second fiddle’ to our enthusiasm on the whole topic of this work. They have borne our absence from our otherwise normal domestic life both stoically and without the slightest complaint and to them this work is accordingly dedicated.



Preface
The Historic Walks along Lee seafront proved to be the catalyst that led to the inception, conception and eventual production of this account of the history of Lee-on-the-Solent.
It is intended to be as comprehensive and detailed as possible, using information from a wide field. Where this includes anecdotal accounts for which no supporting evidence has been found, the accounts have been included with a suitable caveat. A similar approach has been adopted in the cases where personal recollections have been included, hopefully without removing any of the humour or vibrancy of such memories.
Where monetary amounts have been quoted in the text, we have also endeavoured to provide a rough indication of each of those sums at 2013 values. The modern equivalents appear bracketed and in italics immediately after the historic figures, e.g. £334 [£29,250] .
The research for the writing of this account has been an exhilarating journey which has frequently been interspersed with spontaneous interjections of “I didn’t know that”. It is hoped that a similar experience will be enjoyed by those now embarking on exploring the history of Lee-on-the-Solent.
John W Green
Robin A Money
Lee-on-the-Solent
June 2013



Chapter One
Before The Beginning
During its past, Lee-on-the-Solent has had a pier, a railway linking it to Brockhurst where a connection to London was possible, hotels, boarding schools, a swimming pool, a cinema, a ballroom, and a tower. Unfortunately these did not all exist at the same time, otherwise it is quite likely that the town - with its prime location - could have become a premier seaside resort on the south coast. In an attempt to understand why this did not come about, let us go back to the beginning, or rather, before the beginning - to about 4000 BC.
In the early part of the twentieth century, evidence of a Stone Age settlement was discovered at Cherque. A large ancient refuse heap of shellfish shells was found buried together with knives fashioned from flakes of flint which were dated as being about 6,000 years old. As people of that era had no knowledge of agriculture or herding, any settlement would have been temporary and abandoned when the source of food ran out. Their dwellings would have been huts of mud and wattle and would have long since disappeared, leaving only the refuse heap and the stone implements as evidence of their existence. Unfortunately the significance of these archaeological discoveries was not appreciated at the time and they were removed in order to extract the gravel underneath. The resultant gravel-pit eventually became a refuse tip and is now, in all probability, covered by housing.
Because there were large deposits of gravel in the area, gravel digging became one of the area’s major industries from about the eighteenth century. Underneath the few feet of gravel and brick earth that cover much of the Gosport Peninsula there is a layer of greyish clayey sand, known as the Bracklesham Beds, that contains some lignite and fossils, mainly of sharks’ teeth. This geological layer was visible along some sections of the base of the cliffs at Lee-on-the-Solent before it was covered by the construction of the promenade in the 1960s. However it was still possible to find fossilised sharks’ teeth in the shingle, especially at Elmore, until the late 1990s and before the beach was covered with aggregates dredged from the Solent.
Following the fall of the Roman Empire and the departure of the Roman army from the British Isles in 410 AD, there was a progressive breakdown of law and order and civilisation in general. The country became vulnerable to raids by Vikings and, in order to combat those incursions, towns and settlements enlisted the help of mercenaries of Angles and Saxons from what is now northern Germany. The arrangement with the mercenaries was that they could bring over their families and were paid in land which they were then at liberty to farm. Locally the Germanic influence is illustrated by the name of the track which, according to old maps, ran parallel to the coast from Stoce (Alverstoke) and across Brun Down (Browndown) and which was known as Easteran Weg, ‘weg’ and ‘brun’ being the German words for ‘way’ and ‘brown’.
The incoming Anglo-Saxons eventually realised that they were more powerful than the people who had employed them and they gradually took over the running of the area themselves. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle sets out details of the Anglo-Saxon history up to the time of the Norman Conquest. It records how the British Isles consisted of a number of kingdoms which were established after small fleets of three to five ships invaded various parts around the coast and seized the land of the Britons living there. In our local area it appears more likely that, rather than being taken over by invaders, the inhabitants were taken over by the people that they had invited here to defend them. There were two minor territories here, namely Wihtwara which means ‘the people of Wiht’ (the Isle of Wight) and Meonwara which means ‘the people of the Meon’ (the Meon Valley).
The mainland of our area remained pagan until 681 AD and the Isle of Wight until 683 when both were converted to Christianity with the arrival of St Wilfrid, the exiled Archbishop of York. However there was a tendency to declare conversion of an area when the local king agreed to be baptised, even if he failed to adopt Christian practices, and regardless of what the general population practised. This is illustrated by the fact that when churches were built they included pagan symbols in an attempt to appeal to the Anglo-Saxons.
The first historical reference to the Solent was in 686. The Venerable Bede, on a visit to the Isle of Wight, wrote: The island is situated opposite the division between the South Saxons and the West Saxons being separated from it by a sea, three miles over, which is called Solente. In this narrow sea, the two tides of the ocean, which flow round Britain from the immense northern ocean, daily meet and oppose one another beyond the mouth of the river Homelea [Hamble] ... after this meeting and struggling together of the two seas, they return into the ocean from whence they come. This double tide is one of the reasons why Southampton became a major port.
In the eighth and ninth centuries the Danes (Vikings) carried out regular raids on the British Isles and, in 865, their ‘Great Heathen Army’ landed in East Anglia and used it as a springboard for a lasting occupation with the result that, within ten years, they had taken over most of the rest of the country. Nearly all of the old kingdoms fell with the exception of Wessex. After an initial set-back, King Alfred built up an army and managed to defeat the Danes at the Battle of Edington in 878. Following a peace treaty Alfred transformed the kingdom of Wessex and put it on a permanent war footing and by the year 955 England was finally united under one ruler with a centralised government.
Let us now move forward to the most familiar of all historical dates, 1066, the Battle of Hastings and the ensuing Norman Conquest. Many of the noblemen of the victorious army were granted land by William the Conqueror and, by the time he died in 1087, some 92 percent of land was under Norman control.