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Nikephoros Phokas, White Death of the Saracens, the Siege of Chandax and the Foundation of the Greatest Lavra on Mount Athos

July 28th, 2013

In the summer of 960, the great Byzantine general Nikephoros Phokas set sail for Crete. Occupied by the Arabs since 826, the island had become a nest of pirates who were the curse of the eastern Mediterranean, paralysing its economy. Nikephoros had been campaigning for years on the eastern frontiers of the Empire. The emirs of Aleppo, Tarsus and Tripoli had all been humbled. The youthful Emperor, Romanos II, had recently appointed him ‘Domestic of the East’, commander-in-chief of the forces of Anatolia. Confident that Nikephoros would finally re-take the island, Romanos had entrusted him with an overwhelming force, consisting of 307 warships and hundreds of smaller vessels, with 77,000 oarsmen and soldiers on board.

Nikephoros swept through the island, killing a reported 40,000 Arabs, and laid siege to Chandax (modern Heraklion), their well-fortified capital. Both sides suffered terrible privations that winter, but in March 961 the Byzantines broke into the city. The Cretan emir was taken, along with the accumulated spoils of a century and a half of piracy. Nikephoros put the rest of the population to death and the city was burned to the ground. With the island restored to imperial rule, missionaries set about re-converting it to Christianity. It was the greatest Byzantine victory in centuries.

Born in 912 into one of the great military dynasties of Anatolia, Nikephoros, known to his enemies as ‘the White (or Pale) Death of the Saracens’ was personally unprepossessing, with unusually long, curly black hair and a straggly beard. He was rough-mannered and sullen, and lived a remarkably simple, ascetic life, habitually sleeping on the floor. When not covering himself in glory on the battlefield, Nikephoros spent his time in prayer or consorting with holy men. A widower, whose only son had been killed in a tragic accident, he had taken a vow of chastity and hoped one day to become a monk.

Instead, owing to Palace intrigue, Nikephoros was to be crowned Emperor in St Sophia on 16 August 963, following the death of Romanos at the age of 23. To ensure his legitimacy, he was married within the month to Theophano, Romanos’s widow, and became step-father to her sons, the co-emperors Basil and Constantine. Theophano, a publican’s daughter, was extraordinarily beautiful, but unprincipled in the pursuit of her ambitions. Romanos had been completely under her spell. Ill-matched with the dour Nikephoros, she took a lover, his nephew John Tzimiskes, who brutally murdered him on the floor where he lay in 966. He was buried secretly in the Church of the Holy Apostles. An epitaph attributed to John of Melitene was later circulated. It ends with a pun on Nikephoros’s name: ὠ πλην γυναικος τἀλλα δ’αὐ Νικηφορος (Mark Diederich Lauxtermann, Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres, Texts and Contexts, Vol.I, Vienna 2003, pp.305-16.) – which I venture to translate as ‘bringer of victory over all in turn, save a woman’.

Nikephoros believed that he was fighting a ‘holy war’ against Islam, and that those who perished in it were martyrs, although this was a view rejected by the Church. During the siege of Chandax, he had summoned his old friend, Athanasios, to provide him with spiritual support. Athanasios, a native of Trebizond, renowned for his holiness, had abandoned a successful teaching career in Constantinople to become a hermit, and had settled in 957 on Mount Athos, in northern Greece. The promontory had long been favoured by hermits, as it had no other inhabitants. Thanks to the Cretan pirates, normal life there had become impossible.

The Holy Monastery of Simonos Petras, Mount Athos

Nikephoros heaped plunder from Chandax on Athanasios, who used it to found a small monastery or lavra on the south-easternmost point of the promontory. It was the first of many monastic houses on Mount Athos, as opposed to the sketai, or loose affiliations of hermits, that had existed before. Nikephoros had originally intended to join him there. Instead, as Emperor, he re-founded Athanasios’s lavra as an imperial monastery, endowing it with generous annual grants in money and in kind and with tax-free estates in nearby Chalkidiki. He even sent three holy relics from the imperial collection, including fragments of the True Cross. Athanasios’s humble lavra was thus transformed into ‘the Greatest Lavra’ (Μονη Μεγιστης Λαυρας), with accommodation for eighty monks, despite the objections of the hermits who were disturbed by the immense scale of the construction and by the fact that the new monastery had its own boat, an unwelcome connection with the outside world.

There are surviving sketai on Mount Athos where hermits continue to subjugate the flesh and endure lives of the utmost austerity, some of them perched in caves on the edges of cliffs. I have witnessed them myself. Although I have not been to the Greatest Lavra, I have visited other Athonite monasteries and can attest to the strength of the asceticism there, which has certainly wavered over the centuries. At the monastery of Simonos Petras, for example, the monks spend most of the time at prayer in their tiny cells. These are sparsely furnished, and there are no beds. Like Nikephoros Phokas, the monks at Simonos Petras, who are close to being a spiritual elite, sleep on the hard floor. (See Simopetras, Mount Athos, E.T.B.A., Athens 1991.)

Nikephoros, to whom the twenty surviving monasteries on Mount Athos all owe a debt, left no direct descendants, but has countless blood relations in Western Europe. His sister who married Theodoros Kourkouas was the ancestress of Maria of Bulgaria, wife of Andronikos Doukas. Their daughter, Eirene, was the matriarch of the Komnenos dynasty.

Nikephoros’s brother Leon Phokas had a daughter, Sophia, who married Konstantinos Skleros, and was the mother of the famous Theophano, wife of the German Emperor Otto II.

Leon had another daughter, married to a Botaneiates, who was the great-grandmother of the Emperor Nikephoros III Botaneiates (1078-81), and of his sister who married Theodoulos Synadenos. Their daughter, Synadene, married Gesa I, King of Hungary, who died in 1077.

Through these three Byzantine women, there are innumerable well-established lines of descent to the present day.

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Charles Mumby & Co., Gosport and Portsmouth: Memories Evoked by the Isle of Wight Steam Railway

July 18th, 2013

A Mumby descendant at Wootton Station

To travel on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway is to step back in time. I love the waiting room at Havenstreet with the piles of leather suitcases. The redundant station at Wootton has been reconstructed and looks like a typical country terminus of a hundred years ago.

The station building itself is an authentic recreation of the pre-1920s one at Havenstreet, based on a photograph from 1905. The building is festooned with the same notices and advertisements as in the photograph, the most prominent being one for ‘Mumby’s Table Water and Home Brewed Ginger Beer, Portsmouth, as Supplied to the Queen’. I feel a flush of pride, as this was my grandmother’s family firm.

It was founded by Charles Mumby (1823-1895) from Chatteris in Cambridgeshire, a pharmaceutical chemist, who settled at Gosport in 1844. An ancient sea-port that juts into Portsmouth Harbour, Gosport was a ‘well-built, handsome town’ with flourishing, thrice-weekly markets and a railway terminus, contained by ramparts and a moat dating from the 1750s.

A remarkably personable and impressive young man, rather short, but muscular and very good-looking with his wavy blond hair, Charles went into business on his own in 1849, at 47 High Street. He was keen to diversify and, applying his skill with concoctions, soon set himself up as a manufacturer of mineral waters. To ensure the necessary supply of water, he sank a large bore-hole or artesian well in the large yard at the back of his shop, which had a rear access from North Street. At 384 feet, the well was deep enough to reach the aquifers in the chalk subsoil, for Gosport is almost surrounded by the sea, and penetrated by a number of salty creeks.

His next step was to instal elaborate machinery to increase the output of manufactured ice. The fame of Charles’s soda water, ginger beer and lemonade spread rapidly across the south of England and within a few years he was supplying large quantities to both the army and the navy, which were traditionally victualled from Gosport. His crowning glory was to receive a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria, Mumby’s being one of only four brands of mineral-water that were served at her table.

Charles Mumby was a classic Victorian entrepreneur, a Nonconformist, as many of them were, commended for his ‘marvellous activity and energy, admirable business talent, sterling honesty and genuineness of purpose’. By then a rich and influential man, he became in 1864 a member of the Board of Trustees that governed the town. He was to serve for thirteen years (from 1881 to 1894) as Chairman of the Board, overseeing a vast improvement in the borough. Streets were widened, the old fortifications removed. Areas of open ground were acquired for recreational purposes, and a Free Library was created.

Colonel Charles Mumby

Charles became a Poor Law Guardian, a magistrate, a County Councillor for Hampshire, and sat on innumerable public and social committees. The manufacture of mineral waters continued at his original premises in the High Street, and an office was opened up at Portsmouth, first at 71 St George’s Square, then, from the late 1870s, at 34 The Hard. Charles was a founder member of the National Liberal Club (where he rubbed shoulders with Gladstone) and Colonel of his local territorial unit, the Third Hampshires.

Charles Mumby retired from the active management of his business in 1885. The chemist’s shop, reduced by this time to a sideline, was given up. His eldest son, Everitt, was appointed managing-director of the mineral-water company, from which he derived a good living, though he had neither the capacity nor the inclination for a career in business. It was Everitt who oversaw the public flotation of the company in 1898, an event which greatly enriched the family, and further allowed him to indulge his penchant for travel.

Display of Mumby bottles in Gosport Library

Everitt Mumby died in 1906, leaving a third of his majority holding in the company to his only son, Cyril, although the young man would have preferred a career in the army and held the rank of Captain in a militia regiment. When Cyril Mumby was appointed managing-director in 1907, the firm employed about a hundred hands (manual and clerical) in its two factories and had capital of £45,000. He installed himself in the finest house in Gosport, Stanley House (later known as ‘The Hall), next to Holy Trinity Church, on the edge of Portsmouth Harbour, and was the owner of an expensive motor-car and a yacht.

Cyril’s good fortune ended in 1914. Serving with the First Battalion the Lincolnshire Regiment, he was severely wounded at the Nonne Bosschen. After the war, he was to make a new life on the Continent, resigning his directorship of the company in 1924. He died in 1938, by which time the company had been sold out of the family, though it continued until the 1960s to trade under the Mumby name. My mother recalls seeing its advertisements at the cinema in her youth.

The prosperous, elegant Gosport that the family had helped to create was destroyed by a combination of the Luftwaffe and post-war planners. Nothing remains of the firm’s headquarters at 47 High Street, nor of its offices on Portsmouth Hard. Stanley House, my grandmother’s childhood home, was demolished in 1965 by a philistine local authority, which had already razed most of the surrounding area to the ground. The site is now an open space, hedged by two hideous tower blocks that are familiar landmarks to anyone passing in or out of Portsmouth Harbour.

(See The Isle of Wight County Press, 25 May 2012. The full story of the Mumbys is in my forthcoming book, The Incredible Journey of Victor Hugo’s Dog.)

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The Norman Colonisation of the Isle of Wight. Part 2: The De Aula Family of Yaverland and Arreton

July 12th, 2013

Yaverland chapel, with adjacent manor-house

The coterie of Norman knights who surrounded Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon and lord of the Isle of Wight, are revealed in the foundation charter for Quarr Abbey, dating from the 1140s. Many were granted estates on the Island and settled there, giving rise to all the most prominent local families of the medieval period. Among them were the Wavells and the Oglanders, who persist on the Island to this day.

Together with Robert d’Orglandes, Godfrey de Wauville and others, a certain Warin de la Halla is mentioned in the charter, having endowed his chapel of St Nicholas to the abbey. He was clearly in favour with Baldwin, from whom he held the lordship of Bampton in Devon, as well as land on the Isle of Wight, south of Carisbrooke Castle.

View of Yaverland from Culver Down. The distant wetlands are part of the reclaimed Brading Haven

Warin was ancestor of the ‘De Aula’ family of Yaverland (meaning ‘Overland’ in the Island dialect), in the parish of Brading. As its name suggests, Yaverland was virtually isolated on a spit of land under Bembridge Down. Cut off from the parish church by the tidal Brading Haven, the family built a chapel of ease there, with fine Norman features, alongside their sturdy manor-house of stone.

The male line at Yaverland died out in the reign of Edward I. Eleanor, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas De Aula, married William Russell, who built the causeway connecting the ‘overland’ with Brading. It was a key moment in the history of East Wight: part of the Haven was thus enclosed, the first step in the process of reclamation that was to be completed in the nineteenth century.

Yaverland Manor

The Yaverland estate was sold by the Hatfields, descendants of the Russells, in 1553, and the manor-house rebuilt, in its present form, in 1620, on the six-foot-wide Norman footings. Mainly of Wight stone under a red-tile roof, it occupies a stupendous position and is one of the finest houses on the Island, a monument in its way to the Norman Conquest of England. The little chapel beside it, built by the De Aulas, is still used for services.

Writing in the seventeenth century, Sir John Oglander says that members of the De Aula family favoured Godshill for burial. Others, no doubt from the main branch, were buried at Brading. The north chapel of Brading Church, reconstructed after a fire in the late-fifteenth or early-sixteenth century, is a monumental chapel to the family and is still known by their name. It contains the tombs of William and Elizabeth de Aula, their name corrupted to ‘Howley’ in the vernacular tongue. ‘Both are altar tombs, bearing the Tudor rose, and are inscribed, in rough sixteenth century letters,

Tomb in the De Aula Chapel, Brading

Jhu have merci on Wylyam Howly’s sowl. Amen. MCCCCCXX.

Helizabeth hys Wyf.’

Others of the line settled at Arreton. The manor of Arreton was part of the original endowment to Quarr Abbey and in the parish church, rebuilt by the first monks in the best Norman style, the ‘only remaining pictorial brass is that of Harry Hawles, an honourable member of the ancient De Aula family, who probably held office under Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, Lord of the Island from 1386 to 1397, under grant from Richard II. The head is missing, otherwise the figure is perfect, and is a good example of the period.’

Harry Hawles brass in Arreton Church

Harry Hawles is thought to have lived at Hale, the small, stone manor-house in the parish that in 1686 was occupied by the descendant of another prominent Norman family. George Oglander had inherited the Oglander name and seal, but was mystified when asked, by visiting heralds, to explain his connection with the Nunwell branch. These people were by then deeply rooted in the soil, bastardising their names, conversing in the local speech and forgetful of their origins. It is a matter of regret that there are no ‘Howleys’ or ‘Hawles’ in the current phone book. One would be surprised, however, if they had not left a fair distribution of female-line descendants among the existing Island population.

In the same way, the Norman colonisers have even infected the local speech. There is a pub at Brading called the Bugle, and another at Newport, which, during the Civil War, was the headquarters of the Parliamentary Commissioners, who included a debased Wavell. In the Island dialect, the word does not mean ‘trumpet’, but ‘steer’. It derives from the Latin word buculus, and is yet another legacy of the Norman Conquest.

(See S.F. Hockey, Quarr Abbey and its Lands, Leicester 1970, pp.7, 10, 257; Percy Stone, The Architectural Antiquities of the Isle of Wight, I, London 1891, pp.7, 15, 69, 87, 120; G.D. Squibb ed., The Visitation of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, London 1991, p.88; Yaverland Manor Estate, Dreweatt Neate Sale Particulars.)

Hale Manor, Arreton, where Oglander succeeded Hawles

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Why Learn Ancient Greek?

June 11th, 2013

Schoolboys and girls learning classical Greek are often heedless of their good fortune. They refer to it scornfully as ‘a dead language’. However, the death of Greek has been grossly exaggerated. A language is never dead as long as a body of literature survives. And what a body of literature: Homer and Herodotus, Aristophanes and Plato – men whose words, thoughts and stories resonate through the ages, still well-known, loved and relevant after nearly three millennia.

Boys and girls grappling with the Greek alphabet should bear in mind that, but for the Greeks, it is doubtful that we would be able to write at all. The ancient Greeks improved on the system of symbols that they had learnt from the Phoenicians, and invented vowels, so that it was possible for the first time to represent the full range of sounds in a written form. The Greek alphabet was the world’s first true alphabetic writing system. The unwilling pupil may disagree, but their system was so simple to learn that it made widespread literacy feasible for the first time. All modern western alphabets are directly descended from the Greek alphabet. The Romans borrowed from it shamelessly and the Latin alphabet, in which English is written today, includes no fewer than nine unaltered Greek letters.

This supposedly ‘dead’ language lives on, moreover, in all modern European languages, including English. We, the speakers of English, continue to use not only Greek letters but numerous Greek words in their original form – chaos, orchestra, climax, zone, analysis, idea, crisis, character, emphasis, echo, scene. There are countless other English words that have been adapted from the Greek – economy, philosophy, aristocracy, democracy, strategy, zoology, catholic, holocaust, psychiatry. How impoverished our language would seem, if all these words were taken away!

It is, however, in the language of modern Greece that we see the strongest signs of life. Modern Greek is far closer to ancient Greek than Italian is to Latin. Visitors to Greece who have studied the classical language will easily interpret the sign that reads Ἐθνικη Τραπεζα της Ἑλλαδος (National Bank of Greece). They might wonder how the word for ‘table’ (ἡ τραπεζα) has come to mean ‘bank’ – except that it had already acquired that sense in classical times. Similarly, they will readily understand the signs in parks that read: ΑΓΑΠΑΤΕ ΤΑ ΔΕΝΔΡΑ – ‘Love (or be kind to) the trees’. There are unadapted words still in use in modern Greece that appear on the earliest recorded Greek texts, dateable to about 1400 B.C. (they are contained in the clay tablets, written in the so-called ‘Linear B’ syllabic script, found at the Mycenean palaces of Knossos and the mainland) – words like ἐχω, I have, θεος, god, μελι, honey, παλαιος, old. It is only the pronunciation that has changed, and that is easily mastered.

Modern schoolboys and girls are taught ‘Attic’ Greek, the dialect of Athens (capital of Attica) in its classical heyday. The power and prestige of Athens ensured that its dialect became the standard speech throughout the Greek world. Most of the surviving classical Greek literature is in Attic Greek. It was spoken, or at least written, in the East Roman or ‘Byzantine’ Empire, which survived the fall of Rome by a thousand years, until it, too, fell to invaders, the Turks, in 1453 A.D. In modern Greece, Attic is still considered the ‘correct’ form of the language, other usages being merely colloquial.

He may not appreciate it, but ancient Athens is as relevant to an English schoolboy as it was to his Byzantine counterpart. In 508 B.C., one of its elder statesman, Cleisthenes, proposed at a public meeting that the Athenian constitution should be changed, and that all major decisions should thenceforth be agreed at a public assembly. Those eligible to attend would eventually include all male citizens, whatever their class or means, over the age of thirty. Slaves (mere chattels) and women (unreasoning inferiors) were of course excluded, but every male citizen was included equally. The invention of ‘democracy’, the means by which Athens was to be governed during its classical age, was the Athenians’ enduring legacy to the world.

It was during that enlightened period that Athens also gave the world both tragic and comic drama and some of the wonders of classical art, of which the Parthenon complex, on the Athenian acropolis, is surely the defining monument. Medicine, mathematics, philosophy, even atomic theory, were all advanced there. It was in Athens, too, that another form of literature was invented, by Herodotus: the writing of ‘history’, based not on myth and hearsay but on reasoned enquiry. History-writing as we know it had simply not existed before, and Herodotus was its father. Athens, ‘the great democracy’, was thus the ‘seat of a culture which could be said to be the “education of Greece”. The thinking, the theatre, the arts, the varied lifestyle which we still admire were all Athenian or based in Athens’ (Robin Lane Fox, The Classical World, London, 2006, p.161).

The limited vocabulary and subject matter that are required for Common Entrance and Scholarship exams are all redolent of ancient Athens, that tiny city, of only about 50,000 inhabitants, where such remarkable things happened. Words that appear frequently include:

ὁ δεσποτης, master, and ὁ δουλος, slave. It is ironic that a citizenry believing in ‘democratic’ freedom should also have been slave-owners. In fact, there were at least two slaves (almost all non-Greeks, traded on the wharves of Piraeus) for every citizen. They were central to the Athenian economy, working in the silver mines that were its mainstay, as well as in agriculture or in various crafts or as household servants. Many were recognisable only by their tattoos. A general in the Persian Wars once had an important message tattooed onto the shaved head of a slave, not trusting him to convey it verbally.

The native-born Athenian is a citizen, ὁ πολιτης (origin of our word ‘politician’), entitled to have his democratic say, who considers it humiliating to serve any master but himself – hence the number of one-man businesses and crafts in the city. He is jealous, too, of ὁ οἰκος, his house, often built round a courtyard, with an upper storey to accommodate the slaves. Here, the οἰκος νομος, law or organisation of the household, prevails – whence our word ‘economy’. The streets are so narrow and crowded that is it usual to knock before you exit – the doors are large and they open outwards.

ἡ ἀγορα, the market-place, is a focal point of the city. All roads lead to it, a meeting place as well as a shopping centre, enclosed by colonnaded buildings and numerous shrines, where I might θεραπευω (worship) or θυω (sacrifice) to my favourite θεος (god) or θεα (goddess). Here also the judge, ὁ κριτης, administers justice. Other prominent features are τα μακρα τειχη, the long walls that surround the city.

Most noticeable of all are the frequent military references in the exams, for the Athenian army, ἡ στρατια, was a citizen army. The soldier, ὁ στρατιωτης, must equip himself – if he can afford it – with τα ὁπλα, the arms, that are required of ὁ ὁπλιτης, the ‘hoplite’ or infantryman. Consisting of a gleaming breast-plate, helmet and greaves (to cover the calves and shins), and a large, circular shield (about three feet in diameter), these are prominently displayed in ὁ οἰκος. These weapons probably weighed up to fifty pounds, but made the wearer almost invincible to frontal attack, and the Greek hoplites in their legendary formation, ὁ φαλαγξ, one of the most effective fighting forces in the ancient world. The general, ὁ στρατηγος, who led them was a tribal official and there were regular opportunities to στρατευω, march or go on an expedition, or to pitch camp, το στρατωπεδον. Nor should one forget the real source of Athenian military might, the fleet of triremes, αἱ τριηρεις, manned by οἱ ναυται, the sailors, who are also proudly free.

The purpose of studying classical Greek is to understand the rich heritage of Athens, and to be able to read the ancient authors in the original. That is why candidates for Common Entrance are asked to translate simplified passages from ancient literature, such as the story of the death of Hector at Troy that is in the January 2013 paper. To be able, in the process, to prove one’s superior intellect is just a happy side-effect.

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The Norman Colonisation of the Isle of Wight. Part I: The Founding of Quarr Abbey and the Oglanders of Nunwell

May 30th, 2013

Oglander tomb in Brading Church

Richard de Redvers (from Reviers in Normandy) was a loyal supporter of Henry I, who received as his reward lands in Devon and Hampshire and the lordship of the Isle of Wight. The likely builder of the polygonal stone keep and inner curtain wall at Carisbrooke Castle (his Island fortress), he probably also founded the borough of Newport, which would previously have been little more than an obscure port.

The shell keep and inner curtain wall at Carisbrooke, built by Richard de Redvers c.1100

Richard de Redvers died in 1107 and was succeeded by his son Baldwin, eventual Earl of Devon. Baldwin was a figure of national significance, an opponent of King Stephen, but he left his own mark on the Island’s history by his foundation, in 1131, of the Abbey of Quarr.

Nearly two decades in the building, Quarr was colonised by Cistercian monks from the Abbey of Savigny, near Avranches, and endowed by Baldwin with estates including the manors of Arreton, Haseley, Combley and Newnham, all on the Isle of Wight. Meanwhile, Baldwin continued to maintain close links with his native Normandy, where he was lord of Néhou, Reviers, Amfréville and Varaville and, from 1135, of Douvres in the Bessin. His father, Richard, had been buried in the Abbey of Montebourg (on the Cotentin peninsula), of which the Redvers family were the protectors and benefactors.

Baldwin himself, who was harsh, warlike, ambitious and unforgiving, chose to be buried at Quarr, where his supposed tomb was excavated in 1891. The remains had been disturbed, but included the thigh bone of ‘a man of abnormal stature’. One can imagine Baldwin towering above his followers as they gathered to witness the foundation charter of the Abbey, intending by his beneficence ‘to forestall the calamity of our dissolution … and to investigate to our profit how we may attain pardon in the presence of the divine majesty’. According to Sir John Oglander, writing in the mid-1600s but relying on sources now lost, ‘every inhabitant in this Island wase in somethinge or other a helpor and furtheror of ye said woorke’. He relates that the Abbey Church was consecrated on 1 June 1150 by Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, and marked by ‘a greate and solemn feast theyre for ye whole Island, for ye finischinge of so goode a woorke’. (Percy Stone, The Architectural Antiquities of the Isle of Wight from the XIth to the XVIIth Centuries, Vol. I, London, 1891, pp.31 et seq.)

This 18th-century cottage, built amid the abbey ruins, incorporates masonry from the former church, which was on the right of the picture

The foundation charter for Quarr is undated (probably 1141 – 4) but records the construction of the abbey that was then in progress. From this document (a rare example of a ‘diploma’ charter), it is apparent that Baldwin surrounded himself with knights from the Cotentin, men like Robert of Orglandes (only 7km from Baldwin’s chief lordship at Néhou), Warin of Halla and Godfrey of Vauville, none of whom, incidentally, could write his own name. One imagines that they were pretty rough company, the sons, no doubt, of thuggish participants in the Norman Conquest and perhaps also in the First Crusade. Baldwin encouraged them with grants of land to settle on the Island and their descendants ‘will appear constantly in the later story of the abbey, as the local aristocracy during the medieval period: the Gernons or Vernons of Chale, the Trenchards of Shalfleet, the de Lestra of Niton, the Oglanders of Nunwell, the de Barnevilles of Chale and especially the de Insula family, destined to a rank of great local importance. The names of many serve to remind us how closely the history of the Isle of Wight was linked to that of the Cotentin peninsula as a result of the Conquest.’ (S.F. Hockey, Quarr Abbey and its Lands, 1132 – 1631, Leicester University Press, 1970, pp.9-10.)

Quarr Abbey was dissolved in 1538 and quickly dismantled. Only the former Dorter or Dormitory block, on the left of the picture, survives intact

Sir John Oglander, the proud descendant of Robert of Orglandes, writes of the prestige of the Abbey of Quarr, where scions of the best Island families were eager to obtain positions. To hold an office such as treasurer, steward, chief butler or even rent collector was considered a great honour. ‘One of my own auncestors,’ he writes, ‘was theyre steward, and theyre dyed.’ Sir John Oglander himself neatly exemplifies the enduring impact of the Norman Conquest. Blissfully settled at Nunwell, the estate granted to his ancestors by the de Redvers family, he lorded it over an indoor staff of thirteen people, whose wages amounted to a meagre £40 per annum, compared to nearly £700 that he lavished on himself and his dependants. On the other hand, Sir John was deeply rooted and assimilated, so that even ‘in the way he wrote you can hear his Isle of Wight accent and manner. Barns, fields and trees were all “him” and “he”, “fallow” fields were “vallow” and ferny grounds “vearnie grounds”.’ (Adam Nicolson, Gentry: Six Hundred Years of a Peculiarly English Class, London 2011, pp.111, 115.) Sir John had been educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and at the Middle Temple, yet he instinctively conversed in the local dialect. To refer to inanimate objects as ‘he’ is still an Island peculiarity – or was when I was growing up there – where, they used to say, ‘everything but a tom-cat is a “he”’.

The Oglanders (or, at least, their female-line descendants, who have taken the name) still hold part of their ancestral estate at Nunwell. Their name seems to have appealed to Evelyn Waugh, an Oxford contemporary of Denys Oglander, whose ‘Mrs Stuyvesant Oglander’ has a walk-on part in Brideshead Revisited. Another notable Norman family that persists on the Island is that of Wavell, the descendants of Godfrey of Vauville, who are the subject of an earlier blog (http://www.rupertwilloughby.co.uk/archives/999). It would be surprising indeed if the Norman genes were not widely distributed among all levels of Island society.

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Ernest Golledge, Headmaster of St John’s School, Ealing, and the Visits of the Antarctic Explorers Ernest Shackleton, Teddy Evans and Frank Wild

April 5th, 2013

Ernest James Golledge was for twenty-seven years – between 1907 and 1935 – the headmaster of St John’s Boys’ School in Felix Road, Ealing. Situated in a rapidly expanding suburb of London, St John’s was a typical free elementary school of the period. It occupied purpose-built premises on a three-quarters-of-an-acre site, but the number of children on the roll was double that intended by its Victorian founders. Coming from poor, if mainly respectable homes, they were generally undernourished, often infested with lice and, in many cases, inadequately shod. Their expectations in life were pitifully low. Their parents were anxious to put them to work as errand boys as soon as the law would allow, not even aspiring for them to become office clerks. A large proportion of Ernest’s boys had never seen the sea or even been to London.

Ernest, a proud Yorkshireman, was notable for his energy and enthusiasm and for his innovative teaching methods. In the pages of the school magazine that he launched soon after his appointment, he declared war on mediocrity and the self-limiting of his boys’ aspirations, urging them to ‘be something, be anything, but mean’. He aimed above all to instil in them the habit of reading. A passionate admirer of Dickens, Ernest was haunted by his example of a deprived childhood – sent to work in the blacking factory by an unfeeling mother – and his salvation through reading. He opened a ‘Dickens Room’ at the school as a shrine to his hero and as a reminder of the success that can be achieved through the love of books.

Ernest thought his boys should be exposed to the finest works of art as well as the finest literature. Prints of famous paintings were hung throughout the school, and artefacts displayed from all over the world. Before long, he was boldly inviting some of the greatest men and women of the day to visit the school and address the boys, as living examples of excellence. Ernest’s most striking achievement is the number of famous or distinguished people that he enticed through the school gates – from Queen Alexandra to Lords Haig, Jellicoe and French and countless others. All tended to be in sympathy with his own world-view as an arch-imperialist.

Ernest successfully invited a succession of famous explorers to the school. It would be hard, then or since, to think of any speaker more likely to excite an audience of boys than Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer, who in 1909 had marched further south than any man before him, to within 97 miles of the Pole, thereby preparing the way for the expeditions in 1912 of Amundsen and Scott.

Shackleton was even then deep in preparations for his next trip to Antarctica – the Endurance was to embark on her fabled voyage from Plymouth on 8 August 1914 – and must have been frantically busy, yet he found time, that April, to contribute to Ernest’s series of talks for the Livingstone Centenary. According to Ernest, he delivered ‘a delightfully graphic account of the [1909] expedition’, emphasising the pluck, loyalty and devotion to duty of his comrades. ‘Several of the stories he told of almost certain death to himself and others held the boys breathless with excitement e.g.: he fell down a chasm 1,000 feet and was only just rescued in time by Mr Wild when four of the five strands of the rope which held him in suspense had given way. On another occasion he broke a blood-vessel and heard Dr Wilson say that he couldn’t live until morning. When their rations were reduced to 18 ozs. per day per man, these heroes would share their food with their ponies.’ Both Shackleton and Frank Wild, his loyal collaborator and confidant, will reappear in Ernest’s story.

Shackleton helpfully reinforced Ernest’s own persistent message that ‘“imagination” is a splendid incentive to “strive on”’. The explorers had had a substantial library of 3,600 books on the Nimrod, from which they had packed a small selection onto their sledges before setting out for the Pole. These were Dickens’s Sketches by Boz, Borrow’s Bible in Spain, Shakespeare’s Comedies and Scott’s Ivanhoe.

In conclusion, Shackleton told the boys that ‘they all had a “pole” or “goal” to aim at in their lives, and the requirements for an arctic expedition were equally suitable to them viz.: Ideals, Patience, Physical endurance, Optimism, and Co-operation’. It would have been superfluous, if not presumptuous, for Ernest to add to his remarks. He merely said ‘Thank you, Sir Ernest’, and called for three cheers.

Left to Right: Ernest Golledge, Commander Teddy Evans and F. Klein, the assistant master who laid out the playground map, at St John's School, Ealing. Klein was later killed in the war.

Three months later, Ernest achieved another impressive coup. His near neighbours at ‘Wynnfield’, Sutherland Road, were the barrister Frank Evans and his wife, parents of Commander E.R.G.R. ‘Teddy’ Evans, R.N., second-in-command to Scott on his last, fatal expedition to the South Pole. By 1916, the Golledges were on sufficiently close terms with the family to be invited to Teddy’s wedding. It took place at Christ Church, Westminster, the guests including Lady Shackleton and the mother of the gallant Captain Oates. The bride, Miss Elsa Andvord, was described by an admiring reporter as a beautiful Nordic goddess.

As the leader of the survivors of the British Antarctic Expedition (his experiences had been truly harrowing, though he was not one of the party that made the final push to the Pole), Teddy Evans – the future Admiral Lord Mountevans of the Broke – was invited to St John’s on 16 July 1913, to unveil a portrait of Captain Scott. With his alert, handsome face and sturdy figure (though he was not much taller than Ernest), Evans was the archetypal ‘Boys’ Own’ hero. He began the proceedings by driving a steel peg into the middle of the star that marked the South Pole on the huge playground map, along with a Union Jack. The boys then listened with rapt attention to an account of his adventures. They laughed when he said they went 150 days without washing, and when they heard that Petty-Officer Crean had lost his trousers while sliding down the ice (‘though they realised it was serious when they looked into the matter’). They were fascinated to learn that the explorers thought of nothing but food, and of their fantasising about meals in the Hotel Cecil or from the corner fish shop, according to their rank. The message from this fine example of manhood was ‘that life was just slogging on, and the amount of success achieved would depend on the way we slogged’. As for Captain Scott, ‘he set you a fine example to play the game, how to strive for the right, and how to die’.

For good measure, Ernest also sent invitations to Roald Amundsen (in November 1913) and to Sir Douglas Mawson, leader of the recent Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Amundsen’s sister was in charge of his correspondence and thought it unlikely that he would be returning to England. Mawson, responding in May 1914, regretted that he would be leaving shortly for Australia, and had ‘but 2 months in which to write a book describing the whole expedition’. Disappointingly, neither man ever made it to St John’s.

When Shackleton returned from his Antarctic adventure in May 1916. Ernest was unable to engage him for a talk, but settled for his unassuming right-hand man, the ex-Merchant Navy officer – and son of a Yorkshire schoolmaster – Frank Wild. Gaunt and tough, with thinning hair and a large moustache, Wild was a huge attraction. Introducing him on 11 January 1917, Frank Evans, the father of Commander Evans, said he knew from his son that Mr Wild had ‘done more walking in polar regions than any other man, alive or dead … He was as fond of a cold climate as a polar bear.’ He was to list the four great expeditions of which he had been a member on a signed, postcard-style photograph sent to Ernest in 1917: ‘Scott 1901-04, Shackleton 07-09, Mawson 11-14, Shackleton 14-16’. It is one of the treasures of the Golledge archive.

Wild’s enthralling, two-hour lecture included accounts of all four expeditions. He mentioned casually ‘that the temperature experienced was often as low as seventy-four below zero’. He spoke appreciatively of Shackleton’s ‘self-sacrifice and determination under adversity’; of the advantages of ‘abstinence from alcoholic liquors and smoking during sledge journeys’; of the ravenous cravings for food. One comrade, he said, had lived for weeks on an exclusive diet of limpets and sea-weed, the latter acting as a ‘tonic’. The boys and girls were fortunate indeed to hear such a speaker. Wild had been the inspirational leader of the Elephant Island party, while Shackleton, in search of help, had embarked on an 800-mile journey across the Southern Ocean in an open boat. It has been justly called one of the greatest adventures of all time.

Wild had arranged with Ernest that his talk would be illustrated with lantern slides. They included numerous views of Antarctic scenery and wildlife. Wild had suggested as an alternative that he show ‘some cinema film of Shackleton’s 1907-9 journey’. It is intriguing that Ernest should have had the facilities to project both slides and moving pictures. It was later to be Ernest’s proud boast that his was one of the first schools anywhere to introduce the cinema as an educational tool. He records this milestone in the school log-book for 17 November 1916: ‘The cinematograph was used for the first time as a means of instruction – the “industry of Tapiocea” & “Rice Fields of the East”.’

Rupert Willoughby has just completed a commission to write a biography of Ernest Golledge, based on his archive, which is in private hands.

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My Barefoot Childhood: Life with the Basutoland Mounted Police – and the Oldest Man I Ever Knew

February 24th, 2013

Christopher Willoughby, Basutoland Mounted Police

A fascinating Pathé news film from 1968 shows Basutoland, the country of my birth, as I barely remember it.

It describes the newly-independent country, re-named ‘Lesotho’, as a ‘proud, poverty-stricken mountain state’, where most of the population live in ‘mud-hut villages’. The landscape is spectacular, but blighted by a lack of trees. As a result, fuel is scarce. ‘Erosion is this country’s curse – and challenge. Acres of over-cropped topsoil can be lost in just one thunderstorm … It is subsistence farming for the most part, and primitive.’

A farmer bends over his plough which is drawn by two pairs of oxen. Another farmer appears to be driving a tractor, but, as the camera turns, it becomes clear that it has broken down and is also being drawn by a team of oxen.

Seven-year-old herd-boys lead flocks of sturdy sheep ever higher into the mountains in their desperate search for pasture. Woven mohair is one of Lesotho’s few exports, but more significant are the 100,000 men who migrate annually to neighbouring South Africa to work in the gold mines. The alternative is starvation, and their wages are ‘crucial to the country’s revenue’. However, Roman Catholic missionaries have long ago brought schools and hospitals, and deep faith, to Basutoland, which has the highest literacy rate in Africa. A ‘flying doctor’ service operates in the remoter parts.

Most Basutos get about on horseback. The young King, Moshoeshoe II, himself daily ‘rides among his people’. The most fascinating scenes are of Maseru, the capital town, which boasted the only metalled road in the entire country – the ‘Kingsway’, built for the visit of King George VI in 1948. The commentator describes Maseru as ‘something of a shanty town’, and there are lingering shots of ‘Main Street’, a dusty thoroughfare lined by thatched huts, stalls with cardboard awnings and a scattering of glass-fronted modern buildings in the local sandstone. (One that I particularly remember was a shop with a thatched roof in the shape of a Basuto hat.) It seems a sleepy place, like something out of the American Wild West, with lone horsemen ambling by, a procession of pack-mules and women wrapped in distinctive Basuto blankets carrying loads on their heads. Almost everything in Maseru has had to be imported, from the oranges sold in the market to the barber’s clippers and the cardboard that he uses for his awning.

Christopher Willoughby leads a parade at the Police Training School, Maseru

It is reassuring to see ‘the precision drill of their new police recruits’ at the Lesotho Mounted Police Depot in Maseru, knowing that the high standards set by my father have been maintained. As his last job in Basutoland, my father co-raised the paramilitary ‘Police Mobile Unit’ of the Basutoland Mounted Police, which was to be the nucleus of the defence and security force of Lesotho. He maintained that his recruits were addicted to drill and enjoyed practising it in their spare time.

I suspect that my father came to Basutoland, a British protectorate since 1880, in search of adventure rather than professional advancement. Even as they travelled out in 1958, my parents knew that it was being groomed for independence. To my mind, my father typified the professionalism, selflessness and incorruptibility of the colonial administrator. By the time I was born, Christopher Willoughby was an acting Senior Superintendent, commanding Basutoland Special Branch at Maseru. With subversives deemed to be everywhere, he could not afford to take any chances. A friend, Colin Smith, recalls joining him for some target practice:

‘Chris Willoughby had a smart automatic pistol, a 9mm Beretta I think it was, and I took my rickety Browning, and off we went shooting at beer cans in a suitably secluded bit of countryside up near the race course.

‘It was then that the scales fell from my eyes. Chris, who gave the impression of being a slightly simple but tall, handsome and extremely well bred gentleman, was in fact a crack shot. It is a mistake to underestimate such men. Beer can after beer can flew away when he was shooting, while mine remained stubbornly in place. I began to treat the Special Branch, which I had previously seen as a bit of a joke, with more respect.’ (Colin Smith, Green Mountain Doctor (Beaminster, 2000), p.133.)

The Oldest Man I Ever Knew

It was in this improbable, timeless landscape that I roamed barefoot during my early years. I have only vague memories of the place, one of the strongest being of our last few days in Maseru.

My barefoot childhood (front left), with my brother Simon (back left) and friends

Having packed up all our belongings for shipment back to England, we took up residence in the Lancer’s Inn on Kingsway, which passed for Maseru’s smartest hotel. It was – and is – more of a ‘motel’, with guest accommodation in a jumble of single-storey blocks at angles to the main building.

While there, my elder brother and I encountered a permanent resident of the Lancer’s, a retired trader and old South Africa hand by the name of Bacon, who was reputedly 99 years old. He would therefore have been born in 1867, and would have been in his thirties at the time of the Boer War. Though I do not recall him regaling me with stories of that time, I suspect that not many people can precisely identify the oldest person they have ever known.

My mother recalls that, during our stay at the Lancer’s, there was a commotion one evening as a dead body was stretchered out with a sheet over its head. She frantically tried to shield our impressionable eyes from the grisly scene. It seems we had encountered this living relic in the nick of time!

When I was eighteen months old, I had been taken to Vicksburg in the Orange Free State for a minor operation, and had been put in a ward full of adult men. They were Afrikaaners and spoke no English. My mother would find me at visiting times being dandled on the knees of these old Boers who were attempting to comfort me. It seems very likely that there would have been veterans of the Boer War among them. My own great-grandfather (born in 1869), had also served in the war, on the opposing side, but of course I never knew him.

The 1968 Pathé film about newly-independent Lesotho can be viewed at http://www.britishpathe.com/video/emergent-africa/query/maseru. Pictures of the Lancer’s Inn are at http://www.lancersinn.co.ls/index_files/Page390.htm.

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Pagans and Christians at Chedworth Roman Villa

January 4th, 2013

The Roman Villa, Chedworth

The Roman villa at Chedworth, near Cirencester, was abandoned in the fifth century. The roofs must soon have collapsed, and local builders seem to have helped themselves to the stonework, little of which remains. By the time of its romantic rediscovery in 1864, the entire site had been buried under woodland.

The nymphaeum is at top left

The surviving evidence at Chedworth is of a luxurious house that had enjoyed its heyday in the fourth century. It had grand reception rooms, under-floor heating, a pair of bath-houses and fine mosaic floors that are still largely intact.

Even in the century of Constantine the Great (the first Christian emperor), the traditional pagan religion had been observed there. The mosaic floor of the triclinium (dining-room) includes an image of Bacchus embracing Ariadne and it was overlooked, from special bases, by statues of Diana and of Lar, the household god. Another prominent feature (well preserved today) was the nymphaeum, a shrine to the nymphs, that had been raised above a spring at the side of the house. (Chedworth Roman Villa, National Trust Souvenir Guide, pp.5, 8, 18-19, 38-9.)

Bacchic scenes in the triclinium

Despite Constantine’s Edict of Toleration and the example of most of his family, Christianity was still the religion of a tiny minority, particularly in the West. There had even been an ‘Apostate’ emperor, Constantine’s nephew Julian, although on his deathbed in 363 Julian is said to have bitterly acknowledged the triumph of Christ: ‘Vicisti, Galilaee’ (You have won, Galilean). Throughout this period, the most obdurate pagans, ‘often at considerable cost to themselves’, were to be found among that most conservative group, the senatorial aristocracy, who would have included the owners of Chedworth.

Thereafter, as the Church was ‘showered with benefactions, and privileges, invited to undertake responsibilities, and progressively given a directive role in society’, Christianity had become ‘respectable and even fashionable’, attractive to people of all ranks. (J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome (London, 1975), pp.1-2.) One of the more unexpected converts was the owner of Chedworth.

The chi-rho symbol from the nymphaeum

On his orders, the nymphs had been symbolically banished from their shrine, for a coping stone from its octagonal basin was incised with the famous christogram, representing the chi and the rho which are the first two letters of Christ’s name – ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ in Greek. It was the symbol that Constantine had had his men paint on their shields before his great victory at Milvian Bridge in 311, and it appears on fourth-century baptismal fonts (mostly portable lead tanks) that have been discovered throughout Roman Britain. (Paul Stephenson, Constantine: Unconquered Emperor, Christian Victor (London, 2009), pp.1, 5, 135-6, 232-3.) An old pagan altar had been tossed into the Chedworth shrine, which had probably been converted by its owner to use as a baptistery.

Chedworth baths

Christianity at Chedworth had, however, been an aberration. In the late fourth century, there had been a resurgence of paganism in the West. The coping stone had been peremptorily removed from the nymphaeum, and relegated, as building material, to the steps of the west bath-house. Christianity was to be no comfort to those who had to face the final abandonment of the villa.

The swallows still nest in the eaves at Chedworth, as they would have done in Roman times. Surprisingly, the site teems also with specimens of the rare ‘Roman snail’ (helix pomatia), a protected species that is mainly found today in the Chilterns and on the North Downs. At Banstead Woods, near Epsom, these creatures, distinctive by their size and pale colour, are being poached at an alarming rate, and are apparently fetching high prices from French restaurateurs (Daily Telegraph, 27 June 2012). At Chedworth, where they loiter unmolested by the outdoor tables of the café, there is something almost reproachful about their presence. ‘You brought us all this way,’ they seem to say. ‘You used to think us a delicacy in your triclinium, milk-fed and roasted in sow’s udders. Why don’t you want to eat us any more?’

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The Isle of Wight’s Wildest Swimming: Whale Chine, Vauville in Normandy and the Wavells of Atherfield Farm

August 10th, 2012

Whale Chine is a spectacular ravine in the cliffs on the south side of the Isle of Wight. Other examples of such clefts – the word ‘chine’ is peculiar to the dialect of Dorset and the Island – are the better known Blackgang and Shanklin Chines.

Whale Chine is reached from a car park on the Military Road, which is notable for its grand vistas. Some of the greatest wild swimming of my boyhood and youth was to be had there. To descend to the beach, by means of a steep, rickety wooden staircase and narrow path, was an adventure in itself, for the chine is 140 feet deep.

Usually weighed down by a picnic basket, one was overpowered by the grandeur and timelessness of one’s surroundings. The cliffs here abound with the fossilised remains of prehistoric oysters, ammonites and lobsters. The stony beach is steeply shelved, so swimmers at high tide are soon out of their depth. The swell is considerable. So remote and challenging an environment was appealing to naturists, whose presence occasioned much sniggering among us youngsters – all those corpulent bank managers – though swimming naked is, of course, the wildest swimming of all, and they added to the exoticism of the place.

Since 2005, the steps having fallen into disrepair, the beach at Whale Chine has been completely inaccessible from the landward side. It seems the only way of getting there is by sea. The picture at the top was taken the other day from the head of the wooden staircase and evokes many memories.

Whale Chine appears not to have been named for the marine mammal, as I always supposed, but for the Wavell family of nearby Atherfield Manor, who farmed the land up to the edge of the chine. The family left their mark on the place during less than a century of occupation. They are said to have bought the estate in 1557 (from Sir Thomas Trenchard) and to have relinquished it in 1636 (A.D. Mills, The Place-names of the Isle of Wight). The photograph on the left is a distant view of the manor-house, less than half a mile inland – a solid, L-shaped building of stone. From a clearer picture in C.W.R. Winter, The Manor Houses of the Isle of Wight (Wimborne, 1987, p.186), I deduce that it also dates from the time of the Wavells.

These Wavells are a very old Island family. They are recorded there since 1300, when a Roger Wavill witnessed a charter at Afton, near Freshwater. A century later, Adam Wavill was witness to a grant of land at the same place. Their farming descendants had no airs about them and are listed in 1606 among the yeomen of the Island.

Thomas Wavell, who sold Atherfield in 1636, had settled at Limerston, elsewhere in the parish of Brighstone. He served during the Civil War as a major in the Royalist army, but another Wavell was for Parliament, and sat on the ‘Committee of Safety’ that it imposed on the Island. The leading Royalist there, Sir John Oglander, was to deplore the arbitrary government of ‘Ringwood of Newport, the pedlar, Maynard the apothecary, Matthews the baker, Wavell and Legge, farmers’, who ‘overruled Deputy Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace’. He felt this to be contrary to the natural order of things.

Little did Sir John know that the despised Farmer Wavell was assuredly the male-line descendant of a knightly Norman immigrant from the time of the Conquest, which was the proudest boast of his own family (C. Aspinall-Oglander, Nunwell Symphony (London, 1945), pp.11-12, 40, 104). Sir John’s descent was from the lord of Orglandes, near Valognes; Wavell’s was, almost certainly, from the lord of Vauville, also on the Cherbourg peninsula. In the late eleventh century, William de Vauville or ‘Wavilla’ is mentioned in charters in both Normandy and England. Subsequent generations took root in Sussex, Bedfordshire, Somerset and, it seems, the Isle of Wight. From Whale Chine they would unwittingly have looked across the Channel towards their ancestral home, forgetful of their origins and of their former knightly rank, even more than the Durbeyfields of Hardy’s novel.

Major Thomas Wavell’s son Richard (1633-1705), sometime of Egham and London, was a celebrated nonconformist pastor, and great-grandfather of Dr William Wavell of Barnstable, after whom the element ‘wavellite’ is named. Three generations of William’s descendants were all educated at Winchester College and became soldiers, the last being Field Marshal Archibald, First Earl Wavell of Cyrenaica (pictured left), the wartime Viceroy of India. (L.G. Pine, They Came with the Conqueror (London, 1966), pp.46-8; G.E. Wavell, ed. L.G. Pine, The House of Wavell (MS in British Museum); Burke’s Peerage 1949.)

Lord Wavell’s son, the second earl, a Major in the Black Watch, was killed leading a patrol against the Mau-Mau, the last of his line. However, branches of this remarkable and illustrious family continue to flourish on the Island. I note that there are nine Wavells listed in the current Isle of Wight telephone directory.

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A Day at the Dig Part I: Roman Silchester 2012

July 22nd, 2012

Owing to the continuous heavy rain, this season’s excavations at Roman Silchester have been more challenging than ever. However, the usual festive atmosphere prevails, as was apparent at yesterday’s Open Day, when many of the participants wore ‘themed’ costumes.

The rain has also beautifully brought out subtle but revealing contrasts in the soil, which are not so obvious on ground that has been baked dry by summer sun. For example, there are dark stripes marking the remains of floor-level beams, dark circular stains indicating post-holes, more dark stripes along the third-century street (pictured left) suggestive of wheel ruts.

The picture on the left illustrates the progress of the archaeologists over the years from the third-century street level (behind Amanda Clarke, Field Director, in the fetching hat) down to that of the first century (on which she is standing). They are continuing to concentrate on the earliest Roman layer in Insula IX, dating more precisely from about 40 to 60 A.D., where they have discovered a large number of insubstantial wooden buildings.

Michael Fulford and Amanda Clarke, who oversee the dig, remain convinced that these buildings were for military use, and indeed that the Calleva of that period was highly-militarised, if not a garrison town. As Professor Fulford has discovered in previous excavations, there was a square wooden building under the later Forum, which is equally likely to have had a military purpose. In further support of the theory, the finds in Insula IX have included horse harnesses, belts and buckles, a ballista bolt and – in the last three weeks – three tiny pieces of chain mail.

The team are also revealing further traces of the iron-age settlement that existed before the arrival of the Romans, including what may have been the hall of a chief. There is evidence beside it of a substantial track. Its route through adjoining fields is to be investigated by means of ground-penetrating radar. Where the street runs past the chief’s house it is lined by a row of post-holes. There is also a flanking trench, which was either to support a fence, or for drainage.

Remains of amphorae, samian-ware and goblets imported from the Continent are evidence that this was no backwater. The Atrebates enjoyed a relatively sophisticated diet, which included such exotica as dill, coriander and celery. Most exciting of all has been discovery this season, in a well, of a single olive stone, the very earliest to have been found in Britain – a Continental import before ever the Romans arrived. This is not surprising given that Commius and his Atrebates, the first-century B.C. colonisers of this place, were émigrés from Gaul.

The most poignant discovery has been of a little dog in the foundations of the supposed chief’s house. An animal of two or three years old, resembling a miniature poodle, it is of a type never previously seen in Britain, a land better known for its cunning hunting dogs. Professor Fulford thinks the animal was an offering, deliberately buried in the foundations to ensure the life of the building. One wonders if it had been the cherished pet of the chiefly family – and hopes that its death was quick and painless.

Pressed on the causes of Silchester’s decline in the fifth century A.D., Professor Fulford points to evidence of deliberate spoliation, with the rubble of demolished buildings having been tossed into wells. The inhabitants had a habit of digging these wells into ancient latrine pits, which cannot have helped. Whatever the causes of its gradual abandonment, the thoroughly-Romanised Calleva Atrebatum had no future in Saxon-dominated Britain.

For last year’s Silchester blogs, see http://www.rupertwilloughby.co.uk/archives/753.

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