Ginns Old Farmhouse

Authors: Anne and John Coles

Date: 12th May 2017

(Click on the images to zoom in)

 We have studied several Beaulieu houses these past few years but we have really enjoyed looking at Gins. We hope you will enjoy hearing the story too.

This is the menu:

1. First, the monastic period, from the 13th to the 16th centuries. There is no documentary evidence whatsoever. But we still think we can suggest what went on here.
2. Part two is the next hundred years or so and is called “Gins, the smart place to live”. You’ll see why.
3. Part three is our evidence for dating the first house built here. We think that can be done to within ten years.
4. Part four is the story of Gins as a working farm, a story three hundred years long.
5. When we get to the 20th century we have someone here tonight who actually lived in Gins Old Farmhouse and two people who visited it very often.
6. Then we shall look at the splendid row in 1961 over the proposal to build a clubhouse here for Royal Southampton Yacht Club.

Our story has monks, gentlemen, gentlewomen, farmers male and female, dead bodies and guns.
The constant feature of Gins throughout the story is its location - magnificent, beautiful, remote, dangerous at times. The geography is fundamental.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF GINNS

The physical environment has imposed continuity on this low-lying part of Beaulieu that has traversed the centuries. Geology: pink is for Permian!As you approached the house tonight you were driving on the slightly elevated gravels of the Permian geological formation which extends from St. Leonard’s as a promontory into the sea, providing a firm surface amid the mud flats for a harbour. This feature explains much of the history of Gins. It is a strategic location. Until the shingle spit at Needs Ore was formed, largely by the Great Storm of 1703, Gins would have been the first sheltered landing inside the Beaulieu River. The river’s channel was almost certainly deeper in the past, probably by about a metre, and therefore fully navigable for most ships, even at low tide. And the river, today used for recreation, was for most of Gins’ history an important transport route.

Embankments 1867Incursions by the sea were a constant threat to vulnerable farmland. Bunds and embankments like these were needed to protect it. Dating is imprecise but Bartlett believes that much of the work on the embankments was done by the Cistercian monks during their land reclamations. Today the Solent coast is considerably eroded and still eroding. But on the west bank of the Beaulieu River we find extensive marshland, salt flats, and reclaimed pasture, with several small jetties. The salt marsh provided good seasonal grazing. Cattle were important both for beef and dairy production. The reclaimed land was fine for cultivation, for cereals, hay and fodder crops, while the low lying flats with their embankments also offered opportunities for salt production, a major activity here for well over a thousand years. While the main area of salt production was from Milford to Lymington, salterns occur on both sides of the Beaulieu River. The saltern at Deep Marsh, just south of here, is thought to be early mediaeval in origin, while that at Gins may be of similar age and was still in use into the nineteenth century. Traces of it can be seen across the road from the house.
Gins Saltern 1783: M.Mackenzie’s chart

This part of the Beaulieu River was also geographically ideal for smuggling. A panel in Buckler’s Hard Museum describes it well.

We shall focus on the house but we need to bear in mind the constant background of the river, the mud-flats, the marsh, the sea and the continuous effort needed to protect the farmland and the livelihoods of those who worked it. And the weather: the storms. Widnell, the former estate agent, found in early nineteenth century parish records four cases of bodies of strangers being found dead on the shore, at Park, St Leonards and one near Ginns.

THE MONASTIC PERIOD

Gins is not in the Domesday Book of 1086. Nor does it appear in the few surviving monastic documents. The first written reference comes in 1538. But we need to begin our story earlier.

If you google Gins you come across the Hampshire Treasures website which baldly states that Gins Old Farmhouse was built around 1250 for monastic use. That seems to be rubbish. There is no evidence for a house here at that date. If there was a building or buildings, they were probably insubstantial; all traces have disappeared.

Gins was important then for a different reason. The clue lies in the name. In the thirteenth century the word “gin” was a variant of a French word which meant “a machine employing a simple tackle or windlass for lifting”. So this was a place where things were lifted – presumably on or off boats. Where did the goods come from and where were they going? St. Leonards GrangeSt. Leonards was less than a kilometre away. It was the largest of Beaulieu Abbey’s granges and it had the largest mediaeval barn in England. Gins was connected to it by an all weather road. It was essentially the port for St Leonards.

Several recent archaeological surveys refer to a mediaeval harbour at Ginns. Professor Adams of Southampton University sent us the relevant part of their 1994 report part of which reads “ ... a survey was undertaken at Gins Hard....A modern concrete slip has been built on the site but evidence still remains of at least two previous stages of wooden construction”. The report provides further details. The latest study, by Wessex Archaeology in 2010, states: “It is possible that archaeological remains associated with this mediaeval harbour could exist on the foreshore. Fragments of a linear structure, thought to be a landing stage, have been identified from aerial photographs in the location.....” Excited by this, we searched far and wide for those aerial photographs - but without success. While there’s no reason to doubt that there was a mediaeval harbour, a properly focussed archaeological exploration, with dating of timbers et cetera, is needed to confirm the details.

There’s a good reason why the monastic documents contain no reference to Gins. It wasn’t a separate entity. It was part of the St. Leonard’s economic unit. But it probably saw a great deal of activity. It is likely that the stone for building the great barn and the rest of St. Leonard’s was shipped in through Gins. We know that there was constant traffic between Beaulieu Abbey and the granges. The Abbey sent bread, beer, fish and salt to the granges. They sent back oats, wheat, beans, vetches, butter and cheese. This could all have been sent overland but it would have been quicker and easier to use the river. Father Hockey’s history of the Abbey tells us that the lay brothers who staffed the granges had to visit the Abbey for religious services 22 times during the year. All in all, many people would have been travelling to and from St. Leonard’s for administrative, agricultural, religious or other purposes. Gins quay must have been a bustling place.

POST DISSOLUTION

Following the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530’s the big granges, through which the monks had managed their agriculture, were split up and their various parts leased. A number of smallish farms were created, including Gins. From now on we can trace who leased Gins thanks to an almost complete list of tenants provided by the Estate Archivist.

In 1538 there is the first written reference: “a tenement called Gynnes with coast and marsh, then held with the Park of Througham” (Bartlett page 127). Througham is the original name for the park from which today’s Park Farm takes its name. A tenement is just a piece of land owned by someone, not necessarily with a house on it. In 1542 Gins together with three other holdings, St. Leonard’s, Warren and Beck, were leased to a man called Thomas Pace. The lease stipulated that he was to hold this land for 20 years and each year to pay £66 cash and send forty capons to Titchfield where the Lord of the Manor then lived. Pace was a significant figure who became the largest landholder in the area. There is no suggestion that he lived at Gins. His residence was probably in Southampton. He was the only leaseholder in all the Beaulieu leases issued at that time who was described as a “gentleman”. But it became quite common for the tenants of Gins, St. Leonard’s and Park Farm to be given this description. Gentlemen were few and far between on the Beaulieu estate so this part of it had a certain distinction. For a time this was the smart place to live.

The term “landed gentry” had just begun to be used of the untitled members of the landowning upper class. The landed gentry were made up of four separate groups: baronets, knights, esquires and gentlemen. Generally, men of high birth or rank, good social standing and wealth, who did not need to work for a living, were considered gentlemen. The population of England doubled between 1540 and 1640, driving up the price of food. This was a major opportunity for those who held land and many gentlemen and yeomen farmers became prosperous. By the late 16th century the gentry emerged as the class most closely involved in politics, the military and the law and it provided the bulk of members of parliament. We were fascinated to discover how closely the tenants of Gins fitted that template.

For 53 years, from 1570 to 1623, it was held by members of the Kempe family. This was a distinguished and enormous family with branches all over England and the colonies. It was the Kent branch that settled in Hampshire. The rental details are a little unclear but Edward Kempe may have leased Gins as early as 1570. He certainly leased it in 1578. The farm was then about 123 acres in extent and the rent was £9. For comparison, the rent of St. Leonard’s was £48. Gins was always one of the smallest farms in the area but valuable fishing and fowling rights went with the farm.
Edward Kempe quickly became a prominent figure. In 1574 he was what was known as a “Petie Capitaine” of the coastal defence forces between Beaulieu Haven and Calshot. Bear in mind that this was a period of considerable tension. The Spanish Armada was not very far away.
Now, when was there first a house on this site? Edward Kempe tabletIf you go to Beaulieu Abbey church, walk up to the altar and turn right you will see on the wall a brass tablet recording the death of this Edward Kempe in 1605. He was almost certainly the first person to be buried in what was previously the monks’ refectory but had become Beaulieu’s parish church. Widnell quotes a 1648 manuscript in the British Museum about the Abbey which describes this tablet and says “Here lieth the body of Edward Kempe....his coat (i.e. coat of arms) appears in the window at Gynnes, his late house” (Widnell page 42). So proof, proof that there was a house at Gins and Edward Kempe lived in it. And that house must have been built some time before his death in 1605.

Norden 1595But we can do better. On the map of Hampshire by the cartographer John Norden, dated 1595, the name Gynnes is prominent, together with a circle with a dot in the middle. That was Nordern’s symbol for a house. So we now know that there was a house by 1595 at the latest. Saxton 1575But on an earlier map, that by Christopher Saxton, dated 1575, there is no reference to Gynnes and no house in the relevant part. So we seem to have a 20 year bracket for the first house. When Edward Kemp’s son Thomas was married in 1580 he was described as being “of Gins Farm” (Bartlett page 284), which must mean there was a house by then. So in all probability Edward had the house built between 1575 and 1580.

When Gins was listed by Historic England it was described as “Farmhouse, once house. Circa 1700, altered C18 and early C19, possibly on site of earlier building.” Sadly, it is impossible now to recover the evidence for these descriptions. But if Historic England are right about the date of 1700 for the present house then it might have indeed been built on the site of an earlier one, namely Edward Kempe’s house of the 1570’s. But are they right?

Ginns FarmhouseTake another look at the house. It is clear when you inspect it from the outside that the left hand side is a later addition, possibly erected for farming rather than domestic purposes. It may be that the oldest part of the present house is essentially Edward Kempe’s house. We have looked hard for evidence. There are some tantalising inscriptions on the lintel above the magnificent fireplace in the dining room but they do not seem to be dates. And we tried to date the beams with reference book in hand but no luck. Of course it is possible that Kempe’s house is now completely buried beneath the present house but some of what we see now may be as early as the sixteenth century. There can be little doubt that the white stones you see in the walls of the house are monastic in origin and so will almost certainly have come from St. Leonard’s.

Barn and FarmhouseThis barn in which we are meeting was attributed to the eighteenth century by Historic England. This is confirmed by early maps we have seen. In the middle between the two doors would have been a threshing floor, the draught through the barn being used for the winnowing of corn.
Let’s just finish the story of the Kempes. Edward’s son, Thomas, inherited Gins from his father. Earlier, in 1580, he had married a woman called Mary Oglander, from the prominent Oglander family on the Isle of Wight. Mary’s father, Sir William Oglander, took a lease of Beaulieu Abbey in 1590 because his wife had been frightened by the sight of the Spanish Armada appearing off the coast of the Island.

Thomas Kempe became one of the leading men of the region. From at least 1605 he was bailiff to the Lord of the Manor. He was also the keeper of the mill at Beaulieu bridge for eight years from 1616 though he employed someone else to run it. He was a gentleman after all. A lease document dated 1616 laid on Thomas Kempe the obligation to, I quote, “notify the presence of pirates”. As Bartlett points out in a rare flash of humour, it looks from the list of weapons found in Kempe’s inventory (Bartlett pages 215/216) that he was ready not only to report the arrival of pirates but to promote their departure. He had three fowling pieces, a coliver (light musket), a petronella (large pistol), a halberd (an axe mounted on a spear), a billhook, a rapier and three daggers. Quite an armoury. But then when you think about it Ginns in those days was very remote and exposed. If there was trouble you were on your own. And there were constant rumours of invasions from the continent and no doubt plenty of undesirables trying their luck up the Beaulieu River, much as now.

Thomas Kempe died in 1623. He may have been a ‘gentleman’ and Gins farm small but the inventory on his death showed that he had been no slouch of a farmer. He left between 80 and 120 cattle, many grazing on neighbouring farms, where he also grew additional hay. Then there were oxen, 30 sheep, over 20 pigs, a few horses and other livestock. His will shows that he left sums of money to the poor of Beaulieu and to several servants. He was undoubtedly well off. After his death his wife gave to the Earl of Southampton £2000, a very sizeable sum, from the money Thomas had left her. Thomas’s farms went to his son, John Kempe, who became M.P. for Lymington. He supported the Parliament side in the English civil war and is said to have carried the demands of the Parliamentarians to King Charles when he was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. John Kempe bust in Boldre ChurchJohn Kempe died at Boldre in 1652 and there is a bust of him in Boldre church. We are not sure whether he ever lived at Gins as an adult but he must have done as a child. He apparently had a house at Boldre and also at Buckler’s Hard.

So ends the association of the Kempes with Gins. Why did they choose to live here? It was after all an isolated place. Living conditions cannot have been easy. The farm was not large. It is interesting that both Edward and Thomas were given roles to protect this part of the coast. One wonders if the Earl of Southampton or even the Crown wanted this area secured in difficult times and talked the Kempes into living here. Or perhaps the Kempes liked the things the location provided, especially the sport. We know that Thomas Kempe had fishing rights from Needs Ore to Beaulieu Mill. We know they were well equipped for shooting game. And there is another thing. Practically adjoining Gins was the Park of Througham. Many well known English parks began life as deer parks and this was no exception. After the dissolution the tenant of Park was obliged to keep 200 fallow deer. The availability of deer for hunting may have been an additional attraction for the Kempes and the other gentry of the area.

Things now change. Gins comes to be occupied by working farmers rather than gentry. It could be, as the Estate Archivist suggested to us, that on the death of the 4th Earl of Southampton in 1667 the new absentee owners of the estate, the Montagus, decided to maximise income from the farms by leasing them increasingly to proper working farmers. Also by the eighteenth century the ambitions of the gentry were growing. They wanted to own land not lease it. The land around Gins was not really suitable for the grand country house.

THE FARMERS

Gins was a working farm for more than three centuries, from 1652 till 1956. Some families occupied the farm for really long periods; we shall mostly concentrate on these. Information is sparse until we get to the 20th century but a certain amount can be gleaned from the surviving archives. We have chosen the Stowells, the Drews, the Wheelers, the Figgins and lastly the Browns. The list of leases reveals the interesting point that the tenancy often passed to a widow after the death of her husband before another family member was able to take it over some years later.

 We start with the Stowells, whose family acquired the tenancy some 30 years after the Kempes left. We have the inventory of Richard Stowell (H.R.O. 1663/AD/098) who died in 1659, and also of his widow who died five years later (H.R.O.1663 AD/098). Richard is described as a “yeoman”, one grade below the gentry. We can contrast his situation with that of the Kempes. He rented part of St. Leonard’s as well as Gins. But Richard’s total possessions were valued at only £410, far less than the Kempes.

His farmhouse was presumably the same house that the Kempes had used. In Richard’s time 14 or so rooms were furnished. He had a hall, parlour, study, kitchen, sink house, buttery, presshouse, milk house, cheese loft, malt loft, and a milk house chamber, kitchen chamber, parlour chamber and wainscot chamber.

In contrast Thomas Kempe’s inventory showed 16 furnished rooms with beds in seven, compared with Richard’s three. Thomas had a painted chamber, a chamber for cloaks and his parlour had gaming tables for playing cards. But Richard had a study which contained bottles and glasses – and two books! Richard had fewer weapons - only two guns, plus a pistol, a halberd and a fowling piece. Later, his widow left a musket, bandoliers and swords.

The Drews had the tenancy of Gins for over 50 years. In their time, in 1718, a Survey of the Manor was published – a really important document. This shows that Gins farm was then divided into 14 named fields or lesser plots, adding up to about 201 acres. Altogether the farm was valued at £85. The house was already ‘L’shaped . There was no sign of the barn.

1718 map

1718 map enlarged: L shape of house

The Wheelers then had Gins for 76 years. Jonathan Wheeler’s tenancy included a saltern. In 1738 he was accused and convicted of “carrying off 24 bushels of white English salt” – probably his own salt, without paying the government tax. Was he regarded as a security risk? It seems to have been a mammoth undertaking to get him to court in Winchester! There were 13 guards around the house at Gins, three to guard Jonathan at Buckler’s Hard, four men to guard him at Beaulieu, and four to guard him when they arrived at Winchester. Six horses were needed to get him to Winchester. Then there was the expense of feeding the party at stopovers and extra horses on standby. The total distance was a mere 24 miles but the total cost was £6 9s 5d. Jonathan was duly fined £20 but appealed and got off.

Inside of a salternWilliam Wheeler was then tenant for 47 years till 1802 and for part of that time the tenancy included 2 saltpans and a salt works.

His will of 1803 (H.R.O. 1803B/56) is very difficult to decipher but it does tell us about the women in the family. His wife, Anne, already a widow, was left household goods, furniture, plate, linen and china some of which she had brought with her from her earlier marriage. There were 5 married daughters. And in case we are giving the impression that families huddled together in Beaulieu decade after decade, you should know that all the daughters were living elsewhere with their husbands: two in Portsmouth, two in Deptford and one in London. In the will, the daughters received a guinea each; the two sons, mere stay-at homes in Exbury and Southampton, each got three guineas!

Under the Figgins family, who held Gins for 69 years, the farm expands. From 1836 the lease included Salternshill . The 1851 census tells us that the widowed Ann Figgins, who was then 67, was farming 300 acres and employing 6 labourers. The household consisted of Anne, a 24 year old son, two grandchildren, two indoor servants and two of the labourers. Note her age; she held the tenancy until she died at 78. They were an unusually long-lived family.1851 Census Gins Farm Figgins Family

Ginns QuayAnd what about the quay? An advert in the Portsmouth Evening News, inserted by the tenant of Gins in 1894, reads: “60 tons mangolds, 23 shillings per ton, free on boat, Gins quay”. Even as late as 1918, Park Farm advertised the sale of 100 tons of mangolds in place or on barge at Gins Quay. Many thanks to Tony Norris for those references.

Tony also provided this useful description of Gins Farm from the Hampshire Advertiser of 1 August 1885: “To Let, Ginns Farm....the property of the Rt. Hon. Henry Scott, containing about 212 acres, 132 of which are pasture, the remaining being good and useful for serial (sic) cropping, with good house and forest rights for horses, cattle, sheep and pigs. The marshes on the farm are well adapted for dairy purposes or fattening cattle and it has a good quay for loading vessels close to the farm building and joining the Solent.” That quay had been put to good use for over six hundred years by then.

The Brown FamilyNow we come to the Brown family who lived at Gins for 49 years from 1907 to 1956. George William Brown farmed here from 1907 to 1939. When he realised he was dying, he requested that the tenancy be passed to his three children: Ada, who was already married, George and William. The estate agreed, scribbling a rapid reply. George Edward, who had been a keen yachtsman in his youth, then farmed Gins for the next fifteen years. Here is the family: the elderly couple is George and his wife Elizabeth, Ada on the left with William behind. Probably young George was the photographer.

It is a real pleasure to have with us tonight two of his granddaughters, Monica Bradewell of New Milton and Mary Saunders of Lymington. Mary was born at Gins and lived here till she was 12. Monica, her cousin, was a very frequent visitor. We have really enjoyed talking to them about their time at Ginns. Much of what follows comes directly from them.

Ginns Farmhouse

Mary lived at Gins with her parents, George Edmund and Elizabeth Brown, as well as her two older sisters and her uncle William. She remembers it as a large house. They had five bedrooms even though part of the house was shut off and not used. Maybe this was a hayloft in those days. Water was pumped from a well in the 1940’s. Mains water, needed to achieve TT accreditation for the dairy herd, came in 1952, installed by prisoners from Winchester Gaol. No electricity. The family used Tilley lamps until a generator was bought – actually initially for the milking machine! 

1909 Farmhouse

Heating was provided by open fires and oil stoves. The dining-room fire was particularly good. It’s that splendid fireplace which you can still see. No bathrooms. Baths were taken in a tin tub in the same room as the copper where the washing was done. The farm yard in the first half of the C20 had very much its present form.

Mary’s mother drove a pony and trap to Lymington for shopping. Later, her father acquired a car and was said to be the first farmer in Beaulieu to have one. On Sundays her mother and perhaps other members of the family went to church at Park on the main road. It was partly a social gathering. Her mother used to say “We all met on a Sunday”.

The farmyard in the first half of the C20

The house was never flooded in their time though part of the garden was. The area where the Yacht Club is now had no buildings. It was known, for obscure reasons, as “Granny’s Garden” and people used to camp there. The family had a rubber dinghy and a clinker built dinghy which they rowed to Buckler’s Hard and elsewhere. They swam in the river. In the stream they played with baby eels, trickling them between their fingers. And they caught shrimps from the quay – deliciously salty when boiled straight away.Tea on the pontoon - late 1930s

The "Mary Askew"Yachting became an increasingly important sport between the two World Wars. In 1938 the newly formed Beaulieu River Sailing Club had a pontoon and a small hut at Gins. But during the Second World War all private boats had to be removed from the river, including scows as well as fine yachts like the Mary Askew, a yacht which had associations for the family. Naval vehicles took over. As Mary has learnt from her older relatives, there were guns on the quay, two Nissen huts for army use in front of the house and an Anderson shelter in the garden for the family. Cattle were kept inside during the war. Mary’s father was worried that the military activity would upset them. With good reason - on one occasion shrapnel went through a cow pen between two cows and into the pigsty at the back, though without harming any of the animals. There was a doodle bug strike near Drokes and a near miss at Gins when a doodle bug approached but was fired at and turned away towards East Boldre.

Naval vessels near Ginns

The main farming activity was dairy. Mary remembers the cows, about thirty, being milked by hand and remembers too when a milking machine was bought. The milk was put out in churns for the Milk Marketing Board to collect. When the cows grazed the more marshy parts of the farm, the children disliked the milk’s salty taste. Pigs were kept but no sheep. Potatoes, cereals, oats and kale were grown. Mary’s father used lorries for farming tasks, to bring in hay and straw.

Pearl opens the Hut 1927Does anyone here apart from Mary and Monica remember the St. Leonard’s Social Hut? This hut was at the top of Gins Lane, on the left as you turn in. Mary’s father helped to build it as a young man and we have a photograph of the then Lady Montagu opening it in 1927. It was a centre of social activity for local families. There were dances, games and at least one wedding reception was held there. Mary and Monica used to spend the whole day getting ready for these evenings! It was probably still there in 1960 but we see no signs of it now.

1956: the End of an Era

George Brown retired in 1956, the last of the farmers to live in the house. The auction of the Browns’ stock and equipment marks the end of an era. It included 74 TT tested cattle, a Friesian bull and some 220 poultry. A successful farm but surely also a very human one. Each cow, sold individually, had its own name: from Martha, Ruth, Sophie and Pansy and on to Yasmin, Jane and Nelly.

What a pleasure it is to have these first hand memories. Mary and Monica, thank you both enormously.

MODERN TIMES

Ginns from the airNow we come to modern times. In the late 1950’s Ian Strathcarron, then aged 8 or 9, used to visit the house at weekends. Ian’s parents were friends of the Farrar family. In 1958 George Farrar bought Gins, planning to convert it into a weekend house. Ian told us that at that time it was more or less a building site. The interior was largely gutted and the barns were in some disrepair. A keen yachtsman, Farrar turned one of the rooms into a storeroom for dinghies and other sailing equipment. George Farrar died in about 1963. The house had several other occupants until Holly and Julian Chichester, the present owners, bought Gins around five years ago. Meanwhile, the farmland has continued to be leased from the estate and no longer has any connexion with the house.

Just before we conclude, a word about the great row. In 1961 the peace of Ginns was rather shattered by the proposal of Royal Southampton Yacht Club to build a clubhouse here. Some of you will no doubt remember this affair. All we know about it comes from a fat file which we found in the Hampshire Record Office, mostly consisting of correspondence in the periodical, the Yachting World. In October 1961 the distinguished marine artist David Cobb wrote to protest: “This proposal seems to run counter to all today’s efforts to preserve the Solent Waterside from development. Beaulieu...(is)...beautiful precisely because it has not been built upon by clubhouses or power stations. Could the clubhouse not be re-sited at Buckler’s Hard?” The next month there was a leader in the Yachting World saying that more than 150 letters had been received, all of them against the proposal. “Clearly”, the editor concluded, “The clubhouse is not wanted.” The protests continued, some from distinguished people such as Hugh Casson. And George Farrar, owner of Gins, joined in. Not surprisingly, since the proposed clubhouse would deprive Gins of part of its view of the river. People were mostly disturbed at the threat of intrusion into a peaceful and beautiful place. Some feared the clubhouse would become what one called “a gin palace for businessmen.” They were worried about masses of visitors and even went so far as to suggest that the Royal Southampton wasn’t really a yachting club anyway, more of a cricket club.

In January 1962 another letter appeared, from the then Lord Montagu. He stated that he had agreed to sell the site to the Yacht Club for the nominal sum of £400 but had imposed special conditions to protect the amenities of the river. Hampshire County Council recommended to the government in September 1962 that the proposal should not go ahead but a public enquiry the next month found in favour of it and the government gave the green light. One lasting legacy of it all is the tall hedge now protecting Gins from the clubhouse which was planted by George Farrar.

So that is our story. We are most grateful to all those who contributed information and images. And we would like to give our warm personal thanks to Holly and Julian for giving us such ready access to their handsome and fascinating house and making our research on it such a pleasure.

As you drive away tonight you may want to reflect that you have been parking on a hard, and are taking a route, which have been used for well over seven hundred years.

SOURCES

• Hampshire Records Office, Winchester (Indicated by H.R.O. in the text).
• New Forest Centre, Lyndhurst
• Beaulieu Estate Archives
• Poor Law and Burial Records
• Archaeology and Public Buildings Record, Hampshire County Council
• Beaulieu in Tudor and Stuart Times by Bartlett (unpublished)
• A History of Beaulieu Abbey 1204-1539 by Sir James Fowler (The Car Illustrated 1911)
• The Beaulieu Record by H.E.R.Widnell (Pioneer Publications 1973)
• Beaulieu, King John’s Abbey by Dom Frederick Hockey (Pioneer Publications 1976)
• Nunwell Symphony by Cecil Aspinall-Oglander (Hogarth Press 1945)
• A General History of the Kemp and Kempe Families of Great Britain and the Colonies by F. Hitchin. (https://archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00kemp)
• Gentry. Six Hundred Years of a Peculiarly English Class by Adam Nicholson (Harper Press 2012)
• New Forest Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment by Wessex Archaeology, for the New Forest National Park, March 2010 (https://historic.england.org.uk/image-books/publications/new-forest-rczas-phase-1)
• The Barns of the Abbey of Beaulieu and its Granges of Great Coxwell and Beaulieu St. Leonard’s by Walter Horn and Ernest Born (University of California Press 1965)
• Geology of the Beaulieu River Estuary by Ian West and Yining Chen (http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~imw/beaulieu-river-estuary.htm)
• The Salt Industry of Lymington and the Solent Coast by Jude James (St Barbe Museum 1996)
• New Forest Coastal Archaeological Resource by G.Momber,A. Rackley and S.Draper (Report by the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Marine Archaeology 1994)
• The Ancient Earthworks of the New Forest by Hayward Sumner (1921)