Bishop's Waltham
Bishop's Waltham is a medieval market town situated at the source of the River Hamble in Hampshire, England. It has a foot in the South Downs National Park and is located at the midpoint of a long-established route between Winchester and Portsmouth. It is home to the ruins of Bishop's Waltham Palace, a Scheduled Ancient Monument under English Heritage management, and a well-preserved high street with many listed buildings which now house independent shops.
Bishop's Waltham's long history includes a roll call of Medieval and Tudor kings and queens who visited the town to stay at the palace. The name of the town is derived from the Anglo-Saxon words: "wald" and "ham".
Modern day Bishop's Waltham has a population of over 6,723 and is the largest settlement in the Winchester district outside the city itself. It is home to an infant and junior school.
History
The town's name comprises three parts 'walt' – forest; 'ham' – settlement'; and 'Bishop's'. It started off as a very early Anglo-Saxon settlement between 450 and 550 AD, and steadily grew to become one of Hampshire's largest villages, despite being burnt to the ground by Danes in 1001 AD. By the time of the Domesday Book, it had a population of around 600 living in 115 households - at the time, the 11th largest settlement in Hampshire. In 904, King Edward the Elder exchanged it with Denewulf, Bishop of Winchester, for the Bishop's estate at Portchester. In 1136 Henry de Blois, a later bishop, built a new church and in 1158 started the now-ruined Bishop's Waltham Palace. It was destroyed on the orders of Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War. Much of the old Palace is still in the town. Apart from the ruins, which are open to the public, material from the Palace was used as building materials in town buildings still standing to this day.William of Wykeham died in the town, while after the Battle of Trafalgar, some 200 French officers including Admiral Villeneuve were imprisoned there.
There are many Georgian buildings in the town alongside the Norman parish church. The town retains a unique character, with a number of small local businesses including an off-licence which was established in 1617 and closed in 2011. The High Street in the town also has to a number of chain stores and a large supermarket chain ; the owners of the independent shops have fought to prevent larger chains from threatening their businesses and, they argue, the character of the town. Unusually for the United Kingdom, there is a vineyard nearby.
During the 19th century, Bishop's Waltham was a successful market town, being home to several agricultural suppliers, merchants and a cattle market. The town also had a large brickworks to its north, along with a gasworks that provided town gas for lighting and heating the town. The town had a large enough working population by the late 19th century to support a Working Men's Institute, which occupied an ornate brick building on Bank Street, which remained open until 2003, when it was converted into housing. Bishop's Waltham was home to Gunner and Company, which was the last provincial private bank in the United Kingdom.
The brickworks was a major employer in Bishop's Waltham. The works began as the Bishop's Waltham Clay Company, founded by Arthur Helps in 1862. The works, sited west of the town centre across the former palace's fishponds, was on a geologically suitable site: both the major clay types of the Hampshire Basin – the London Clay and Reading Formation beds – were present at different but easily accessible levels. The company started making clay bricks and tiles, and in 1864 began making terracotta architectural and homeware products to try to compete with the established Staffordshire potteries. Arthur Helps invested the works' minimal profits and much of his own fortune in building new housing for workers and the unsuccessful attempt to build the Bishops Waltham Railway. Economic recession finally caused the collapse of the business in 1867. The defunct works was acquired by the Blanchard family of London, already owners of a terracotta works in Lambeth, and restarted operations in 1871. In 1880 the Bishop's Waltham Clay Company was merged with Blanchard & Co., which made Bishop's Waltham the centre of its new operation and invested heavily in the works. Blanchard terracotta made at Bishop's Waltham became world-famous for its even bright red colour and rare combination of hard, smooth external texture and great strength.
Buildings using Blanchard terracotta include Buckingham Palace and the Natural History Museum, London, plus buildings as far away as Peru and Egypt. Blanchard continued to produce various types of brick and tile at Bishops Waltham as well, which were used extensively on railway construction and other civil engineering projects in the county. Both the Hockley Railway Viaduct and Privett railway tunnel on the Meon Valley Railway – each the longest of their type in Hampshire – used Blanchard bricks. Much of the Victorian housing stock in Newton, Waltham Chase, Swanmore and as far afield as Southampton and Portsmouth is made from bricks fired at Bishop's Waltham. In 1918 the Blanchard brothers, lacking heirs to pass the business to, sold the works to the prominent Southampton-based builders' merchants Elliott Brothers. They continued to run the business throughout the inter-war period but the relatively small scale of the Bishop's Waltham works, the lack of room for expansion and the dwindling amount of viable clay deposits on the site caused a decline in fortunes. There was also competition from larger brickworks in the Midlands owned by the London Brick Company, making more bricks each day than the Blanchards works made in a year meant that the operation became increasingly unviable. The site received major bomb damage during the Second World War and Elliotts closed the Bishop Waltham works in 1957. The site is now the Claylands industrial estate and business park – there is still an Elliotts builders' merchant branch on the former brickworks site.
Bus services
There is one main bus stop in Bishop's Waltham - The Square. This stop has an average of three services an hour in each direction.Bishop's Waltham has two bus companies that operate from Bishop's Waltham square: Stagecoach South and Xelabus.
Closed railway line
Bishop's Waltham's commercial status warranted the construction of the Bishops Waltham branch line railway to the town from Botley in 1862. The railway became part of the London and South Western Railway in the 1870s, who operated distinctive steam railcars on the line for passenger services, although the majority of traffic was goods – with bricks leaving the town and coal for the gasworks coming in. The LSWR laid on special services to allow farmers to bring their cattle to market at Bishop's Waltham, with trains made up of a mix of cattle trucks and passenger carriages. The line was closed to regular passenger traffic in 1932, but goods services remained, becoming ever less frequent and regular before finally stopping in the 1960s. Bishop's Waltham station was a distinctive brick/half-timbered design with numerous architectural details produced in terracotta by the local brickworks, which stood where the main roundabout in the town – now known as the Old Station Roundabout – at the junction of the B2177 and the B3035 towards Corhampton now is. A short section of the line and a pair of level crossing gates next to the roundabout have been preserved.Culture and attractions
Bishop's Waltham is twinned with Saint-Bonnet-le-Château in France. The Palace grounds are frequently used to hold festivals and other events. The town has a small museum.The Bishop's Waltham Youth Theatre is run by local theatre directors associated with the Theatre Royal, Winchester.
The Moors
is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is a nationally significant tract of alkaline wetland and open waters located south of the Chalk outcrop in southern Hampshire at the head of River Hamble displaying a good diversity of habitat types, plant and animal communities and rare species. As a result, not only is the majority of the site designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest under the UK Wildlife and Countryside Act, but also as a Nature Conservation Review site, in recognition of its special national interest.The land comprises some mainly of hydrologically sensitive fen, fen meadow and wet woodland dissected by a series of south and west flowing streams and drains totalling some in length. Some of the drains originate from one-time watercress beds fed by clear chalk water springs and feed into either the Western Stream arising off the 'Sand Boils' or the Eastern Stream arising off Alexanders Moors. Both streams flow into Waltham Mill Pond and from where the water passes to The Moors Stream, a headwater of the River Hamble. The 'Sand Boils' is an area at the head of the West Stream in which upwelling spring water creates swirling sandy patches in the gravelly streambed.
The Moors comprises the wetland area fed by springs and surface watercourses within the SSSI and adjacent land and which discharge into the Waltham Mill Pond. Water from the mill pond passes through Chase Mill and then downstream as The Moors Stream tributary to join the Northbrook Stream tributary of the River Hamble.
Dundridge Meadows is a Local Nature Reserve near Bishop's Waltham.