Wild life in Hampshire highlands

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

\

THE

HADDON

HALL

LIBRARY

EDITED

BY THE

MARQUESS OF GRANBY

AND MR.

GEORGE A. B. DEWAR

All rights reserved

WILD LIFE

IN

HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS

BY

GEORGE A. B. DEWAR

AUTHOR OF
'THE BOOK OF THE DRY FLY/ ETC.

LONDON
J. M. DENT & CO., ALDINE HOUSE

29 & 30 BEDFORD STREET, W.C,
1899

Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty

L \ b

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO

MY BROTHER

THE OWNER OF DOLES WOOD, HAMPSHIRE

WHERE WE HAVE SO OFTEN ROAMED

AND SHOT TOGETHER

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS .... i

II. FROM SARUM TO WINCHESTER . . . . 18

III. THE SWEET OF THE YEAR 33

IV. THE WOODLANDS' MEDLEY 61

V. ANGLING IN HAMPSHIRE 94

VI. A BIRD'S-NESTER'S NOTES . . . • .137

VII. AMONG THE BUTTERFLIES 182

VIII. THE SILENT TIME 199

IX. IN THE AUTUMN FIELDS 222

X. WINTER SPORT AND WILD LIFE . . . 243

XI. WINTER SPORT AND WILD LIFE (continued) . 269

INDEX 297

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

* Where the Blackcap builds' i '. . V Frontispiece

From a drawing by R. W. A. ROUSE

Page
On Bransbury Common . , , . ». . 24

From a drawing by R. W. A. ROUSE

The Nightingale ... . . . . . 60

Drawn from life by RALPH HODGSON

' The Queen of Chalk Streams ' . . ... 96

From a drawing by R. W. A. ROUSE

The Redstart and Lesser Whitethroat . . . , ICO
Drawnfrom life by RALPH HODGSON

' Hampshire Highlands' . . . . . 2IO

From a dra^ving by R. W. A. ROUSE

* The Breezy Common ' . . . . . .260

From a drawing by R. W. A. ROUSE

WILD LIFE IN
HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS

1 These familiar flowers, these well-remembered
bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these
furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of
personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows
— such things as these are the mother tongue of
our imagination, the language that is laden with
all the subtle inextricable associations the fleeting
hours of childhood left behind them.'

GEORGE ELIOT.

CHAPTER I

In Hampshire Highlands

THE house stands in a small park or clearing in
the midst of the great oak and hazel woods which
climb steadily up one of those rounded chalk-hills
that, alternating with broad and sweeping valleys,
form such familiar features of our North Hampshire
scenery. A home built in the centre of dense
and secluded woodlands miles from a town, almost
miles from a village — should it not be a paradise
for the lover of the wild life and sports which
have such a hold on the affections of English
country people ? It is one of the objects of this
volume to try and show that in a home like this,
one out of very many in southern shires not less

A

2 IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS

happily placed, no portion of the year can be
without its delights for the field naturalist, or for
the sportsman who is content with a small and
perhaps mixed bag, and sets much store by
charming south-country scenes and the pleasures
of observing a great variety of wild life.

The woods lie in the north-west corner of the
county, not far from where the hills or downs
of chalk reach their highest point. This north-
west is the least known corner of the county,
rather perhaps through the difficulty of reaching
it than through its lack of interest. In the south-
west of the county there is the region of the
New Forest, so widely known and appreciated ;
in the north-east Strathfieldsaye, Silchester, and
Eversley, a village bound up for ever with the
name of Charles Kingsley, are all far-famed places ;
whilst in the south-east of Hampshire the districts
around Petersfield and Havant are well visited
by pleasure-seekers and holiday-makers from the
large and growing centre round England's naval
capital. But the north-west corner of Hampshire
is not one which the compilers of guide-books
and the promoters of excursions have taken much
into account.

IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS 3

Perhaps for the tourist in a hurry and the
sightseer it has no very striking feature. It has no
Silchester teeming with remains of Roman great-
ness ; no private residence of such superb Jacobean
beauty as Bramshill House, in the eastern corner
of the county ; no great naval centre like Ports-
mouth or military centre like Aldershot; nor,
finally, is it so well pierced by the iron roads,
which bring the tourist and the sightseers, as
are other parts of the county. And yet this
north-west corner, bordering on Wiltshire on the
west and Berkshire on the north, is both an
interesting and a beautiful district. There must
have been a day when the tide of battle swept
over nearly the whole country hereabouts. You
need not go to the highest point in the woods
to see standing out clear-cut from the surround-
ing country the marks of many a fierce struggle.
Danebury and Quarley are among the hills with
summits now covered only with a few clumps of
trees, that had at one time great entrenchments,
and were the heights, no doubt, round which the
combat often deepened. These entrenchments
were probably British, but elsewhere traces of
the Roman rule are not wanting. There are

4 IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS

portions of roads leading from and to such
places as Winchester, Silchester, and Cirencester,
of an unmistakably Roman origin ; whilst in
Egbury Hill by Whitchurch, on the Test, some
believe they see the famous Vindomis. They
who live much in the past, indeed, might find
still greater interest in the strange remnants of
a race compared with which the Roman seems
but of yesterday, unearthed years ago at the
village of St. Mary Bourne, close to this same
Egbury, the stone implements of what is called,
I believe, the newer flint or neolithic age.

This land of chalk was once, and compared
with many parts of the country is still, a land
of woods. The whole of north-west Hampshire
was covered with woods some centuries since,
though no doubt the New Forest in the south
even then was by far the greatest in size and
importance within the county. The wood with
which this book will deal was formerly part and
parcel of Chute Forest, that must have covered
a large portion of these Hampshire Highlands
as well as the north-east corner of the adjoining
county of Wiltshire. Even to-day, as I have
said, Hampshire is well furnished with woods.

IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS 5

There is Harewood Forest, not far short of two
thousand acres in extent, lying within our district ;
and there are portions of the large wood of Bentley
in the west, and Alice Holt — a Royal forest, with
some fine timber and beautiful scenery, in the
east ; besides which there are many lesser woods
with unnumbered oak and hazel copses all over
the county. Woolmer I do not include in my
list ; its forest trees do not exist, whilst Waltham
Chase is somewhat a forest of the past, and the
best days, too, of Bere have long since passed.
Speed, in the quaint and no doubt laborious map
of Hampshire — or 'Hantshire,' as he calls the
county — apparently does not mark any of the
woods except the great historic ones, such as the
New Forest, used for the shipbuilding needs of
England. Nevertheless, Hampshire in his day —
his map of Hampshire in my possession was
printed about the beginning of the seventeenth
century — must have been a finely wooded
county. Chute was then one of the Royal
Forests, extending from Savernake in Wiltshire
far into North Hampshire. Only portions of
it are now to be seen, such as the wood described
in this book and one or two others in the east

6 IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS

part of Wiltshire. Michael Drayton, in his Poly-
olbion, speaks of 'the sprightly Test arising up
in Chute,' thereby meaning, no doubt, what is
now called the Bourne, a pretty and all too short
tributary of the queen of Hampshire chalk
streams, that now has its perennial source some
miles from any trace of the once great forest
where a Stuart king had one of his hunting
boxes. It is at least conceivable, though I care
to do no more than suggest it as a possibility,
that the Bourne was in Drayton's time a more
considerable stream than it is now, with a source
higher up the valley. Anyhow, it is surely not
unreasonable to suppose that there was a greater
rainfall in Hampshire in those days of great woods
than there is now. I read only recently in a
State Report of New York that, by reason of the
felling of woods and the growing of thirsty crops,
a Wyoming stream, formerly quite sufficient for
the miller's purposes, had become useless ; and
other cases can be quoted where deforestation has
led to a lessening in the supply of water.

The woods climb up to some six hundred and
forty feet above sea-level, and at about their
highest point they command a view of the sur-

IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS 7

rounding country in a northerly direction, which
cannot but be a surprise and delight to the stranger
who, coming from the south, has for many miles
enjoyed nothing like scenery on a large scale. He
has come probably by small and well-tilled valleys
bounded by the most gently sloping hills, perhaps
up the valley of the Anton, chief tributary of
the Test, or down that of the idyllic trout-brook
Anna or Pilhill ; in any case, through villages
and hamlets not built on steep hillsides or nestled
far away in the depths of wild coombs, such
as we expect to find in the bolder or more
broken land of the west of England, but scattered
here and there among the towering elms, the oak
and hazel coppices, and the familiar fields of corn,
root crops, and clover, which chiefly make up a
North Hampshire farm. He has seen nothing
but landscape of a quiet, peaceful character, the
reverse of bold or grand. But at this point he
stops to look down into a real valley, seeming
deep indeed and well-defined compared with those
he has lately passed through — namely, the valley
of the river Bourne, which, when the springs are
high, takes its rise by the secluded village of
Upton and flows eastward through Hurstbourne

8 IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS

Tarrant, Stoke, St. Mary Bourne, and beautifully
undulating Hurstbourne Park to join the Test
by the last-named spot. North of the valley,
here, perhaps, seen at its best until Hurstbourne
Park is reached, lie the rolling chalk-hills which
crown themselves at Combe, Inkpen Beacon, and
Sidown. Combe and Sidown are in Hampshire,
but Inkpen, the giant of the chalk-hills of Great
Britain, lies across the border in Berkshire, at a
point where the three counties of Hampshire, Wilt-
shire, and Berkshire dovetail in with one another.
Sidown, which is immediately to the south of
Highclere Park, is well wooded ; but the hills
of Combe and Inkpen, bleak and treeless, give
to the country a suggestion of wildness which
must prevent even the most widely travelled man
from describing the scenery here as tame. Stand-
ing one summer evening by Tangley Clump,
another high point near by, I was struck by the
fineness of these hills. The * feel of June ' was
in the air beneath this lonely spot ; but up here
there was little sign of the abundant life and
brimful overflowing joy one associates with the
long day of that month of all months. A flame-
bird or two — as I have heard the redstart called

IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS 9

much farther west — and the yellowhammer's mono-
tonous note, were the sole signs of all June's bird-
life, and occasionally the note of the latter alone
broke the deep silence which brooded over all
things as I reached the point where, in a perfectly
clear air, you can without field-glasses see the
aerial pinnacle of Salisbury Cathedral. It was
one of those alluring evenings when the winds,
high during morning and afternoon, are ' up-
gathered now like sleeping flowers/ whilst the sun,
hid through much of the day, reappears to sink
in the west a globe of fire. To the south there
lay stretched out a long line of purple hills, some
of which would overlook the rich valley of the
Wiltshire and Hampshire Avon — a river having,
next to the Thames, the largest watershed of any
of our south-country streams ; and the valley, too,
of Avon's tributary, the little Winterbourne or
Porton Water, the 'pretty Bourne' of Michael
Drayton. Other hills would overlook the charm-
ing Anton and her Anna, and some few the
Test, a name to conjure with among anglers in
all parts of the country. There are not many
spots in the south of England where with a single
glance of the eye one can even dimly take in a

io IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS

country which is enriched by so many pure and
sweet trout-streams as these. Softness was the
feature of this landscape to the south: a medley it
looked of oak and hazel coppice, farms, and great
thatched barns among dark elms, with here a few
cottages clustered together, and there the orna-
mental timber of some considerable county seat,
such as Amport, that recalls the fine old Hamp-
shire name of Paulett. But to the north I
enjoyed a much rarer, if less extensive, view of
southern scenery. Bare and severe lay the hills
above Combe, as desolate in aspect as those
irreclaimable hills of Exmoor Forest, one of
Nature's last remaining fastnesses in the tilled
and tamed south. Green on the convex, and by
reason of the light grey on the concave, how fine
those hills looked that still, clear June evening !
There is a glamour about such barren and severe
spots in the midst of a country the features of
which are softness and plenty. Green waving
woods of oak and underwood, valleys watered by
pellucid and never-failing chalk springs, trim
cottages, their gardens ablaze through the summer
with the flowers of our forefathers, lanes having
great straggling hedges, laden in many parts with

IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS n

heavy masses of wild clematis, might save even
a decidedly flat country from the charge of tame-
ness ; but a bit of wild, open moorland, a bleak
hill without a green thing save its grass upon it,
or with, at the most, a few stunted bushes and
deformed trees, will always be a welcome change
to the lover of landscape. Towards a bare wind-
swept hill the eye will always be drawn. When
I turned homewards that evening Combe was all
grey ; the yellowhammer, a bird that seems quite
indifferent whether he lives and nests by bright
homestead, in grass-grown woodland glade, or on
a high and solitary spot like this, had ceased;
and round the oaks beneath, the nightjar, the
' sombre gigantic swallow ' of the twilight, was
gliding and glancing like a bird-ghost.

This range of high chalk-hills viewed from a
distance invites close inspection. It may be
reached from the south by Netherton valley, and
will well repay a visit. On each side of Netherton
valley there is a broad and smooth expanse of
turf with woods above on both hillsides, and the
whole wears somewhat the look of a road through
a park. Netherton rectory — its garden was once
a rare place, I remember, for lilies of the valley —

12 IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS

is passed, and soon one enters upon a wild and
remote corner of the county. Here again the
beautiful redstart is quite at home, flying in and
out of the thin old hedge in front of the intruder,
more inquisitive, it would seem, than alarmed.
On the left-hand side of the road the land is more
or less cultivated, but on the right the great
rolling downs have their way, forming in at
least one instance something like an immense
natural amphitheatre within the valley. Alter-
nately waves of sun and shadow swept over this
land when I last saw it one day in late summer,
and between Hurstbourne Tarrant, the Up-
husband of the earlier part of the century, and
the remote and well-named village of Combe, I
met but one small party of labourers who were
bringing home the last loads of the bountiful
harvest of 1898: from Hurstbourne to the foot
of the hill that leads up to Combe Church and the
old dismantled manor-house — a distance of some
four miles and a half — not another soul. Combe
Church and churchyard, which lie a little apart
from the village in the hollow, are worth visiting.
The two aged yews in the churchyard, in their
' stubborn hardihood,' are fine specimens of a tree

IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS 13

which evidently flourishes in the chalk, as does
the graceful ash. Most old Hampshire churches
have their fine yew or two. St. Mary Bourne has
one with a girth of twenty-one feet, or some six feet
less than the vast tree in the churchyard of Gilbert
White's Selborne, which I measured some years ago
and found to be nearly twenty-seven feet in girth.
In some spots, notably about the Roman or British
remains close to Bransbury and by Bullington in
the same district, yews grow in some numbers in
the hedgerows, and here and there at random
like oak and ash. Nor are the quaintly-cut yews
of the cottage garden wanting in various villages
and hamlets hereabouts. Tennyson knew his
Hampshire yews, and has described the tree in
the second canto of In Memoriam —

* Old Yew which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.'

At Combe village one may well leave the road
and follow a track leading to the top of the
towering masses which divide the counties of
Hampshire and Berkshire. From the breezy top
at Combe Gibbet — the grim mark of a rough-