Part 4

Sheltered beneath the Almighty's wings, Thou shall securely rest, Where neither sun nor moon shall thee By day nor night molest.

Then thou, my soul, in safety rest, Thy Guardian will not sleep, His watchful care, that Israel guards, Shall Israel's monarch keep.

At home, abroad, in peace or war, Thy God shall thee defend, Conduct thee through life's pilgrimage, Safe to thy journey's end."

Will the sight of these lines bring back to any one the old tune, the old sounds, the old sights of the whitewashed Church, and old John Green in the gallery, singing with his bass voice, with all his might, his eyebrows moving as he sung? And then the Commandments and Ante-Communion read not from the Altar, but the desk; the surplice taken off in the desk instead of the Vestry; Master Oxford's announcements shouted out from his place, generally after the Second Lesson--"I hereby give notice that a Vestry Meeting will be held on Tuesday, at twelve o'clock, to make a new rate for the relief of the poo-oor." "I hereby give notice that Evening Service will be at half-past two as long as the winter days are short." Well, we should think these things odd now, and we have much to be thankful for in the changes; but there were holy and faithful ones then, and Master Oxford was one of them.

In the days here described, from 1820 to 1827, few small villages had anything but dame schools, and Otterbourne children, such as had any schooling at all, were sent to Mrs. Yates's school on the hill, where she sat, the very picture of the old-fashioned mistress, in her black silk bonnet, with the children on benches before her, and her rod at hand.

Several families, however, did not send the children to school at all, and there were many who could not read, many more who could not write, and there was very little religious teaching, except that in the Sunday afternoons in Lent, the catechism was said in Church by the best instructed children, but without any explanation.

About the year 1819 Mrs. Bargus and her daughter came to live at Otterbourne, and in 1822 Miss Bargus married William Crawley Yonge, who had retired from the army, after serving in the Peninsula and at Waterloo. Both Mr. and Mrs. Yonge had clergymen for their fathers, and were used to think much of the welfare of their neighbours. It was not, however, till 1823 that Mrs. Yonge saw her way to beginning a little Sunday School for girls, teaching it all by herself, in a room by what is now Mr. J. Misselbrook's house. While there was still only one Service on Sundays, she kept the school on the vacant half of the day, reading the Psalms and Lessons to the children, who were mostly biggish girls. This was when Archdeacon Heathcote was the Vicar of Hursley and Otterbourne, and the Rev. Robert Shuckburgh was his Curate. Archdeacon and Mrs. Heathcote, who were most kind and liberal, gave every help and assisted in setting up the Clothing Club.

Mrs. Yonge's first list of Easter prizes contains twenty names of girls, and the years that have passed have left but few of them here. A large Bible bound in plain brown leather was the highest prize; Prayer Books, equally unornamented, New Testaments, and Psalters, being books containing only the Psalms and Matins and Evensong, were also given, and were then, perhaps, more highly valued than the dainty little coloured books every one now likes to have for Sunday. Then there were frocks, coarse straw bonnets, and sometimes pocket handkerchiefs, for these were not by any means such universal possessions as could be wished, and only came out on Sunday. As to gloves, silk handkerchiefs, parasols, muffs, or even umbrellas, the children thought them as much out of their reach as a set of pearls or diamonds, but what was worse, their outer clothing was very insufficent, seldom more than a thin cotton frock and tippet, and the grey duffle cloaks, which were thought a great possession, were both slight and scanty.

About 1826, Mrs. Yonge was looking at the bit of waste land that had once served as a roadway to the field at the back of Otterbourne House, when she said, "How I wish I had money enough to build a school here." "Well," said Mrs. Bargus, "You shall have what I can give." The amount was small, but with it Mr. Yonge contrived to put up one room with two new small ones at the back, built of mud rough cast, and with a brick floor, except for the little bedroom being raised a step, and boarded.

The schoolroom was intended to hold all the children who did not go to Mrs. Yates, both boys and girls, and it was sufficient, for, in the first place, nobody from Fryern-hill came. Mrs. Green had a separate little school there. Then the age for going to school was supposed to be six. If anyone sent a child younger, the fee was threepence instead of a penny. The fee for learning writing and arithmetic was threepence, for there was a general opinion that they were of little real use, and that writing letters would waste time (as it sometimes certainly does). Besides this, the eldest daughter of a family was always minding the baby, and never went to school; and boys were put to do what their mothers called "keeping a few birds" when very small indeed, while other families were too rough to care about education so that the numbers were seldom over thirty.

There were no such people as trained mistresses then. The National Society had a school for masters, but they were expensive and could only be employed in large towns; so all that could be looked for was a kind, motherly, good person who could read and do needlework well. And the first mistress was Mrs. Creswick, a pleasant-looking person with a pale face and dark eyes, who had been a servant at Archdeacon Heathcote's, and had since had great troubles. She did teach the Catechism, reading, and work when the children were tolerably good and obeyed her, but boys were a great deal too much for her, and she had frail health, and such a bad leg that she never could walk down the lane to the old Church. So, after Sunday School, the children used to straggle down to Church without anyone to look after them, and sit on the benches in the aisle and do pretty much what they pleased, except when admonished by Master Oxford's stick.

Mr. Shuckburgh had by this time come to reside in the parish, in the house which is now the post-office, and there was at last a double Service on the Sunday.

The next thing was to consider what was to be done about the boys, who could not be made to mind Mrs. Creswick. A row of the biggest sat at the back of the school, with their heels to the wall, and by constant kicking had almost knocked a hole through the mud wall; so the Vicar, who was now the Archdeacon's son, the Rev. Gilbert Wall Heathcote, gave permission for the putting up another mud and rough cast school house near the old Church, for the boys, in an empty part of the Churchyard to the north- east, where no one had ever been buried.

However, there Master Oxford was installed as schoolmaster, coming all the way down from his house on the hill (a pretty-timbered cottage, now pulled down). He and his boys had a long way to walk to their school, but he taught them all he knew and set them a good example. The boys were all supposed to go to him at six years old, and most were proud of the promotion. One little fellow was known to go to bed an hour or two earlier that he might be six years old the sooner! But some dreaded the good order enforced by the stick. There was one boy in particular, who had outgrown the girls' school, and was very troublesome there. He would not go to the boys', and his mother would not make him, saying she feared he would fall into the water. "Well," said Mrs. Bargus, who was a most bright, kindly old lady of eighty, "I'll make him go." So she took a large piece of yellow glazed calico intended for furniture lining, walked up to school, and held it up to the little boy. She said she heard that he would only go to the girls' school, and, since everybody went there in petticoats, she had brought some stuff to make him a petticoat too! The young man got up and walked straight off to the boys' school.

Here are some verses, written by Mrs. Yonge in 1838, on one of the sights that met her eye in the old Churchyard:--

While on the ear the solemn note Of prayer and praises heavenward float, A butterfly with brilliant wings A lesson full of meaning brings, A sermon to the eye.

There on an infant's grave it stands, For it hath burst the shroud's dull bands, Its vile worm's body there is left, Of gross earth's habits now bereft It soars into the sky.

Thus when the grave her dead shall give The little form below shall live, Clothed in a robe of dazzling white Shall spring aloft on wings of light, To realms above shall fly!

Changes were setting in all this time. The rick-burnings, in which so many foolish persons indulged, was going on in 1831 in many parts of Hampshire. They were caused partly by dislike to the threshing machines that were beginning to be used, and partly by the notion that such disturbances would lead to the passing of the Reform Bill, which ignorant men believed would give every poor man a fat pig in his stye. There was no rick-burning here, though some of the villagers joined the bands of men who wandered about the country demanding money and arms at the large houses. But, happily, none of them were actually engaged in any violence, and none of them swelled the calendar of the Special Assize that took place at Winchester for the trial of the rioters.

One poor maid-servant in the parish, from the North of Hampshire, had, however, two brothers, who were intelligent men of some education, and who, having been ringleaders, were both sentenced to death. The sentence was, however, commuted to transportation for life. At Sydney, being of a very different class from the ordinary convict, they prospered greatly, and their letters were very interesting. They were wonderful feats of penmanship, for postage from Australia was ruinously expensive, and they filled sheets of paper with writing that could hardly be read without a microscope. If we had those letters now they would be curious records of the early days of the Colony, but all now recollected is the account of a little kangaroo jumping into a hunter's open shirt, thinking it was his mother's pouch.

The Reform Bill, after all, when passed made no present difference in Otterbourne life--nothing like the difference that a measure a few years after effected, namely, the Poor-law Amendment Bill. Not many people here remember the days of the old Poor-law, when whatever a pauper family wanted was supplied from the rates, and thus an idle man often lived more at his ease on other people's money than an industrious man on his own earnings. It was held that if wages were small they might be helped out of the rates, and thus the ratepayers were often ruined. In the midst of the street stood the old Poorhouse. It had no governor nor anyone to see that order was kept or work done there, and everybody that was homeless, or lazy, or disreputable, drifted in there. They went in and out as they pleased, and had a weekly allowance of money. Now and then there was a great row among them. One room was inhabited by an old man named Strong, who was considered a wonder because he ate adders cut up like eels and stewed with a bit of bacon. Every now and then a message would come in that old Strong had got a couple of nice adders and wanted a bit of bacon to cook with them. Then there was a large family whose father never worked for any one long together, and lived in the Workhouse, with a wife and six or seven children, supported by the parish. These people were pursuaded to go to Manchester, where there was sure to be work in the factories for all their many girls. The men in receipt of parish pay were supposed to have work found for them on the roads, but there was not much of this to employ them, and as they were paid all the same whether they worked or not, some were said to hammer the stones as if they were afraid of hurting them, or to make the wheeling a couple of barrows of chalk their whole day's work.

A good deal depended on the vestry management of each parish, and there was less of flagrant idleness supported by the rates here than at many places. There was also a well-built and arranged Workhouse at Hursley, and the Poor law Commissioners consented to make one small Union of Hursley, Otterbourne, Farley, and Baddesley, instead of throwing them into a large one.

The discontinuance of out-door relief to help out the wages was a great shock at first, but, when the ratepayers were no longer weighed down, they could give more work and better wages, and the labourers thus profited in the end, and likewise began to learn more independence. Still the times were hard then. Few families could get on unless the mother as well as the father did field work, and thus she had no time to attend thoroughly to making home comfortable, mending the clothes, or taking care of the little ones. The eldest girl was kept at home dragging about with the baby, and often grew rough as well as ignorant, and the cottage was often very little cared for. The notion of what was comfortable and suitable was very different then.

The country began to be intersected by railways, and the South-Western line was marked out to Southampton. The course was dug out from Shawford and Compton downs, and the embankment made along our valley. It was curious to see the white line creeping on, as carts filled with chalk ran from the diggings to the end, tipped over their contents, and returned again. When the foundations were dug for the arch spanning the lane the holes filled with water as fast as they were made, and nothing could be done till the two long ditches had been dug to carry off the water to Allbrook. In the course of making them in the light peaty earth, some bones of animals and (I believe) stags' horns were found, but unluckily, were thrown away, instead of being shown to anyone who would have made out from them much of the history of the formation of the boggy earth that forms the water meadows.

{The Old Church, Otterbourne: p32.jpg}

It is amusing to remember the kind of dread that was felt at first of railway travelling. It was thought that the engines would blow up, and, as an old coachman is reported to have said, "When a coach is overturned, there you are; but when an engine blows up, where are you?" He certainly was so far right that a coach accident was fatal to fewer persons than a railway accident generally is.

The railway passed so near the old Church that the noise of the trains would be inconvenient on Sundays. At least, so thought those with inexperienced ears, though many a Church has since been built much nearer to the line. However, this fixed the purpose that had already been forming, of endeavouring to build a new Church. The first idea had been of trying to raise 300 pounds to enlarge the old Church, but the distance from the greater part of the parish was so inconvenient, and the railroad so near, that the building of a new Church was finally decided on. There really was not room for the men and boys at the same time on the backless forms they occupied between the pews in the chancel. Moreover, if a person was found sitting in a place to which another held that he or she had a right, the owner never thought of looking for another place elsewhere, and the one who was turned out went away displeased, and declared that it was impossible to come to church for fear of "being upset." It is strange and sad that people are so prone to forget what our Master told us about "taking the highest room," even in His own House.

But besides the want of accommodation, the old Church was at an inconvenient distance from the parish. No doubt there had once been more houses near, but when the cottage inhabited by old Aaron Chalk was pulled down, nothing remained near but Otterbourne Farm and the Moat House. Every one living elsewhere had to walk half a mile, some much more, and though Kiln Lane was then much better shaded with fine trees than it is now, it was hard work on a hot or wet Sunday to go twice. Some of us may recollect one constant churchgoer, John Rogers, who was so lame as to require two sticks to walk with, and had to set out an hour beforehand, yet who seldom missed.