Cathedrals -- England; England -- Description and travel
That Bosham was a harbour in Roman times, and that it had more than a
little to do with the founding of Regnum, and the building perhaps of
the Stane Street, I had long since convinced myself. All these creeks
and harbours were probably known and used even then, and certainly all
through the Middle Ages Bosham was of importance as a port; and the
series of creeks, the most eastern of which it served, and the most
western of which is Southampton Water, with Portsmouth Harbour between
them, was still among the greatest ports in England, easily the
greatest, I suppose, in the south country.
In order to see something of this low and muddy coast, which has seen
so much of the history of England, I set out from Bosham very early one
morning, intending to make my way through Emsworth and Havant, by the
Roman road which joins Chichester and Southampton and runs across the
north of these creeks, which may perhaps be considered as one great
port of which only the more western part is famous still.
That way has little to recommend it, and indeed I learned little, for
the modern world has obliterated with its terrible footsteps nearly all
that might have remained of our humble and yet so glorious past, and it
was still early morning when I crossed the Hampshire boundary and came
into the little town of Emsworth, once famous for its trade in foreign
wines, now, I suppose, best known as a yachting station. Emsworth was
originally of far less importance than Warblington, of which it was a
hamlet. There the fair was upon the morrow of the feast of the
Translation of St Thomas of Canterbury, to which saint the parish
church of Warblington is dedicated. This is a very beautiful and
interesting building, but it is obvious at once that it cannot always
have stood in the name of St Thomas, for part of its central tower--the
church consists of chancel, and nave, with a tower between them, north
chancel, vestry, north and south nave-aisles, and north porch--is of
Saxon workmanship. Only one stage of this, however, now remains, the
lower part having been altogether rebuilt. This tower was originally a
western tower, the Saxon church standing to the east of it. There is no
sign of Norman work here, and it seems probable that the Saxon church
remained until in the first years of the thirteenth century a new nave
and aisles were built to the west of the old tower, the lower part of
which was then removed and the tower supported by arches in order to
open a way into the nave of the old church, which thus became the
chancel of the new. It was then in all probability that the church was
newly dedicated in honour of St Thomas. The whole of the old church,
nave and chancel together, however, was destroyed before the end of the
thirteenth century, and a large new chancel built with a chapel or
vestry at the eastern end upon the north; at the same time the aisles
of the nave were rebuilt. Later in the fourteenth century the eastern
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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