There is left but one small street, and an isolated house or two of the former busy townlet, red-bricked, and with cross beams black with age, sloping roofs, and tiny paned windows. And almost the only indications of life are to be seen along the shore where the grass has overgrown the old slipways, and where a few children and fisherfolk now congregate, or near the tiny pier to which, during the summer months, excursion launches and small steamers occasionally come. Down the street, once thronged with workmen, now grass-grown, as well as along the once busy road which skirts the river for some little distance towards Beaulieu on the Buckler’s Hard side, cattle wander and sheep occasionally browse. But, notwithstanding its deserted appearance, the little group of decaying houses, which looks almost a derelict cast up by the tide, has an attractiveness that comes of its traditions and picturesque situation. There stands the little street with the river flowing at its foot, a memory of a bygone age, with the walnut tree in the Adamses’ garden still surviving, green and fruitful. And, as is only right and proper, Buckler’s Hard possesses its ghost. A grey lady who wanders at times, so the story goes, along the deserted street at nightfall; and there are tales of uncanny sights and weird sounds which are heard in several of the houses. From the bulging window of the little room in the Adamses’ house, in which so many of the battleships were laid down on paper by their designers, is a beautiful peep of the river and old slipways. And here, no doubt, stood, one eye on the paper before him, and the other on the yards and the work which was going on near the river’s brink, Henry Adams, whose descendants are to be found at the present day in various walks of life far removed from that of shipbuilding. These occasionally return to the scene of their family’s departed glories, and wander through the rooms of the old house, which has so many memories of stirring bygone days and the famous folk who once came to it. At the end of this picturesque waterway stands Beaulieu Palace, and the ruins of the ancient Cistercian Abbey, which was founded by King John very early in the thirteenth century, and completed by his son and successor Henry III. The Abbey, which was one of the most beautifully situated in the south of England, owed its origin to a dream. According to the tradition upon which this idea is founded members of the Cistercian Order having greatly displeased the King, they were summoned by him to Lincoln, where it is said he intended to have them trodden to death by horses.