Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 23, 2025
The ruins of Netley Abbey can best be seen by taking the pleasant shore road from Woolston and Weston Grove. The distance is a little over two miles from the Itchen ferry. The ruins of the Cistercian Church which once graced this shore and raised above the trees its lighthouse tower, a seamark by day and a beacon by night, are among the loveliest in Wessex.
And out of that cave though not always out of the mouth of it will run a stream of water, which seems to you clear as crystal, though it is actually, like the Itchen at Winchester, full of lime; so full of lime, that it makes beds of fresh limestone, which are called travertine which you may see in Italy, and Greece, and Asia Minor: or perhaps it petrifies, as you call it, the weeds in its bed, like that dropping-well at Knaresborough, of which you have often seen a picture.
Although every lock on the Itchen is now in ruins or choked by weeds, and the last of its fleet of brown-sailed barges is derelict, this is essentially a city whose origin goes back to the days when those who, coming cautiously up from Southampton Water, reached at length the practical part of the valley, where they built their stronghold under the shelter of the downs, yet within easy reach of the sea.
'The next morning Arthur was engaged, and left her to be the guide to the cathedral, whereat she looked shy and frightened, but Mr. Martindale set himself to re-assure her, and the polished gentleness of his manner soon succeeded. They stood on the hill, overlooking the town and the vale of Itchen, winding away till lost between the green downs that arose behind their crested neighbour, St.
Before returning to the hotel that night, Mrs. Pitt suggested that they go to see the old Hospital of St. Cross. "It's only about a mile from the town," she said. "There's a charming little path along the banks of the Itchen, and I think we'd enjoy the walk in the cool of the afternoon." Mrs. Pitt was quite correct.
Woodford and his niece found a tiny house at Winchester, near the wharf, with the clear Itchen flowing in front and the green hills rising beyond, while in the rear were the ruins of Wolvesey, and the buildings of the Cathedral and College.
The expansion of Sussex and Kent was checked by Saxons who had landed in Essex or advanced up the Thames and the Itchen; East Anglia was hemmed in by tribes who had sailed up the Wash, the Humber, and their tributaries; and the three great kingdoms which emerged out of the anarchy Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex seem to have owed the supremacy, which they wielded in turn, to the circumstance that each possessed a British hinterland into which it could expand.
Richard of Devizes, in 1189, called Winchester the "Jerusalem of the Jews", and, writing of the massacre and plunder of the Jews in London and other cities, said: "Winchester alone, the people being prudent and circumspect and the city always acting mildly, spared its vermin". The Jews settled in Winchester between the years 1090 and 1290, landing at Southampton and making their way up the Itchen until they came in sight of the old capital of the kingdom.
Giles's Hill, where they had been temporarily housed, and, all chanting psalms, entered into possession of their fair college. The buildings have been but little altered since their founder's day, and extend now, as then, on the south side of the Close, and along the bank of the Itchen.
Much the same must be said of Itchen Abbas, Itchen A Bas, where the road falls to the river, the small Norman church there having been both rebuilt and enlarged in or about 1863, while an even worse fate has befallen the church of Itchen Stoke, two miles further on, for it has disappeared altogether.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking