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At Wolvesey King Alfred brought together the scholars who were to aid him in writing the "Chronicles of the Time"; and on the outer walls he hung the bodies of Danish pirates as a warning to those who made periodical raids up the valley of the Itchen.
Taylor, of Southampton, set up a large establishment on the river Itchen for their manufacture; and on the expiry of his contract, the Government determined to establish works of their own in Portsmouth Dockyard, for the purpose at the same time of securing greater economy, and of being independent of individual makers in the supply of an article of such importance in the equipment of ships.
From among the fertile meadows bordering the banks of the Itchen to the south of Winchester rises the stately grey pile of St. Cross, standing where it has stood for over seven and a half centuries, a witness alike to the munificence of its founders, de Blois and Beaufort, and to the skill of the mediaeval builders.
Roger, despite his early training abroad, soon showed good sound English tastes. He took delight in country life; and though he did not bring down the partridges in the woods, or throw the fly upon the surface of the Itchen, with a degree of skill that would command much respect in the county of Hants, he did his best, and really liked the out-door life.
The phenomenon kept alive our waning interest during nearly a year of waiting. As for Crocker he gave it out ostentatiously that he was bound for a wonderful Cima in Northumbria and afterward was to try dry-fly fishing on the Itchen. Beyond that he had no plans.
Yet Winchester endures in her beauty, her now so precarious loveliness, and while she endures it is still possible to refuse to despair of England. For she is co-eval with us; before we knew ourselves or were aware of our destiny she stood beside the Itchen within the shadow of her hills east and west, in the meads and the water meadows.
A slightly longer but pleasanter route goes by the banks of the Itchen. St. Cross is the oldest charity, still living its ancient life, that remains to us. Its charter is dated 1151, but it was founded nearly twenty years earlier by Bishop Henry de Blois.
It stands upon a tongue of land thrust out into the Itchen from the left bank, between Northam and St Denys on the right bank; the river washed its walls upon three sides, north, south and west, but upon the landward side to the east it was protected by two lines of defence, an outer and an inner, the one nearly three hundred yards from the other.
No parvenu, whose rank is the result of success in cheesemongering or kindred pursuit, is the holder of the title, for, as Debrett tells us, the family of Tichborne was of great importance in Hampshire before the Conquest, and derives its name from the river Itchen, at the head of which it had estates; "hence it was called De Itchenbourne, since corrupted into Tichborne.
The little village thus founded, certainly still existed in the time of the Conquest, and such it would always have remained but for Godfrey de Lucy, Bishop of Winchester, who, among his many achievements, numbers this chiefly that he made the Itchen navigable not only from Southampton to Winchester but here also in its headwaters, and this by means of the great reservoir, known as Alresford Pond, into which he gathered the waters of many streams to supply his navigation.
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