62 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



After Fawley, the walk becomes more beautiful. We pass 

 deep lanes and scattered cottages set in their trim gardens, 

 when suddenly on the shore rises the round gray castle of 

 Calshot, standing at the very end of a bar of sand, sepa- 

 rating the Southampton water from the Solent. Though much 

 repaired, it stands not much altered from Henry VIII. 's 

 original blockhouse. Once of great importance, its garrison 

 now consists of only the coastguard and a master-gunner. 

 Its walls are still strong, measuring in the lower embra- 

 sures sixteen feet through, but the upper storeys are much 

 slighter. On the west side is cut the date 1513, whilst some 

 stone cannon balls of the Commonwealth period show the im- 

 portance Cromwell attached to the place. But the stronger 

 fortifications of Hurst, and the new batteries in the Isle of 

 Wight, have done away with its necessity, and it stands now 

 only as a monument of Tudor patriotism and of Cromwell's 

 care.* 



But the place has older associations than these. In The 

 Chronicle said Florence of Worcester we read f that, in 495, Cerdic 

 and his son Cynric arrived with five ships, and landed at Cerdices- 



* Colonel Hammond, Governor of the Isle of Wight, in a letter to the 

 Committee of Derby House, dated from Carisbrook Castle, June 25th, 

 1648, speaks of "Caushot Castle as a place of great strength." (Peck's 

 Desiderata Curiosa, vol. ii., book ix., p. 383.) In the reign of Elizabeth 

 there were stationed here a captain, with a fee of one shilling a day ; a 

 subaltern with eightpence ; four soldiers and eight gunners with sixpence 

 each ; and a porter with eightpence. (Peck's Desiderata Ciiriosa, vol. i., 

 book ii., p. 66.) And in 1567, we find the queen ordering " the mountyng 

 of ordinance," probably to pay attention to Philip, who was expected to pass 

 through "the narrowe seas." Record Office. Domestic Series, No, 43, 

 Aug. 27. 1567, f. 52. 



t The Chronicle. Ed. Thorpe. Vol. i. p. 24. Florence. Ed. Thorpe. 

 Vol. i. pp. 3, 4. 



