134 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



There seems, however, as in the case of the still older 

 Norman house at Southampton, to have been no wall-passage 

 connecting the building, as we might have expected, with the 

 castle ; but like it, its entrances, of which there were three, 

 one opening out upon the stream, were on the ground floor.* 



Coming down to later times, the great Lord Clarendon here 

 possessed large property, and one of his favourite schemes was 

 to make the Avon navigable to Salisbury. For this purpose it 

 was surveyed by Yarranton, the hydrographer, who not only 

 reported favourably of the idea, but proposed to make the harbour 

 an anchorage for men-of-war, bringing forward the great natural 

 advantages of Hengistbury Head, as also the facilities of pro- 

 curing iron in the district, and wood from the New Forest, f 

 All, however, fell to the ground with Clarendon's exile, and 

 the harbour is now silted up with sand and choked with weeds. 



Nothing else is there to be mentioned, except the visit by 

 Edward VI. to the town, from whence he wrote a letter to 

 his friend Barnaby Fitz -Patrick, far superior to most royal 

 letters. The lazar-house, which stood in the Bargates, has long 

 since been destroyed. The old market-place has been lately 

 taken down ; but in the main street, not far from the castle 

 keep, remains, lately restored, one of those timbered houses 



* Descriptions of it will be found in Hudson Turner's Domestic Archi- 

 tecture of England, vol. i. pp 38, 39. Parker's Glossary of Architecture, 

 vol. i. p. 167 Grose's Antiquities, vol. ii. Hampshire; in whose time it 

 appears to have been cased with dressed stones. In the Chamberlain's 

 Books of the Borough, under the date of the sixth year of Edward VI., 

 1553, we meet with repairs "for the house next the castle," which entry 

 probably refers to some buildings belonging to the house, which, according 

 to Grose, stretched away in a north-westerly direction to the castle. 



f England's Improvements by Sea and Land. By Andrew Yarranton, 

 Ed. 1677, pp, 67. 70. 



