THE HAMPSHIRE ANTIQUARY &> NATURALIST. 



formerly worked at Andover, Odiham, Alton, Whit- 

 church, and Overton. The silk goods woven at Alton 

 were partly exported to America. At Overton a silk 

 factory was working as early as ijqi, and so continued 

 for more than half a century. About 1842 this manu- 

 facture afforded employment for the greater part 

 of the female population in and near Overton. 

 At Andover the silk manufacture had in about 1840 

 superseded the making of shalloons. About the same 

 time silk-weaving was the employment of many of 

 the inhabitants of Odiiiam. This old silk manufacture 

 of Hampshire is not extinct, for it is carried on by 

 .Mr. ]. Hide at Victoria (Waten Mill, Whitchurch, 

 but this is now the only silk mill in the county. 

 About 1840 there were two silk mills at Whitchurch 

 employing 100 people, and in 1858 about 150 persons 

 were engaged in this manufacture. The survival of 

 .this industry in Hampshire, notwithstanding the 

 fierce competition of the last quarter of a century, 

 proves that this county has natural facilities for 

 certain manufactures. In the matter of knitted silk 

 goods Christchurch held a foremost place at the 

 beginning of this century, the silk knit stockings 

 made there being considered the best in the market. 

 Hampshire has not only been a silk manufacturing 

 county, but has grown silk, although I regret to say 

 not at a profit. Many years ago Mr. G. Mason, of 

 Yateley, near Winchfield, laid out a considerable 

 acreage of land and planted it with mulberry trees, 

 from which he reared silk worms, and produced raw 

 silk. Specimens of this Hampshire silk, and articles 

 woven from it, were presented by him to the Museum 

 of the Hartley Institution, where they are still ex- 

 hibited. 



From silk we may turn to salt. There has been 

 some talk lately about salt syndicates and the rise 

 in the price of this commodity, and if the rise should 

 be considerable, the time may come for a revival of 

 the Hampshire salt trade. This is one of the very 

 oldest industries in the count}', and it has survived at 

 Hayling Island, notwithstanding all the great com- 

 petition our sea salt has had to meet from the salt 

 works of Worcestershire and Cheshire. The salt 

 manufacture was so considerable near Lymington, 

 that the tax formerly levied on the salt amounted to 

 ^50,000 annually paid on that made near Lymington 

 alone. Salt works formerly existed all along the 

 Hampshire coast, and in several parts of the Isle of 

 Wight. At Lymington, Epsom salts were also largely 

 made as well as culinary salt, and bay salt used for 

 curing purposes. The salt exported annually from 

 the Isle of Wight about a century ago amounted to 

 i, too tons. So old is the Hampshire salt trade, that 

 it was an old industry when Charles I attempted to 

 dispose of the right of salt-making as one of his 

 monopolies, as the records of the Corporation of 

 Southampton show. 



Another decayed manufacture in Hampshire is that 

 of paper making. Formerly there were many paper 

 mills in various parts of the county. There are, I 



believe, now only four, viz., that at Laverstoke, 

 where the Bank of England Bank Note paper is 

 made, and other mills at Romsey, Alton, and near 

 Headley. The raw material now used in the manu- 

 facture of paper is so varied that the old trade has 

 been much changed. The paper-making industry is 

 now connected with tree products, and when we get 

 an improved system of Forestry carried out on the 

 Crown lands of Hampshire there will be more raw 

 material close at hand for- the paper makers. This 

 county had at one time a considerable industry in the 

 manufacture of sacking, made by handlooms at Win- 

 chester, Fareham, Alton, near Lymington, at Romsey, 

 and elsewhere. At Fordingbridge the manufacture 

 of striped bed ticking, which had been carried on for 

 many years, at the beginning of the present century 

 afforded employment to two-thirds of inhabitants who 

 were engaged in the processes of spinning, bleaching, 

 weaving, and dressing flax. The manufacture of 

 sailcloth from flax is still carried on there. 



A lace factory formerly existed at Newport, where 

 about thirty years ago it gave employment to 

 200 hands, chiefly women and children, but this trade 

 is now extinct. At an earlier period, Newport had a 

 manufactory for starch, which was in successful 

 operation a century ago, paying an annual duty on it 

 amounting to a thousand pounds. 



The old iron manufacture of Hampshire has gone 

 past recall. The manufacture of iron from native iron 

 stone was carried on till the beginning of the present 

 century, and the sites of some of the old iron forges 

 can be pointed out. The last to suspend its opera- 

 tions was that of Sowley, near Lymington, where 

 several heaps of iron stone, rich in metal, 

 and a quantity of iron slag may still be 

 seen. This iron stone is still collected on 

 the shores of the Solent in small quantities, 

 and sent to South Wales. When iron came to be 

 used so largely in modern manufactures and arts, the 

 old iron smelting works of Hampshire as well as those 

 in Sussex and Kent were doomed, from a lack of the 

 raw material as well as from lack of coal, and this 

 iron manufacture has gone for ever. Something else 

 which may in time partially displace iron, may as 

 years go by take its place, for man} 1 distinguished 

 metallurgical chemists of Europe and America are at 

 the present time at work to discover a cheap process 

 for the extraction of aluminium from clay, and their 

 expectation, if this can be done, that aluminium will 

 displace iron in some structures where lightness is a 

 consideration as well as strength, is not unreasonable. 

 Hampshire contains an abundance of clay. No fewer 

 than a dozen different geological kinds of clay 

 and loam, to say nothing of different varieties of 

 these kinds, are used in this county, in the 

 manufacture of bricks. There are metallurgists who 

 believe that before the twentieth century is far 

 advanced, ships built of aluminium will not be un- 

 known. The next paper I shall write for the 

 Hampshire Field Club will be on the clays of the 



