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, separating 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 embrasures sixteen feet through, but the upper storeys are much slighter. On the west side is cut the date 1518, whilst some stone cannon balls of the Commonwealth period show the importance 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.[1]
But the place has older associations than these. In The Chronicle and Florence of Worcester we read[2] 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 Curiosa, 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.
- ↑ The Chronicle. Ed. Thorpe. Vol. i. p. 24. Florence. Ed. Thorpe. Vol. i. pp. 3, 4.
