Entre le Marie Knyszt de Arnemuthe, mestre John Johnsone: Anket iiiid.
Thomas Brangwein de Middleburgh xxvi C de ayll Cust xxvis,

Port Book of Southampton

Southampton has suffered over the years. French raids, German bombers, sixties planners and a sequence of shopping centres each built when half the units in the previous ones stood empty, have all taken their toll. But there's plenty to love about the place and in particular a fair portion of the mediæval walls still stand.

Years ago, the city laid out a rather nice trail 'Walk the Hamtun Walls', with illustrated storyboards marking the route. Sadly, part of the elevated section is closed at the moment, apparently the result of an excess of zeal by some risk assessor, the Tdor House Museum renovations show no signs of starting any time soon, despite the lottery funding having been in the bank for a year or so, and other buildings are also closed due to a lack of zeal somewhere. It's left mainly to local volunteer groups to maintain interest by running guided walks round the old town, with value-adds such as ghost stories and other entertainment along the way.

I photographed the wall walk with one or more web pages in mind some years ago, but never quite got round to it. I began to write part of it up a couple of years ago when I read James Rattue's marvellous 'The Living Stream': knowing my interest in wells, regular visitors will be completely unsurprised to know that I immediately determined to find the two Southampton wells he mentions. The task was not a great success: but the idea for this walk was planted. Renewed correspondence with James prompted me to write it up properly, after five years' gestation. Were I to do the walk with help from the story-telling group, this is roughly how it would go. I'm sharing a little of my favourite part of my home city, a few tall tales and flights of fancy. The people named here really existed and if I have taken liberties with their characters then I hope that their shades will forgive me.

During the pylgersput research, this modern translation of the entry from the Port Book of Southampton caught my eye for some reason so I checked the location of Arnemuiden, which turned out to be close to the Beginhof at Hoogstraten.

By then, I already knew where the Pylgersput or Pilgrims' Well was, and was aware that nothing remained of it. But something tempted me back to walk along the old Town Quay (after which one of the modern-day shopping centres is named) and to look at the space model of the fourteenth century trading vessel. That got me thinking. Around this time the Begijns were declared heretic. Many of the Begijns were widows of wealthy traders - probably one reason for the Vatican's sudden desire to dissolve the order. A widow with the right, slightly dodgy, connections who was fleeing the chaos would have had little trouble arranging passage on a boat. A few strolls round town, a few glasses with my favorite landlord and the rest is history. Or perhaps not.

Enters the Marie Knyght of Arnemuiden, master John Johnson: Anchorage 4d.
Thomas Brangwein of Middlesburgh, 26 hundreds of garlic, Customs 26s.

It's worth starting by standing on the upper level of the south end of West Quay shopping centre, not far from Shopmobility. It's walkable from the railway station or there's a free circular bus to the back of the West Quay centre: from the drop-off point continue along the tunnel in the direction the bus was going, then cross at the pedestrian crossing at the end. If you're able, climb the steps to the West Quay shopping centre and look over the railings. In front of you is what might seem to be the remains of a castle, but hey, fooled you. these are the north-west towers of the wall. What you can see of the erstwhile castle is further down, behind the first set of arcades in the walls. If you can't make it, the best route to the erstwhile dockside is to head straight down Bugle Street and turn right at the Duke of Wellington pub, through Westgate. You won't have missed musch: the next paragraph is just pointing out the geography and there's a view down from the ramparts at the end of the walk.

From West Quay, however, looking to your left is the Bargate, northerly gate of the old town, sitting somewhat incongruously in splendid isolation in a pedestrian area surrounded by modern shops. It's well worth looking at later, but for now, just be aware that this is the north end of the town and that whilst today the shops hide the view of St Mary's church, in those days that landmark and its attendant settlement would have been visible beyond the intact walls. Cross the road and you're rewarded with a view over a somewhat tedious foreground to the old West Wall. The squat tower is St Michael's, another of the landmarks at the time of Marie Knyght's landfall. Virtually all of the land to your right and a good deal of that behind you is reclaimed, so the walls would have looked even more spectacular. Walk down the steps and along under the walls to Westgate.

Take yourself back 600 years, in a small ship only just capable of beating the wind and the tide. In a manoeuvre familiar to modern tankers approaching Fawley, it would be necessary to time the approach to the Solent fairly carefully. If it was a good run, you've been at sea for two days. Will you make it in time for the tide or have to sit out at sea overnight? How welcome would be the view of the spire of St Mary's, indicating that you're probably safe, then an hour or perhaps two later, the safe harbour indicated by St Michael's? Fortunately for our story that the Marie Knyght made it. Perhaps she sighted the Wight and the lower island in front of it around sixt. She would have entered the Solent at nones (mid-afternoon), and arrived safely in time for her sole passenger, Mevrouw Anna van Raas, to hear the bells for Vespers ring out across the water.

We'll move on to the old quayside, below the remains of the West Wall and by the old Watergate. There's a dummy of a small sailing ship surrounded by some outlines, which, if you use your imagination, give an indication of the site of the quay. Everything further out into the road, and the site of the De Vere hotel, was water. It's worth walking further south to see the vista of the West Wall with the dummy ship to give it scale: the Marie Knyght would have been larger, but would still have been dwarfed by the wall.

Imagine that it's dusk and, after the harbourmaster has inspected the cargo, opening one barrel at random, and using his foot to stir the scrap blue-and-white tiles carried as ballast, John Johnson paid him the twenty-six shillings and then picked some local dockers to offload the cargo. There are no warehouses on the quay, so the men are struggling the barrels through one of the gates. Anna, John's first contraband, pays him the second half of the fare and then threads her way through the raucous confusion, walking north to enter the town by the aptly named Pilgrim's Gate. We'll meet her again later, but for now, we'll head up Blue Anchor Lane to see where the barrels are going. Later, John will head for an inn to get a good night's sleep before slipping the moorings at first light and heading west on the morning tide. His final destination is Bridport, to take on more cargo, but he will make an extra landfall en route, to offload the rest of his contraband, several bolts of fine cloth hidden deep under the tiles.

If we walk a short distance up Blue Anchor Lane, the buildings on the right give an idea of what the old town was like. There are under-crofts and houses at ground level, only a small portion showing above the walls. Why is this? I first heard the folk-tale story of the aftermath of the French raid of 1338 shortly after arriving at university and joining the morris side. I now know that the truth is somewhat different, but this whole page owes as much to the imagination as to anything else, so I'll stick with the folk version.

As told in innumerable pubs and to tourists at innumerable gigs in the old town, what happened was that the French put on a small raid (we used to say 'a few small boats') and the locals saw their opportunity. King Edward III arrived post haste from Winchester to inspect the damage and was told that his all of his store of wine had been stolen. Reckoning (quite rightly) that the French fleet wasn't big enough to have taken the wine away, but unable to prove it, he decreed that all of the fine merchants' houses facing the sea had to have their windows bricked up and be turned into a defensive wall.

The story goes that the locals considered that the spire of St Mary's Church, outside the walls in the old Hamtun district, might have made a good navigation point or the French, just as it did for John Johnson and his crew. So they had it demolished. Now, this was supposedly the queen's favourite church, so was this perhaps a case of the merchants getting their revenge on the king? We'll probably never know, but it's a good story.

We'll walk to the top of Blue Anchor Lane, where it meets Bugle Street at St Michael's Square. Sadly, the buildings one either side of the church spoil the illusion, and with the Tudor Merchant's House closed for the foreseeable future (although tours can sometimes be arranged). But the church is worth a visit. Sometimes this is restricted to peering in through the glass: the tower and the central portion of the church are much as Anna would have seen them when she attended Compline on the evening of her arrival. If the church is open, take a few minutes to enjoy the peace Anna would surely have experienced.

We're taking Anna's journey in reverse and as you come out of the church you'll see why. We turn right and walk north up Bugle Street to the crossroads at the Endeavour pub. All the buildings on the left are new and although they're reasonably in keeping with the feel of the old town, it's nicer to have seen Blue Anchor Lane first. Facing north, on your left is 'Biddlesgate'. Anna would have entered Southampton by walking up here towards us. At the bottom was the Pilgrim's Gate, the street itself was formerly called Pylgersput after the well and the buildings one either side were tenements. The well was about half-way down on the left, somewhere around the modern entrance to the flats (marked in green). The gate itself isn't a casualty of either bombers or planners, or at least not in the twentieth century: it had vanished by the time of Speed's map of the mid seventeenth century.

It takes a lot of imagination, but walking halfway down we can imagine Anna visiting the well when she arrived, perhaps taking a little of the water in her hands and giving thanks for her safe arrival, perhaps leaving a coin as a token. I imagine the well as being somewhat like the pipe-well in Liskeard, with the well-head behind a grating in the building, overflowing into a cistern outside the grate. You must make up your own mind. Turn and head back up to Bugle Street. The last building on the left was an Inn and I like to think Anna lodged there. There was official pilgim accommodation in town but since her arrival was not strictly legitimate, she'd probably have avoided it. Of course this building is long gone, but walking is thirsty business and since we're reached the end of my short walk, we have two options.

To be as close to Anna as we can geographically, cross the road and sit in the Endeavour (formerly the Ocean Queen). Temporally, a short walk south down Bugle Street is the Duke of Wellington. This dates from the thirteenth century, when it was a private house owned by the Mayor. It was damaged during the French raid and in the late fifteenth century was incorporated into a building called 'The Bere House'. It has remained an inn, changing its name shortly after the battle of Waterloo, was damaged again during the second world war and restored in the 1960s. Whereever you go, it's worth deciding what to do next. There's plenty more to see, but my short tour ends on top of the walls, by returning to the upper end of Bugle street and walking down the alley by the side of the 'Bosun's Locker'.

As I said at the start, much of the elevated part of the official walk is closed, but fortunately for aesthetics, even health and safty officials can't close whole roads unless they're about to fall into the sea. So for another aerial view of the walls (or the first if you didn't bother with West Quay), walk to the end of the alley and look over the wall. You can walk slightly left until you meet a wall and a grating, enjoy the view south, then turn back and walk round the corner of 'Forest View', whence you can see down into the gardens and across to 'Catchcold Tower', sadly with what is probably West Quay's least endearing profile behind it.

If you started from West Quay, you now know where you are. If you started from Shopmobility, just proceed to the end of the lane and the building should be obvious across the car-park. I hope you've enjoyed this tiny taste of my city. Maybe, in another year or two I'll write up Anna's visit to the cloisters.

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