There’s something to be said for starting the day off with a nice walk. When that day also happens to be the first day of a new year, doubly so. It helped that the first day of 2022 dawned crisp and cold, a truly golden start to the year. After all the madness of the last two years, I hoped this was a good omen for the year ahead. I’m fairly sure I wasn’t alone in being tired of all the panic, rumour, conspiracy theories and restrictions at this stage. Commando and I strolled across the Common, admiring the layers of gold, grey and blue through the bare branches of the trees. The wonderful Gareth had already been round putting out his signs and the set up crew were on the flats putting out the poles and chains of the parkrun finish funnel. The sky was the real star of the show though. It looked like being a beautiful morning, which was just as well, because drizzle would have put a dampener on my plans.
Most of my parkrun walks are aimless wandering, usually around the Old Cemetery, but for my first walk of 2022, I had a proper plan — well, sort of. Once the runners began to gather for the pre run briefing, I set off towards the Avenue. Struggling against the tide of stragglers heading for the start line, I made for the road. A few people gave me odd looks. Maybe the Dryrobe made them think I was a stray park runner going the wrong way, or I could have had the look of a New Year reveller on the walk of shame.
Pretty soon Avenue St Andrews United Reformed Church came into view. The name might be a bit of a mouthful, and it usually goes by Avenue Church these days, but the red brick building, dating from 1898, is quite a landmark for people visiting Southampton. Unfortunately, searches for information about it can be a touch on the confusing side. This is because Avenue Church is an amalgamation of three different churches, two of which no longer exist.
The Oldest of the three churches is Above Bar Congregational Church, founded in 1662. Isaac Watts, of Watts Park and hymn fame, was a deacon of the church and it had three incarnations. In 1727 the original chapel was demolished and a new, larger church build to accommodate the growing congregation. The new church was also demolished, In 1819, and a third version, costing £6000, was completed in 1820. In the nineteenth century, this was the main Non-conformist church in Southampton. Sadly, on 30 November 1940, it was destroyed in one of the worst air raids of the Southampton blitz and the congregation moved to the nearby St Andrews Presbyterian Church on the corner of Brunswick Place and Dorset Street.
St Andrews Presbyterian Church had been founded in 1853. In the slum clearance on the 1960’s, much of the surrounding housing was demolished, including the Northam Street terraces that feature in my upcoming book Seventh Daughter. The congregation dwindled, and the church fell into a poor state of repair. In the early 1980’s, it was decided to merge with the Avenue Church as both had become United Reformed churches. The old St Andrews church was demolished soon after and replaced with offices.
The church is probably worth a visit, but, unsurprisingly, at nine o’clock on New Year’s morning, it wasn’t open, so I began to walk towards Burgess Road. Before long, the Cowherds came into view. It may seem like an odd name for a pub, but, back when the people of Southampton used the Common for grazing, this was where the cowherd, who was paid to look after the cattle lived. The current building isn’t quite as old as the Common. It was built in 1762, but there are lots of interesting stories surrounding it. Obviously, ghosts are a key feature. It’s rumoured that a strange short man in a tall hat has been seen walking through the walls. Perhaps he is the ghost of one of the people hanged on the nearby gallows? The pub is also said to be haunted by the ghost of a landlady who was murdered in the nineteenth century.
Ghosts aren’t the only odd tales to centre around this pub. On 5 March 1918, James Mason, a labourer from Shirley, was walking on the Common when he stumbled upon the body of a baby covered in earth and leaves behind the pub. An inquest was opened the very next day and Dr Ives, who carried out the post mortem, confirmed it was the body of a newborn baby girl. Although there were no marks of violence on the body, the child’s mouth had been plugged with dirt and leaves, which had caused her death. On 30 March, Elizabeth Rogers, aged 36, a widow from Empress Road, appeared in court in connection with the death. Her landlady, Mrs Clothier, had turned her in. She’d heard about the discovery of the baby’s body and recalled seeing Elizabeth looking pale and haggard on the night in question. When she’s asked her if the baby was hers, Elizabeth had replied, ‘Yes, for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone.’
On 23 June, Elizabeth appeared at the Hampshire Assizes, charged with the wilful murder of her child. As the circumstances began to unfold, it was clear that Elizabeth had been in a poor state of mind at the time. In early March Mrs Clothier had given Elizabeth and her two year old daughter notice to quit her lodgings, even though she was well aware that she was heavily pregnant. On 5 March, Elizabeth left her job at Carter’s Dye Works and went to Weston Shore, determined to drown herself. There were too many people around, so she walked to the Common instead and, behind the Cowherds, she gave birth to the baby. Exactly what happened next isn’t clear. The medical evidence confirmed that the child had breathed at birth and had died from suffocation, but the jury were not satisfied that the baby had had a separate existence apart from her mother and Elizabeth was acquitted of murder. Instead, she was jailed for five months for concealing the birth.
It was still relatively early and the Cowherds wasn’t open. There were no short men in tall hats about, or any other strange people that might have been ghosts. In fact, there was no one about at all, so I kept walking. A little while later I passed the Beyond Graffiti tunnel and briefly thought about going to see if there was any new artwork. In the end, I decided against it. A short distance up the road I did find an abandoned electric scooter, but I think it had more to do with drunken New Year’s Eve revellers than ghostly goings on. I may not have seen any ghosts, but I did find a large fungus of some kind. It may have been a kind of oyster mushroom.
As I got close to Burgess Road, I also spotted something strange going on with the road signs. The speed signs had all turned grey. This struck me as very odd. I kept walking, wondering if the council were responsible. Maybe they’d taken them down because they were going to make a change to the speed limit? When I reached the second speed sign, it was clear they’d been painted over, rather than removed. Perhaps it was some kind of drunken prank?
Before I reached the corner of Burgess Road I turned back onto the Common. I was hoping that the park runners would have either passed or thinned out enough for me to walk back towards Bellemoor corner and on to the finish before Commando got there. My route took me past the site of the old gallows. The last public execution was in 1785, and there’s nothing much to see there now, but I did glance at the trees as I passed. If you want to know more about those last executions, I wrote a post about it back in 2016. It can be found here.
It turned out I’d walked a bit faster than I’d intended. When I got to the corner, there were still quite a lot of park runners coming through. I stood for a while and cheered them, then, when they thinned out a bit, I headed against the tide towards Bellemoor corner. I saw a few friends along the way, but it was a relief when the tail walkers finally came past me.
In the end, I didn’t get back before Commando, so, as plans go, it hadn’t been that successful. It had been a nice walk though and I’d seen a few things to make me think and make me smile. I hoped it was a sign of things to come.
If you like what I write, and you’re interested in my novels are available now on Amazon in paperback, on Kindle and via Kindle Unlimited. Check out my Amazon page here and my Goodreads page here. If you would like to help me keep writing, you can now buy me a virtual coffee by clicking on the little orange coffee cup at the bottom right.
When the cycle path on The Avenue was put in the speed limit changed from 30 to 40. The scheme was temporary so the signs were painted over rather than removed altogether, Th speed limit is still 30 and as this is a road with streetlights at regulation intervals the 30 signs do not need to be in place.
Ah, thank you for explaining. I rarely go that way so I hadn’t noticed it before.