Bursledon, windmills, bricks and hills

17 May 2015

My Sunday walk didn’t finish at the end of the greenway trail. If I only had one day for walking I wanted to fit in a great deal more than six miles. Unfortunately the plan meant the next part would be along the main Bursledon Road with traffic zooming past. At least, being Sunday, there weren’t too many cars and, for a moment, I was tempted to cross the road and grab a coffee in Costa before good sense prevailed. Maybe on the way back…

A bike was chained to the railings in the middle of the crossing which seemed a bit odd until I remembered the accident earlier in the week involving a cyclist. It may be part of the phenomenon known as ghost bikes, where a bike painted white is chained where a cyclist has been killed. In this case the cyclist is seriously injured but still clinging to life and the bike is not painted white so I could be wrong. It does seem like a strange place to leave a bike though.

Bursledon Road is one of the main routes in and out of Southampton, converging with Bitterne Road at the top end of my village, it leads towards Fareham and Portsmouth.  The name Bursledon means hill of a man called Beorhtsige and hills are the order of the day. In fact Bursledon Road is a real roller coaster of a thing although I’d managed to avoid some of the ups and downs by walking through the greenway. Unfortunately the last mile and a quarter of road walking, included some rather unpleasant hills and two busy roads to cross but I made it to Windmill Lane more or less unscathed, if a little red in the face.

The last time I visited Bursledon Windmill it was December, the new laticies had just been put on and it was bitterly cold. When I rounded the corner of the lane I could see that the canvas sails have since been attached, meaning the mill is now capable of grinding grain into flour. It was a real sight to make me smile after those horrible hills.

This is the oldest working windmill in Hampshire and, after being out of action for such a long time, it’s good to see it in working order again even if the sails were not actually turning. It’s certainly a historic building, but I’ve already written about Phoebe Langtree and the ghost. In fact there was a moment on one visit when I thought I might have seen the ghost in the window but it was probably a trick of the light.

Being Sunday there were quite a few people around wanting tours so, after a quick photo of the Hiltingbury Granary, the millpond and the Chineham Barn, I wandered off to the woods to find a peaceful place to drink my chocolate milk. Annoyingly, someone in one of the fields or houses behind the trees had lit a bonfire and the smoke was drifting through the trees so it wasn’t quite the pleasant rest I’d anticipated.

With my milk gone I left the smoky bench and the trees carved with initials and hearts and went back towards the windmill.  The mill was an impressive sight with the sun shining on the newly painted walls and the cedar cap, which can be turned to face the prevailing wind, and I’d have liked to stay longer. It would have been nice to take a closer look at the windshaft laying on the grass beside the millpond and photograph the flowers in and around the pond but there were just too many people wandering about.

Much as I’d have liked to stay and see the sails turning I didn’t have time. There was a lot more walking to fit in before I turned for home. With a last few photos of the mill and a quick check of the windows for ghosts I set off back down Windmill lane to the road. At least I have a good excuse for another visit.

There is a lot more to see in Bursledon, amongst other things it has a marina, dockyards and a brickworks.  One Sunday walk is not enough to see everything so I’d set my sights on the brickworks, not really knowing what to expect. The Bursledon Brickworks is actually across the River Hamble in Swanwick but there were more hills to negotiate before I got there. When I’d looked at the route on the map the two mile walk had seemed quite simple, being mostly on a long straight road with little chance of getting lost. Of course, I wasn’t thinking about the hills, although I knew very well they were there. You don’t build a windmill in a dip after all.

At first my walk took me down Providence Hill, the steep hill the windmill sits on. For a while the sight of hawthorn flowers distracted me from the thought of the walk back up. The hawthorn, or May flower, is one of my favourites because it usually blooms on or around my birthday and the first ones were the usual white, some slightly tinged with pink. Further on I came to some where the edges of the petals were deep rosy pink, the darkest I’ve ever seen. Just as I was wondering if they were some kind of strange anomaly, I came to some even darker ones, almost red. Apparently these are cultivars bred for their pink or red petals. They seem strange but I quite like them.

The rollercoasterness of the road which is, after all, just Bursledon Road under another name, continued. As I’d already walked four and a half miles before I started down Providence Hill, the last mile of which was hilly, the whole venture was beginning to look like a bad idea. At the junction of Portmouth Road I almost turned off and gave up on the brickworks altogether but in the end I carried on. Eventually, the bridge over the River Hamble was in sight. In the 1700’s this was a wooden toll bridge, the current stone bridge was built in around 1800. On the other side I came upon a sign telling me I was now in Fareham. This made me feel as if I’d walked a lot further than I’d thought.

Once I’d passed the Navigator Pub I turned off onto Swanwick Lane where I was greeted by a row of pretty pastel coloured houses. Now I was walking into the unknown but I told myself I’d come this far so I might as well keep going. The long, curving road did at least have the advantage of being largely flat but, with no reference points, it seemed to go on and on. Approaching an ancient looking brick barn I thought I might have arrived at my destination but it turned out to be just a large house and outbuildings although I did wonder if the bricks had come from the brickworks. Around about then I began to wonder if I might have passed it by mistake I seemed to have been walking on this road for an awfully long time.

Right at the moment when I was about to give up because I was sure the whole thing was a figment of my imagination I crossed a railway bridge and the brickworks entrance was in front of me. Outside there was a giant machine of some kind on a brick pedestal, unfortunately there was nothing to tell me what it actually was, although it looked impressive. There was also a brick plaque on the wall dated 1999, the date when the works opened as a museum.

After a promising start things went downhill a bit, and I don’t mean in the literal sense. There was a long gravel road lined with rusting pieces of machinery and piles of bricks. Most of the machinery had helpful labels. Well, they would have been helpful if I’d had Commando with me, as an engineer he might have been able to explain what they actually were. The further I walked the more obvious it became that I was well out of my depth. I took photos but what on earth is an areal rope way terminal or a kibbler?

Despite its rather ramshackle appearance, this is actually a rather important piece of our industrial history. Founded in 1897 by the Ashby family, it is the last surviving example of a Victorian steam powered brickworks in the country. Right up until 1974 it produced the famous Fareham red bricks in exactly the same way they had been produced in Victorian and Edwardian times. Quite why the process was never modernised is a mystery but this was the reason they were saved and turned into a museum.

Leaving the kibbler and other unidentified machinery behind, along with two dilapidated looking horse statues that seemed rather random, and passing the station of the model railway that shares the site I finally made it to the main building. Straight away I could see there was a queue to get in so I went off to use the loo. On my travels I saw more rusting machinery, some of which had labels that may or may not have been informative.

From my pre walk research I knew that the visit would cost me £5 and I’d come prepared with money. Quite what I’d get for my fiver apart from the chance to make my own brick or chimney (possibly at an extra cost) wasn’t clear but it was clear it was going to be crowded and probably frustrating. Yes I’d like to have seen the kilns and learned how the brickworks went from digging clay by hand to mechnised digging producing twenty million bricks a year but I didn’t want to wait around to do it. Perhaps I was just tired and crabby after all those hills. It also occurred to me that carrying a brick or chimney the six or more miles home up and down all those hills might not be the best of plans.

In fairness, the lottery funded project to restore the buildings is not due to end until December 2015 so the visit may not have been one of my better ideas. Maybe I’d have found out about the machinery if I’d gone inside but,  In the end, I didn’t although I did stop to look at some of the piles of bricks and chimneys on my way back along the gravel lane. Maybe I’ll come back next year when all the work is done. If I do I think I’ll bring my car.

Feeling rather disappointed I walked back along Swanwick Lane, which suddenly seemed much shorter, and recrossed the River Hamble. All that remained was a long tired trudge up and down all the hills towards home. There was a brief moment of joy when I saw the windmill sails turning through the trees on Providence Hill but I was too exhausted by the climb to do more than smile. Believe it or not, after all those hills, I was too tired to even stop at Costa.