Celebrating in Selborne

No, Selborne has not become a hotspot for nightlife, but meeting my parents and children there for lunch in the Selborne Arms and going for a little amble in this pretty, traditional Hampshire village yesterday afternoon was how I chose to celebrate becoming a year older.

After lunch hubby and I ambled along to St Mary's church where we admired the remains of the ancient yew tree and enjoyed the quiet of the church, which has a quality that makes it different from other kinds of quiet, and I was pleased to see the peace chapel was still there.

The kids decided to go back home after lunch but we met my parents back at the car park and then walked to the botttom of the zig-zag path of the Hangar. Dad can't walk too far these days, but he decided it would be worth going back down to Gilbert White's house for a cup of tea and a piece of cake in their elegant tea parlour, where I had hot chocolate in a small, white coffee pot to accompany my cinnamon scone. It was a very pleasant afternoon. The rain held off and we even saw the sunshine for a few minutes. In better, drier weather, there are pleasant walks around the area, but they do go quite close to the river, so aren't so enjoyable after heavy rain.


Although Selborne looks like a quiet place where nothing much happens it was not only the home of the clergyman and naturalist, Gilbert White in the late 18th century, but also host to the infamous Selborne Riots in 1830 when a mob several hundred strong attacked the workhouse in Selborne, Hampshire, turned out the occupants, burned or broke the fittings and furniture, and pulled down the roof before moving on to do the same to the workhouse at Headley the next day. This was one of a number of 'bread or blood' riots in the England and Wales at the time as a wave of social unrest spread through the land fuelled by rising prices, falling wages after the end of the wars in America and Europe, and an emergent socialist ideology.

Similar riots also took place in Merthyr Tydfil and the Welsh singer/songwriter, Martyn Joseph, wrote a song about Richard Penderyn, 'who was unjustly hung in 1831'. This injustice is still remembered in Wales today and not so long ago (2001?) a group of school children petitioned the Home Office for a postuhumous pardon for Dic Penderyn.

Robert Holdaway, ex-publican of the parish, who, some said, tried to stop or limit the activities of the rioters was sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to transportation. His son, Frederick changed his name to Holloway when he joined the navy and even gave his father's name as Robert Holloway on his marriage certificate, which suggests his father was a source of shame or embarassment for him.

Robert Holdaway interests me as there is an outside chance he could be the elusive father of my ancestor, John Holdaway, an agricultural labourer at Brook, north of Romsey.

Two others involved in the riots were even less fortunate:

"Henry Cook aged 19 of Micheldever and James Thomas Cooper aged 33 of East Grimstead in Wiltshire were the two unfortunate prisoners not to be reprieved. Cook stood charged with a "felonious assault" in which two sovereigns had been taken, but more tellingly he had also knocked off the hat of William Bingham Baring JP with a sledge hammer. Cooper was charged with "riotous assembly" and machine breaking, but had also gained a certain notoriety as the self-styled 'Captain Hunt,' leading mobs around the Fordingbridge area.

"At eight o'clock on the morning of Saturday 15th January, they were hanged, and all capitally convicted prisoners still in the gaol and those awaiting trial at the next Assizes were "brought out into the yard to witness the awful spectacle." Reports speak of many of the convicts weeping bitterly, some burying their faces in their smock frocks and others leaning for support against the wall of the yard unable to watch."