In 1976 there was a public inquiry into the Department of Transport’s proposal to route the M3 Motorway through Winchester’s water meadows below St. Catherine’s Hill. We were heavily involved in the campaign against the proposal and kept of everything we printed for the M3 Action Group.
Thirty years on and the road had been constructed on the far side of St. Catherine’s Hill thus saving the water meadows, and some of the original participants in the campaign were writing a book about it. I gave my file of ephemera to one of the authors who subsequently became ill, suffered a burst pipe in his house that he was unable to fix, and all the paperwork was destroyed.
I tell this story to illustrate how easily historical information can be lost. Of course, it can be objected that in the grand sweep of history this is of little importance, swamped as we are with so much information about almost everything that it becomes impossible to extract significance from the welter of triviality.
That is why a book like “The Four Worthys” is so necessary. Compiled by professional historian Barry Shurlock, with the assistance of the long-established Worthys Local History Group, the book had its origins in a dissertation for his MA in Book Design at Reading University by Tim Underwood who has worked for, and with, us for more than twenty years. It covers the villages in the Itchen Valley to the north of Winchester of Kings Worthy, Headbourne Worthy, Martyr Worthy, and Abbots Worthy. As Barry observes in his Introduction, there are few places in the country that have so much to tell! Or, because I am a secondhand book dealer and am familiar with local histories from all over the country, there are few places that have been so well researched and recorded, and few books that have been produced that are as well-considered and produced as this one.
The first part of the book looks at each of the villages in turn, and in particular their links to the River Itchen which flows through them all, and the selection of the images is carefully crafted to encapsulate as far as possible the historical development of the area. The second part of the book is thematic, as is often the case with local histories: chapters on Farming, Faith, Transport, Schools, and so on. Again, it is the flow of history that is emphasised, so that (apart from the section on railways!) it is not an exercise in nostalgia, as can so often be the case with this type of book, but a recognition that the moments that are being recorded in the images may be ephemeral but are also adding another layer to the accretion of the lives lived in these places.
Not included in the book is the fact that it was at a meeting in Abbots Worthy Mill, the home of Joyce and Raymond Hitchcock (who do feature in the book), in the spring of 1976 that the plans to disrupt the M3 Inquiry were hatched. The only record of that evening, which arguably changed the future route of the M3, is probably my diary entry.
“The Four Worthys” can be obtained from P & G Wells Booksellers: info@pgwells.co.uk
