Hordle

Hordle has several shops including a pharmacy, and Co-operative Stores. The village also has a primary school, and it did have a pub: The Three Bells but it closed some years ago. The building is now a hotel. Although there is no pub, there is a cidery, Miners Cider, in Silver Street, where local ciders are available, late into the evening. The present civil parish is somewhat smaller than the it used to contain, but still includes the hamlets of Tiptoe and Everton. Originally the parish included both Hurst Spit (and Hurst Castle) as well as Sway tower. During the 19th century, Hurst Spit and adjacent areas were transferred to Milford whilst the hamlet of Everton was included in Hordle. Similarly, a northwestern section was transferred to the newly created parish of Sway. The soils of the parish are based mainly on well drained gravels to the south and clayey loams to the north: the character of the parish is agricultural, although in medieval times a few saltworks were operated on the coast. The present parish church, All Saints, was built in 1872 and succeeded a previous building on the same site dating from 1830 which fell down. Prior to this, the parish church was for some 700 years located a mile further south, where the churchyard still remains at Hordle Cliff. The local tradition telling of the existence of the original village near the church, which has disappeared into the sea owing to cliff erosion, is a myth although there is no doubting the substantial (and ongoing) coastal erosion. ==History==

The name Hordle is generally believed to mean hoard hill – OE hordhyll – (treasure hill), There is no connection with "Golden Hill" which lies on the main road from Hordle to Ashley and which is a Victorian invention as is Silver Street. In modern times, one 4th-century copper coin (of Maximus) has been found in a garden near Golden Hill. Hordle is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 when it comprised the manors of Hordle and Arnwood. Hordle manor then belonged to Oidelard, who held it of Ralph de Mortimer. Afterwards held by the de Redvers family, Earls of Devon, it was granted to Pagan Trenchard around 1140. Two separate manors evolved, one the Trenchard Manor and the other that held by Breamore Priory. With the enclosure of Arnewood Common in the early nineteenth century, the main centre of population moved northwards, away from the coast, and to meet this change the ancient parish church was demolished in 1830 and moved to its present situation close to the now enclosed Downton Common, two miles (3 km) to the north. They were eventually evicted from this home and they moved to nearby Tiptoe, where they lived in tents until their leader, Mary Ann Girling, died in 1886. After about 1920 considerable infilling took place in the parish and this accelerated in the 1950s and 60s leading to a much increased population that largely seeks its livelihood in the neighbouring towns of Lymington and New Milton. Buildings of national importance are no longer within the parish boundary. These are Hurst Castle, one of Henry VIII's defensive works, and Sway tower (also known as Arnewood or Peterson's tower) the tallest non-reinforced concrete construction in the world. Saltmaking The Domesday Book mentions six saltpans here but the industry declined thereafter and ceased well before the end of the 14th century apart from a saltworks on Hurst Spit. ==References==