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For a few days we followed in the footsteps of the early life of Thomas Gregory (see my previous post) in county Hampshire. Our first stop was the small village of Hurstbourne Tarrant where Thomas was born on 16 July 1799, and baptised five days later in the ancient village church, St Peter’s, built in the 12th century and still containing centuries-old elements. We inspected the church interior and rear graveyard, locating the 1830s section of the latter where Thomas’ parents would have been buried, both having died while Thomas was detained in Van Diemen’s Land. In a shockingly cruel twist of fate, the day after Thomas was pardoned in Van Diemen’s Land, back in England his mother died.
Hurstbourne Tarrant still contains many old buildings, including some impossibly quaint cottages hatted out with cute carved straw roofs. We departed via Hurstbourne Hill that gives a fine panoramic view of the village and surrounding countryside.
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Next stop was the nearby village of Thruxton. Following a picnic lunch on Thruxton Green we inspected the grounds of the adjacent Church of St Peter & St Paul. It was here on 18 November 1826 that Thomas married Maria Cooper and where their sons were baptized in the following years. The family lived in Thruxton where Thomas was a skilled tradesman and had obtained a position as carpenter to village and county bigwig Lord Winchester.
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The tiny village of Quarley little more than a kilometre to the south-west was our next destination. It was here on 22 & 23 November 1830 that Thomas’ life became seriously unstuck. Leading a mob of disaffected and desperate labourers, Thomas took part in the destruction of Mr William Edward’s chaff cutting machine, and Mr Richard Cox’s threshing machine. Even more seriously (as far as the Law was concerned), Thomas demanded a sovereign from Mr Joseph Lane, an act deemed to be robbery for which Thomas was later very nearly to be executed by hanging.
Thomas was arrested and taken south to the city of Winchester for trial and sentencing. And so that had to be our next destination too.
Winchester. Winchester is one of England’s most historically significant places. For several centuries it was England’s capital city. It was William the Conqueror who commenced the construction of Winchester Castle, used by various Royals until its destruction by Oliver Cromwell’s forces in 1645. Only the Castle’s 12th century “Great Hall” survived. And it was in this very Hall where the Hampshire agricultural rioters of 1830 were tried and sentenced.
And so it was that on Wednesday 22 December 1830, Thomas Gregory was taken from the nearby Winchester County Gaol in Jewry Street and led into the Great Hall of Winchester, for his own trial to begin before stern Judge Baron Vaughan.
We had much more salubrious digs in Winchester than Thomas did in 1830 – we stayed in a traditional English Hotel, the Winchester Royal, popular, as we discovered, with friendly older ladies touring groups. Just around the corner in Jewry Street still stands much of the former County Gaol, though these days put to a much happier use as the Old Gaolhouse Pub. And we were also free to roam around inside the Great Hall, now a museum open to the public, and imagine the fear and trepidation Thomas must have felt as he passed through that imposing door and entered the cavernous space inside to account for his actions and to learn his fate.
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Our final stop was on the coast, about an hour south of Winchester, at Gosport on Portsmouth Harbour. These days the scene at Gosport is one of marinas and waterfront apartments, but in 1830 the waterside living was of an altogether different kind with convict ships moored along here. It was in the prison hulk ‘York’ moored at Gosport that Thomas spent his final weeks in England before being loaded, in chains, onto the ship ‘Proteus’, sailing shortly afterwards through the narrow entrance of Portsmouth Harbour and out onto the ocean, to punishment and a new life on the other side of the world.
And fittingly it was at Gosport that we too bid Adieu to Thomas Gregory, to head off to prepare for our own departure from England.
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