Map from Lycos @ 1:200,000
Brownsea Island which takes up some 500 acres of
Poole Harbour is now a tranquil oasis of heathland, pinewood and saltmarsh owned
by the National Trust
- a place of retreat from the bustle of the large conurbation which comprises Bournemouth,
Poole and Christchurch. Now it is
managed largely as a nature reserve disturbed only by the many thausands of visitors which take the short
voyage here from the mainland each summer. The island has, however, had a very varied history.
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The name in the 13th century was Brunkeseye which
derives from the personal name Burn or Brown and the Old English
eig for island.
Until 1903, the island was known as Branksea. In that year,
however, a number of guests of the Van Raaltes travelling from London mistakenly
alighted the train at Branksome Station instead of continuing on to Poole. This led Charles van Raalte
to change the island's name from Branksea to the
present Brownsea to avoid future confusion.
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PRE-HISTORIC BROWNSEA
The end of the last Ice Age some 10,000 years ago caused a general rise in sea-level as the land-locked
ice melted and found its way into the world's oceans. The rising of the sea drowned the estuary and created
Poole Harbour itself leaving the desposits of gravels, sands and clays carried
eastwards from the West Country by the Great Solent River piled into what is now Brownsea Island.
The beginning of th 5th century BC brings us the first signs of human settlement in the area
with the establishment of agriculture, trade and the production of pottery. That the
harbour was used as a highway early on is evidenced by the discovery of two
sections of a 33-foot long log boat by a dredger in the marine silts just to the north of the island in
1964. Carbon-dated to about 800 BC, the
remains of the boat have now been preserved by Poole Museum.
ROMAN & SAXON BROWNSEA
The Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43 saw the establishment of a supply base for the conquering
legions on the mainland site of an Iron Age settlement to the north of Brownsea, although it is
not until the 3rd century AD that we see signs of the settlement of the island itself.
The Roman legions withdrew from Britain in [] leaving it open to the invading Anglo-Saxons who
established their villages along the shores of the harbour. By 800 AD,
Wareham had become prominent
as a Saxon town which, like Brownsea Island, was part of the powerful kingdom of Wessex.
The period from 830 AD saw the area attracting the ever-increasing attention of the Norsemen whose
raiding parties visited the harbour and pillaged the Saxon settlements. In 876 AD, Wareham was not
only attacked but occupied by the Vikings although Alfred the Great's fleet drove the Danish ships
to flee into the English Channel. By the time of Alfred's victory, a chapel dedicated to St Andrew
and belonging to the Abbey at Cerne had been established on Brownsea with a hermit ministering to
the local seamen. In 1015, the Danish Cnut or Canute, yet to become King of England brought his fleet
into the harbour to over-winter and the Vikings laid waste to the whole
area.
MEDIEVAL BROWNSEA
Before the Norman invasion of 1066, Brownsea Island was in the possession of one Bruno. William I,
the Conqueror, gave Studland to his half-brother Robert de Mortain but ownership reverted to the
crown. The island itself could have been of little value in 1086 when William assessed his realm for
taxation by ordering the compilation of the Domesday Book as it is not mentioned within its pages.
The Abbey of cerne retained its rights over Brownsea and these included the right to wreakage - to keep
any cargo which might be washed up on its shores. this caused a fierce dispute in 1275 after the
Constable of
Corfe Castle removed
casks of wine from the island's shore. The Abbot of cerne took his
complaint to the monarch,
Edward I, and the errant Constable was ordered to surrender over the casks.
In 1318 the monks of Cerne were granted the sole rights to hunt rabbit, deer, hare and other wild-life
on the island - they were also empowered to severely punish any poachers.
The existence of a small medieval fishing village and salt-producing community on the island was revealed
by excavations in 1974 as were skeletons buried in the Christian fashion (with the heads buried to the
west) which carbon-dating suggests were buried between 1030 and 1310.
TUDOR BROWNSEA
Following Henry VIII's split with Rome and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530's, it was not
only the monastic houses and their surrounding property which was consficated by the crown but also
their estates.
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Contemporary documents from henry VIII's reign show that the townsfolk of Poole were required to
maintin a permanent garrison at the fort on the island.
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Thus it was that control of Brownsea Island passed from Cerne Abbey to the crown.
Mindful of the risk of invasion from the continent, Henry sought to build a chain of fortifications
along the length of the south coast. Recognising the strategic value of the island's commanding
position at the mouth of the harbour and the
approach to the thriving port of Poole, the monarch encouraged the Port's merchants to establish and
maintain a small fort with gun platforms on the island. The fortifications on the island had fallen
into disrepair by 1562 and the mayor of Poole petitioned the Privy Council for funds to restore it as
an effective fort.
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Hatton promoted
Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the world.
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Queen Elizabeth I granted Brownsea Castle to one of her favourites,
Sir Christopher Hatton,
in 1576 (the Queen also sold
Hatton Corfe castle
on the Isle of Purbeck).
Hatton
later became Lord Chancellor (1587-91) and was also one of many members of
Parliament who controlled
the island.
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Piracy was rife during this period in history and the captains of brownsea castle are reputed to have
provided protection for some of the leading English pirates - in return for a share of their gains.
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It was about the time of Hatton that 'copperas' working commenced on this island; the pyritous nodules
which were found in the Brownsea clay were collected to manufacture the hydrated ferrous sulphate
which was used in dyeing, tanning and in the making of ink.
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The long-awaited onslaught on England eventually arrived in the shape of the Spanish Armada in August
1588 and the effectiveness of the defences on the island were very nearly to put to the test. The
Armada was engaged in the English Channel just off the Dorset coast between Portland Bill and the
Isle of Wight. In the event, the Spaniards made their way eastwards beyond the Isle of Wight where the
Armada was destroyed by a storm. With the Armada defeated, the immediate threat of invasion was over and
the importance of coastal defences diminished until Napoleon made new plans for invasion at the end
of the 18th century.
THE STUARTS UNTIL 1726
Onwership of Brownsea island changed, comparatively uneventfully, several times until the srtife
between King and Parliament erupted into Civil War (1642-51). The townsfolk of Poole threw in their
lot with Parliament and Brownsea castle was strongly fortified and garrisoned throughout the
war.
Sir Robert Clayton owned the island at the time of the Restoration in 1660. He later became
a member of parliament and a Lord Mayor of London. Five years later, Charles II and his court fled the
ravages of the plague in London and thus it was that the monarch sailed around the island on
September 15th 1665 without landing. Instead the monarch graced the town of Poole to dine with his
illigitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth - a plaque in the town commemorates the site of the meal.
In 1688, a delegation (which included Sir Robert Clayton) invited william of Orange to take the
throne from James II. The Stuarts sought the support of the French and, until peace was negotiated,
invasion again threatened waking the castle on the island to a state of vigil and readiness.
1726 ONWARDS
With lack of attention, Brownsea castle declined. In 1726 the island was bought by
William Benson
for �300. Eccentric and controversial, the sometimes styled 'Mad' Beson after a serious
mental illness in 1741, he reputed to have dabbled
in black magic. His plans to raize the derelict fortifications on the island and rebuild it as a
residence brought him into a protracted conflict with Poole and his plans only came to fruition
after the matter was referred to the Attorney General. Knowledgable in botany,
Benson planted
many different trees on the island and preserved hundreds of specimens of rare plants there.
The next owner of Brownsea Island, Sir Humphrey Sturt
who bought it 1765, continued its improvement as a
gentleman's estate. The castle was raised to four storeys and new wings added. He laid out gardens
complete with hot-houses. Sturt imported barge-loads of manure and soap-ash from Portsmouth and
London and pioneered new methods of cultivating plants - it was he who had the flanks of the island
planted with thausands of fir trees. Two freshwater lakes were created by peat-cutting and Sturt also
created a walled garden and pheasantry on the island. On his death in 1786, the island passed to
his son Charles.
Charles Sturt was the member of parliament for Bridport and an enthusiastic
yachtsman. As war with revolutionary France became more inevitable, the island guarding the harbour
again became strategically important and Sturt became the Captain of the Brownsea Island Artillery
Volunteers who manned three new gun batteries on Brownsea.
Brownsea was sold to Sir Charles Chad
for �8,000 in 1817. Chad made further extensions to the castle
and laid out several acres of pheasant preserve which became known as 'Venetia Park' later. The island's
defences were strenghtened to protect it from privateers and, to combat the smuggling which was rife
in the area at the time, a coastguard station with a ten-gun battery and a row of cottages were
completed on the island in 1842. The coastguard station, later known as 'Villano', now serves as the
National Trust cafe.
In 1845 the island was sold to the former member of parliament and diplomat
(the British Minister Plenipotentiary in Washington at the outbreak of war with the US in
1812 over
impressment),
Sir Augustus Foster for £14,000.
His retirement on the
island was not a
happy one for, following a severe illness, he committed suicide at the castle by cutting his own throat.
1852 - 1857: INDUSTRIALISATION BY THE WAUGHS
Mary Waugh
discovered the existence of high quality china clay on Brownsea Island and, thinking
they would make their fortune from porcelain manufacture, her husband ,
Colonel William Petrie Waugh
bought the island for only £13,000 in 1852. Colonel Waugh was a director of the
London and Eastern Banking Corporation and easily raised over £200,000 to finance
the couple's plans to drastically change Brownsea.
The five years which followed saw huge changes on the island with the erection of a
three-storey pottery complete with engines on the south shore, brickworks and a
horse-drawn tramway to haul the clay from the north of the island. In its hayday,
The Branksea Clay & Pottery Company employed over 200 people, many of commuting to
the island from nearby Studland
by rowboat every day. On the island itself,
Colonel Waugh built a model village for the workers which he named
'Maryland ' after his
wife.
It was during this optomistic period of investment by
Colonel Waugh
that the church of St. Mary the Virgin was built on the island in the neo-Gothic style at a cost
of £10,000 - a considerable cost at the time. Changes were
also wrought on the castle by
Waugh; the south-east front was built in the Tudor style, a gatehouse with clocktower was added, as
was the family pier with its castellated watch-towers.
Waugh also attempted to enlarge
the island by reclaiming St Andrew's Bay. A brick sea wall was first built and a windmill erected to
pump out the water behind the wall and drain the 100 acres of newly-created marshy meadows which are now
the lagoon.
The Brownsea clay proved unsuitable for the manufacture of fine china which the
Waughs had envisaged and
they were forced to turn their efforts to the production of terra cotta chimney pots and sanitary pipes.
These wares were insufficiently profitable to finance the vast expenditure which had been lavished on the
island by the Waughs and
disaster was inevitable.
The fall of the Waugh's and
their plans for the island came about in a most unusual manner when a group of businessmen arived on the
island to ask Colonel Waugh to
stand for parliament. Mary Waugh was rather deaf and wrongly surmised that the visitors had about unpaid bills
and she pleaded with them for more time to settle them. Thus prompted, the creditors of the enterprise
compared their notes and the enterpise collapsed about the
Waughs, forcing the couple to
take flight to Spain. In 1857, only five years after
Clone Waugh purchased the island,
it fell under the auctioneer's hammer as part of the bankruptcy proceedings which followed.
1857 - 1901:
Lengthy legal arguments amongst their creditors followed the bankruptcy of the
Waughs in 1857 and it was not until 1873
(the Admiralty had considered buying Brownsea Island in the 1860's to replace Dartmouth as a base
for training naval cadets)
that the island was sold to the Hon.
George Cavendish-Bentinck MP.
Although he kept the pottery works founded by Waughs going until 1887, his main efforts
were concentrated on improving agriculture on the island; he brought pedigree Guernsey and Jersey cows to
the island and planted maize, barley, and oats. His passion for art collecting filled Brownsea Castle
with Italian Renaissance sculpture some of which still decorates the
church and quay buildings. Cavendish-Bentinck died in 1891 and the island was sold to yet another
member of parliament, Major Kenneth Balfour.
On Sunday 26th January 1896, only five years after Major Kenneth Balfour had purchased the Island, Brownsea Castle was almost
completely destroyed by a fire which rumour attributed to the newly installed electricity. With no
fire engine on the island, the islanders formed a human bucket-chain to save the castle from the flames
but could not prevent the building from being gutted.
The undaunted balfour rebuilt the castle, complete with modern fire hydrants, but put the island up for sale
again in 1901.
1901 - 1925: THE VAN RAALTES
Charles and Florence Van Raalte came to Brownsea Island in 1901, their arrival heralding a period of
Edwardian splendour. The Blunderbuss, thier steam launch,
ferried titled guests from various European royal families to the Van Raaalte's elegant summer
house-parties on the island. They played golf on the course which was built to the west of the castle
or shoot the game in the island's woods.
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Until 1903, the island was known as
Branksea.
In that year, however, a number of guests of the Van Raaltes travelling from London
mistakenly alighted the train at Branksome Station instead of continuing on to Poole. This led Charles van Raalte
to change the island's name from
Branksea to the present
Brownsea to avoid future confusion.
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The island was a paradise for the Van Raalte children, Margot and Babs, who could run wild in the woods,
sailed in Poole Harbour and would often swim the 1.25 miles to the mainland. Guglielmo Marconi, the pioneer
of wireless telegraphy who conducted experiments at the Haven Hotel on Sandbanks opposite Brownsea Island,
was one of the more unusual guests of the Van Raaltes. He was a particular favourite of the Van Raalte
children to whom he gave one of his early wireless sets.
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THE BIRTH OF THE SCOUTING MOVEMENT
Major-General Robert Baden-Powell, at the invitation of
Charles Van Raalte,
chose Brownsea Island as the location of his first Scout camp which took place on the south coast of the
island in August 1907. While some of the 22 boys were the public school children of baden-Powell's
acqaintances, others were working-class boys drawn from the Boys' Brigades of Bournemouth and Poole.
The success of this first camp encouraged Baden-Powell to publish his
Scouting for Boys in the following year and from these modest begginings the
international Scouting movement mushroomed.
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Charles van Raalte died in 1908 and was buried in Brownsea Church. Florence Van Raalte continued the
same high standards at Brownsea for another seventeen years before she
sold it in 1925.
1927 - 1962: MRS MARY BONHAM-CHRISTIE
Mrs. Mary Bonham-Christie bought Brownsea Island at auction in 1927 for £125,000. Like many of the
island's previous owners, she was a touch eccentric and moved into what had previously been the agent's
house on the quay to live a very reclusive life.
She was very opposed to the blood sports which had played such an important part of the Edwardian splendour
of the Van Raaltes' tenure. Indeed, the lady was opposed to any exploitation of
animals and banned fishing on the island and allowed the farm animals to roam wild. The farm, dairy,
orchards and daffodil fields were abandoned to nature and brownsea reverted gradually to
heathland. For the majority of the now redundant estate workers, the new regime
brought a sad exodus back to the mainland but for the island's wildlife it was an immense boon - Brownsea
became an increasingly important sanctuary for wildlife amidst the rapid urbanisation of the mainland and
the consequent shrinking of natural habitats.
In July 1934 the island sanctuary was violated by fire, the same enemy which had claimed the castle
nearly four decades before. The island burned under a pall of smoke for three days and
threatened the all the main buildings at the eastern end of the island before the wind changed to save them.
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BROWNSEA DURING WORLD WAR II
In May 1940 the peace of Brownsea was invaded by the War which had started to rage in Europe when it provided
a haven for Belgian and Dutch refugees who had escaped before the Nazi onslaught on their homeland in small
boats and had been shepherded by the Royal Navy along the south coast to sanctuary in Poole Harbour.
To mislead the German bombers which sought as their would-be targets the harbour installations of Poole and
Bournemouth, flares were lit at the western end of the island. As a result, the estate cottages of the village
of Maryland which had been built by Colonel Waugh in the 1850's and had been mostly empty
since 1927 were so severely damaged by the bombers that they had to be demolished later
in the interests of safety.
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1962: THE NATIONAL TRUST TAKES OVER
Aged 98, Mrs. Mary Bonham-Christie died in april 1961 leaving her grandson no option other than to put the
island up for sale in order to meet the deat duties due to the Treasury.
Rumours that this wildlife sanctuary would go the way of its mainland neighbour with plans for luxury housing
and a marina were rife and this led to the formation of the Brownsea Island Appeal Committee by a group of
concerned locals to protect the island from such development. Leslie Miller was the Committee's chairman and
Helen Brotherton its Honorary Secretary.
The Treasury agreed to accept the island lin lieu of death duty and the National Trust agreed to take the
responsibility for it provided that an endowment of £100,000 could be raised.
There followed a nationwide
campaign to save the island and donations large and small arrived from individuals, businesses, charitable
trusts and Scouts organisations mindful of the island's part in the
history of the Scout movement. In these
efforts, the John Lewis Partnership was a particularly generous donor - it also repaired the Castle and rented
it from the National Trust as a hotel for its employees.
The money for the endowment was raised and the island saved by May of 1962 and the new Head Warden,
Alan Bromby, and his assistant, Jack Battrick, worked with large numbers of volunteers throughout the
particularly severe winter of 1962/3 to prepare the island for the arrival of visitors in the summer. Not
only were tracks cut for the visitors through the dense growths of rhododendron which had established
themselves, but firebreaks were cut to prevent a
disaster by fire like that of 1934. Amongst the audience
at the formal opening of the island were two members of Baden-Powell's historic Scout
camp here near the turn of the century.
The Dorset Wildlife Trust, then known as the Dorset Naturalists' Trust,
took over the running of its first nature reserve in 1962 when it leased the northern part of
Brownsea Island from the National Trust.
The island is probably best known for its connection with the Scouting Movement as it
was here that Colonel Baden-Powell sited his first experimental camp in 1907.
Once the property of Cerne Abbey in Dorset, the island possessed a hermit's cell. It was
in private hands with no access to the public until it passed to the National Trust which
manage it as a nature reserve. It is the last refuge of our native red squirrel, ousted
from England and Wales by its larger grey American cousin, to be found this side of the
border with Scotland.
The island's position commanding the mouth of the harbour and the navigable channel led to
the building of Brownsea Castle at its southern extremity by
Henry VIII and its strengthening during the reign of Charles I.
Brownsea Island and all upon it came into the possession of
Lieutenant-Colonel Waugh in 1848 and he spent a great deal of money developing it by
building cottages and a church. The austere castle itself did not
escape his attentions either - given a Tudor-Gothic frontage it was remodelled as a
splendid mansion. It burnt down in 1896 and was rebuilt to leave the
castle we see today.
The northern part of the island is leased to the Dorset Wildlife Trust
which runs it as a nature reserve. The Wildlife Trust's first reserve, it was acquired by them in 1962.
The island is accessible to visitors by means of a foot passenger ferry from Sandbanks.
Poole Harbour
National Trust's Browsea Island Site
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