From Quiet Hamlet To Famous Shipyard And Back Again

While travelling around the south coast, it is easy to miss a quaint little hamlet on the Beaulieu River called Buckler's Hard. It sits very quietly on the western bank of the river, a couple of miles down stream from the village of Beaulieu itself, and is part of the Beaulieu estate that runs to some 9,000 acres.

When first constructed in Georgian times, probably sometime about 1720 it was to be called Montagu Town, as a mark of respect to John Montagu, the Second Duke of Montagu, and the intention was that it would used as a free port to trade with the West Indies, with the import of sugar a top priority.

It was planned that it should have an eighty foot wide street suitable for festivals and markets, although as unsettled times made the country suspicious of the intentions of our international neighbours, it was readily seen that the plentiful supply of timber from the nearby New Forest would make Buckler's Hard ideal as a place to build ships.

It opened as a civilian shipyard in the 1740's with Henry Adams, a Master shipbuilder in control. The first warship built there was the 24 gun HMS Surprise. As the eighteenth century passed, the shipyard was responsible for building more and bigger warships, three of which, the Swiftsure, the Agamemnon and the Euryalus served under Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Indeed Nelson was the captain of the Agamemnon in 1793, and the announcement of his death at the Battle of Trafalgar was written on board the Euryalus.

The Adams shipbuilding dynasty had moved into the building of merchant ships and cutters, but by the 1850's the ship building business was in decline, and the future of the area and the river was to be one based on the leisure industries.

There was a return to importance during the Second World War when the area was responsible for building and repairing motor torpedo boats, as well as the construction of the floating Mulberry harbours used in the D-Day Normandy Landings. Sir Francis Chichester began and ended his single handed voyage around the world in Gypsy Moth IV at Buckler's Hard.

Since 1963, there has been an impressive museum at Buckler's Hard, set amongst the original Georgian buildings. Life size models and background soundtracks combine to tell the story of the area, and the home of Henry Adams, the Master shipbuilder is now an atmospheric inn, naturally called the Master Builder's. The then Princess Mary was a visitor during the Cowes Regatta Week of 1920.

All in all, a first class day out, plenty of fresh air and a quality history lesson.