Sway

Sway
Hampshire
Sway: Forest Heath Hotel
Location
Grid reference:	SZ282977
Location:	50°46’43"N, 1°36’4"W
Data
Population:	3,448  (2011)
Post town:	Lymington
Postcode:	SO41
Dialling code:	01590
Local Government
Council:	New Forest
Parliamentary constituency:	New Forest East

Sway is a village in Hampshire, within the New Forest in the south-west of the county, to the west of Boldre, of which it was once a hamlet, but while Boldre has remained a tiny, scattered place, Sway is on the railway, with its own station. and has grown to become a substantial village.

The village has shops and pubs, and a railway station on the South West Main Line from Weymouth and Bournemouth to Southampton Central and London Waterloo. Here too stands Sway Tower, a concrete folly of 218 feet, built in the 19th century.

Sway is on the southern edge of the woodland and heathland of the New Forest. Much of Frederick Marryat's novel The Children of the New Forest is set in the countryside surrounding Sway.

The name of the village appears to be from the Old English "Sweg-ea" to means 'noisy river', or swige eaa, meaning 'silent stream', which may refer to the Avon Water. The village appears in the Domesday Book as Suei, and as Sweia in the 13th century.

History

Stone Age implements have been found here and Bronze Age barrows containing funerary urns.

Sway is listed four times in the Domesday Book of 1086. Two hides were held from Roger de Montgomerie, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury by Fulcoin and Nigel respectively. A certain Edmund at the same date was holding one hide in Sway which Algar had held from the King in the days of Edward the Confessor. Romsey Abbey also held one hide in Sway.

At some time before 1150 Hugh de Witteville gave "his whole land of Sway with its men and one mill" to Quarr Abbey, and about the same date Ralph Fulcher donated land at Sway to the same abbey. In the 13th century Christchurch Priory also gained land in Sway, which increased in the 14th century by the grant of land in Sway from John, vicar of Christchurch. Free warren in Sway was granted to the priory in 1384. Romsey Abbey also held land in Sway, afterwards known as the manor of Sway Romsey or South Sway. The Abbess of Romsey was holding land in Sway together with the Abbot of Quarr and the Prior of Christchurch in 1316.

In 1543, at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, the lands possessed by Quarr and Christchurch were granted to Sir John Williams and others, by whom it was subsequently conveyed to John Mill, the purchaser and grantee of much monastic property in the neighbourhood. The combined lands became known as the manor of Sway Quarr. The manor of Sway Romsey (South Sway) remained separate but were also granted at the Dissolution to Sir John Williams and henceforth had the same owners as Sway Quarr. The estate then followed the descent of Battramsley manor until 1627, when it was sold by George Wroughton to John Button of Buckland Lymington, and in 1670 he or his son appeared before the justice seat held at Lyndhurst as the lord of the manor of Sway. Before the end of the 17th century, however, it had passed to Edmund Dummer of Swaythling. It then passed by inheritance into the Bond family who held the estate down to the 19th century.

St Luke's Church

One other Domesday Book manor within the parish of Sway is known as Arnewood, which before 1066 had been held by Siward from Earl Tostig. The estate seems to have belong to Christchurch Manor in the 13th and 14th centuries, although one small part of it was held differently and later became joined to the nearby manor of @Ashley to become "Ashley Arnewood". In 1384 the Earl of Salisbury and lord of Christchurch sold the manor of Arnewood to Thomas Street. The manor passed through various hands in the following centuries, but by the 19th century it belonged, like the other manors of Sway, to the Bond family.

St Luke's Church was built in 1839. Its ecclesiastical parish of Sway was created in 1841.

The railway came to Sway in 1888, when Sway Station was built.

In the village was Arnewood House (now destroyed by fire) which was the home of the Children of the New Forest in Captain Marryat's book. Marryat also used the surrounding countryside as the setting for the book.

In Second World War, an Emergency Landing Ground for aircraft opened in August 1940, when farmland was levelled and cleared just south of the village. It was used by aircraft based at RAF Christchurch for overnight stays to protect them from German attack at Christchurch. The airstrip was also intended to be a decoy airfield intended to trick the Luftwaffe into bombing it, this happened on several occasions. In October 1941, the site was closed and returned to farmland.

Sway Tower

About the village

Sway has shops, two pubs, a church, a village hall and a number of restaurants and hotels. There is also a Church of England primary school.

The northern part of the parish contains areas of woodland, heathland, acid grassland, scrub and valley bog, supporting a richness and diversity of wildlife.

Sway Tower, also known as "Peterson's Folly" and "Peterson's Tower" is the village's main landmark. It is a folly which stands 218 feet tall at the southern entrance to the village. The tower is a is Grade II listed. It was built by Andrew Thomas Turton Peterson, and eccentric Yorkshireman who owned an estate here. It is constructed entirely out of concrete made with Portland cement: the first major building in Britain to be built entirely from concrete, and still the tallest non-reinforced concrete structure in the world. It served to publicise the superiority of Portland cement, even then not fully accepted.

Society and sport

• Archery: Sway Bowmen
• Cricket: Sway Cricket Club,
• Fencing: Sway Fencing Club
• Football:
  • Sway F.C.
  • Sway Junior Football Club
• Tennis: Sway Tennis Club

There is a thriving community choir ‘Sing Sway’ and a gardening club.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Sway)

• Sway Parish Council
• Sway Village Portal
• Sway Tower, BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight