A picture of Southampton 900 years ago

Halfway along this street is the small Chapel of St Julien, founded in 1185 as the chapel for God’s House Hospital by Gervaise de Hampton, a wealthy local man.

In 1567, Elizabeth I gave the French-speaking refugee protestant community in Southampton permission to use this chapel as their church in which to worship in their own language but in accordance with the English Book of Common Prayer.

The early congregation was composed mainly of worshippers from the Flemish towns of Dieppe and Valenciennes. They were known as Walloons and were escaping religious persecution by the Spanish.

Also attending the church were several French speakers from Guernsey and Jersey, many of whom were traders operating between the Channel Islands and Southampton.

Don't miss out: Get our weekly heritage and nostalgia newsletter

Records show that these trading links continued into the reign of James I as a great many of the traders in Southampton at the time of the sailing of the Mayflower from Southampton in 1620 were Channel Islanders.

Today there are many local families who can trace their roots back to Channel Island ancestry.

There is however another Channel Islander, a Jersey man known as Maistre or Master Wace, who visited Southampton about 900 years ago on business or research and as a consequence made an important contribution to what we know about life in Southampton at that time.

Maistre Wace was a Norman poet born on Jersey around 1100 and educated at Caen and Paris.

Under the patronage of Henry II, he wrote his narrative poem Roman de Brut, a history of Britain based on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britania, completing it in 1155.

He then presented a copy to Henry II’s wife Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Henry II also commissioned Maistre Wace to write a history of the Dukes of Normandy known as Roman de Rou, a large part of which is devoted to William the Conqueror and the Norman Conquest.

What is of interest to us is Maistre Wace’s description of the port of Southampton contained in Roman de Brut in which King Arthur is readying his fleet for the invasion of Gaul.

No doubt his description would have been based on his visit in about 1135, with the embarkation scene rich in remembered detail.

Wace’s description has been translated many times with translators commenting on its richness of language and imagery.

This is part of Wace’s description of port activity in Southampton 900 years ago from a translation by Glowka:

To Southampton he came for passage;

The ships were brought into that place

And there the companies were joined.

You would have seen ships being fixed;

Ships being tied; ships being anchored;

Ships being dried; ships being floated;

Ships being pegged; ships being nailed;

Cords being stretched; masts being fitted;

Gangplanks set out; ships being loaded;

Helmets, shields and hauberks carried;

Lances prepared and horses pulled;

Knights and servants going in;

Many went about saluting

Those who stayed and those who left.

After the ships had all been filled

And they had suitable tide and wind,

Then you’d have seen the anchors lifted,

The chains drawn up; the shrouds rolled up;

Mariners leaving on their ships.

Sails and masts being deployed.

Wace then continues in great detail describing the sailing of the ships as they leave Southampton.

In his excellent book “The White Ship” about the loss at sea of William the favoured eldest son of Henry I, Charles Spencer uses Wace’s verse to describe activities in Southampton as the King awaits the arrival of William from France not knowing he has drowned.

Finally there are few lines in Wace’s description that summarise the lives of those who build and sail ships which should resonate with the people of Southampton:

Very bold, very gallant was he

Who first built a ship

And set sail down wind,

Seeking a country he didn’t see

And a shore he didn’t know.

• Godfrey Collyer is a tour guide with SeeSouthampton.co.uk