You may have noticed that the tower of St Peter’s Church is adorned around with a series of carvings of a variety of figures, some human, some animal. They are characters from the medieval legend of Sir Bevis of Hampton – i.e. of Southampton. Bevois Valley, south of Portswood, is named after him. The legend is long and complicated and if you want to know the details you can find them at https://historicsouthampton.co.uk/bevis/

 Meanwhile, it is not too difficult to match up the characters in the legend with the figures on the tower.

For a start, there’s Sir Bevis himself :   

And his horse Arondel :  

And the twins :  

and the boar :      and the lion :  

However, one of the figures is commonly said to be a character not from the Legend of Sir Bevis but rather from the local Curdridge ledgend of Kitty Knocks :

   This story tells of a young woman who drowned one night on Kitnocks Hill while trying to elope. I have written about this affair previously in the Parish News (see: https://bundellbros.co.uk/kevansmiscellany/category/kitnocks-kitty-nocks-curdridge-witch). I have even written a song about it, which you can listen to at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyeD8Jf4KSU

The question is, who was this character actually intended to be when they built the tower ? Was it meant to be Kitty Nocks, or was it meant to be another character from the Sir Bevis legend – Princess Josian, for example, Sir Bevis’s girlfriend ? In order to try and settle the matter, I headed off to the Hampshire Records Office in Winchester.

I found the papers – letters, documents, plans – relating to the building of St Peter’s Church in 1887. Unfortunately they had nothing to say about the tower, or its inhabitants.

It turns out that the tower was built some seven years later than the church itself – and there are no papers at all in the Records Office relating to the tower.

The mystery remains then. Is it Kitty Knocks, or is it not ?

Kevan Bundell – www.bundellbros.co.uk