The Needles, Hampshire : Historical writing

Descriptive gazetteer entries

These other entries in our collection of descriptive gazetteers are also about The Needles. You may be able to find further references to The Needles in the descriptive gazetteers by doing a full-text search here.

Place Type of entry Source
Needles, The group of insulated chalk rocks Bartholomew
NEEDLES (The) Imperial

Travel writing

This website includes the complete texts of books describing journeys around Britain, written between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Selecting one of the links below will take you to the first reference to The Needles within the selected text. This will not always be a description of a visit: travellers often mention places other than where they are, for example as a basis for comparison.

Traveller Section No. of Refs.
William Gilpin Monmouth to Llandovery 1

This website includes two large libraries, of historical travel writing and of entries from nineteenth century gazetteers describing places. We have text from these sources available for these places near your location:

Place Mentioned in Travel Writing Mentioned in Historical Gazetteer
Totland 0 2
Colwell 0 2
Hurst Castle 0 2
Freshwater 1 3
Afton 0 2
Keyhaven 0 2
Norton 0 2
Milford on Sea 0 2
Yarmouth 11 2
Thorley 0 2
Pennington 0 2
Efford 0 2
Lymington 13 5
Brook 0 2
Wellow 0 1
Hulverstone 0 2
Hordle 0 2
Ashley New Forest 0 2
Shalfleet 0 2
Ningwood 0 1

Names from historical writing

The following appear as names for The Needles. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name Author Source
NEEDLES John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
John Marius Wilson Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co., 1870-72).
NEEDLES THE John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
John Marius Wilson Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co., 1870-72).
THE NEEDLE CLIFFS William Gilpin Observations of the River Wye, and several parts of South Wales (London: Cadell Junior and W. Davies, 1800).
THE NEEDLES John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
John Marius Wilson Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co., 1870-72).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

  • The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
  • Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
  • References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.