Occasional Magazine Vol.4 No.1 (June 1927)

Arnewood Tower by T. A. Wylie. Between 1879 and 1885 Arnewood Tower in Hordle was built to the design of Andrew Thomas Turton Peterson (1813-1906). Qualifying as a barrister, Peterson spent much of his career in India, retiring early to England a wealthy man and settling in Hordle in 1868. His Tower, probably intended as a mausoleum, was built entirely of concrete by novel methods, a campanile of 13 storeys connected by internal spiral staircase, surmounted by a smaller two-storeyed observatory, and the whole rising to 218 feet. From the 1870s Peterson became a convinced Spiritualist and published a book of the communications, drawings and paintings he believed he had received from sundry ancient Greek, Roman and Renaissance spirit controls. The present paper includes three photographs: Peterson, his Tower, and his memorial tablet (of genealogical interest) in Sway Parish Church.