John Keble's Parishes: A History of Hursley and Otterbourne

Polecats and martens only exist in the old rating book, but weasels and stoats remain, as well as a profusion of their prey—hares and rabbits. Squirrels haunt the trees, and ott...

IN one of his prose writings Mr. Keble speaks of the faithful shepherd going on his way though storms may be raging in the atmosphere; and such might be a description of his own...

AS it was just at this time that the customs of the manor of Merdon were revised, this seems to be the fittest place for giving Mr. Marsh’s summary of them.

BEFORE entirely quitting the parish, a few of the older words and forms of expression may be recorded, chiefly as remembered from the older generation, for “the schoolmaster” an...

To begin at the west, where the border is on Romsey, Michelmersh and Farley, the Romsey road, formerly the direct road from Winchester to Salisbury, running through it, beside A...

Sir William was born on the 17th of May 1801, the son of the Rev. William Heathcote, Rector of Worting, Hants, and Prebendary of the Cathedral of Winchester, second son of Sir W...

AFTER his dispute with the haymakers, Sir Thomas Clarke sold Merdon to William Brock, a lawyer, from whom it passed to John Arundel, and then to Sir Nathanael Napier, whose son,...

IT was considered in the Middle Ages that tithes might be applied to any church purpose, and were not the exclusive right of the actual parish priest, provided he obtained a suf...

THE South Downs of England descend at about eight miles from the sea into beds of clay, diversified by gravel and sand, and with an upper deposit of peaty, boggy soil, all havin...

THE rectorial tithe of Hursley having been given to St. Elizabeth’s College, and apparently some rights over Merdon, the Chancellor Wriothesley obtained that, on the confiscatio...

THOSE forebodings of Mr. Keble’s mercifully never were realised; many more years were granted in which Hursley saw the Church and the secular power working together in an almost...

THE Golden Age of Hursley did not deduce all its honour from the manor house. The vicarage was perhaps the true centre of the light which the Park reflected, or rather both knew...

GREAT changes began at the Restoration. Robert Maunder became vicar of Hursley in 1660, on whose presentation is unknown; but that he or his curate were scholars is probable, si...

THOMAS DUMMER, Esquire, who in 1765 succeeded his father in the possession of Cranbury, was a man to whom some evil genius whispered, “Have a taste,” for in 1770 he actually pur...

IN the October of 1853, the Rev. Robert F. Wilson having resigned the curacy of Ampfield, he was replaced by the Rev. John Frewen Moor, who on 12th January of the next year beca...

The Heathcotes belonged to a family of gentle blood in Derbyshire. Gilbert Heathcote, one of the sons, was an Alderman at Chesterfield, and was the common ancestor of the Rutlan...

JOHN KEBLE, from the Pencil Drawing by John _Frontispiece_ Bacon, jun., (1851), by permission of the Rev. J. B. Medley of Tyntesfield MERDON CASTLE AND WELL, HURSLEY PARK _To fa...