The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.48 No.3 | December 2021

Member’s article

on the 26th May 1850 at Winchester College where his father Frederick, also a clergyman, was the second master. Educated at New College, Oxford, he had been a curate at Newton Ferrers in Devon for two years before

The Canal, Crookham c1894 – OS Map reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.

becoming the incumbent at Christ Church, Crookham in 1875. Unlike Farnborough with its medieval parish church, Crookham had been a tything within the parish of Crondall and it was not until 1840 that Christ Church was built on Crookham Common to serve Crookham and the neighbouring tything of Ewshot. Though Wickham left the post in 1883, the living was to remain in the family. From 1883 until 1925 the incumbent was his younger brother the Reverend Wilfred WICKHAM . Known as ‘Parson Bill’ he became the first vicar of the parish when the living

Canal Cottage, Chequers Bridge (Copyright Carol Gomm 2020)

became a vicarage in 1890. While Rosa was at Crookham in 1881, her sister Kate was a housemaid to the Reverend Thomas ROBINSON , a curate of Crookham cum Ewshot at Ewshot Hurst. While Christ Church had been built in 1840 on the heath between

Crookham and Ewshot to serve both communities, in 1873 a second church called St. Mary’s was built to serve a growing population at “Ewshot Street” which in 1886 became the separate ecclesiastical parish of Ewshot. In 1891 Kate was a housemaid at the Rectory in West Coker, Somerset and married John LANG here in 1893. John was a carpenter from Bradford

Church Crookham c1894 – OS Map reproduced by the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Abbas in Dorset, the parish where Gordon Bolles Wickham, previously the incumbent of Crookham in 1881, was the Vicar from 1886 until his death. Perhaps Kate, like her sister Rosa, had been working for the Reverend Gordon Wickham and had moved to Bradford

118