The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.2 | Sept 2023

Local Group Programmes

1940 and his widow Lady Cooper insisted on remaining in a part of the house. She finally left in 1942. As part of the lease there was a detailed description of the house and its contents which will be of use to historians. Many of the estate workers transferred to Vickers Supermarine. Dave provided details of a long list of aircraft designed at Hursley such as Sea Otter, Seafire, Seagull, Swift and Scimitar. Many of the prototypes were built at Hursley Park. Vickers Supermarine left the site in the 1950s and IBM bought Hursley Park in 1958. Dave was inundated with questions and comments at the end. (July) Hampshire Memorials – Tony Cross As there are so many memorials in Hampshire, Tony produced a list of 10 in a roughly chronological order and spread over the county. Some of us knew about some but not all. He started with the Mayflower memorial near to Southampton’s Town Quay and had photographed it whilst awaiting the Isle of Wight ferry. He lamented that events arranged for the 400th anniversary of the voyage in 1620 that were lost in the pandemic. In Cheriton Lane, Alresford, there is a memorial for the English Civil War battle of Cheriton (March 1644). In Winchester near West Gate there is a monument erected by the Society of Natives to commemorate 100 years since the plague of 1666. The Society was originally set up to help survivors of the plague. Farley Mount is a folly erected on a high point west of Winchester for a horse that, having survived a fall in a chalk pit, went on to win the 1734 Hunters Plate. The horse was named “Beware of the Chalk Pit”. There is a memorial stone at Hambledon to record the world’s first cricket club and nearby there is the “Bat and Ball” pub. In Houndwell Park in Southampton there is a monument to William Chamberlayne who endowed Southampton with street lighting. He was an MP for Christchurch and latterly for Southampton. Sir Harry Burrard Neale (Royal Navy and local MP) also endowed street lighting to his constituency of Lymington. His memorial is in St Thomas’ Church, Lymington. A local character in the New Forest, Harry Mills, was known as the Snake Catcher of Brockenhurst. His gravestone is in St Nicholas’ churchyard. (Philip) Edward Thomas (1878 1917), poet and natural history writer, has a sarsen stone monument on the hill above Steep, a memorial in Steep church and appears on the village War memorial. The Sandham Memorial Chapel, Burghclere, was built in the 1920s in memory of Henry Willoughby Sandham who died in World War 1. It contains paintings by Stanley Spencer based on his own experiences in that war. It is a National Trust property. Tony finished with two memorials to early aviators. The first was Thomas Sopwith, who designed the Sopwith Camel fighter aircraft used in World War 1 and who went on with Harry Hawker to form the Hawker Aircraft company. Sopwith’s gravestone is in Little Somborne churchyard. Geoffrey de Haviland’s company built the Mosquito and Comet aircraft. His first flight in 1910 in his own built aircraft at Seven Barrows, Litchfield, has a memorial plaque close to the A34 just south of Beacon Hill.

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