Celebrating Hampshire Historians

Historian of the Month - April - December 2022

As a part of our Celebrating Hampshire’s Historians project, we feature a Historian of the Month. They have been chosen to illustrate the breadth of topics and approaches that we have discovered in building the profiles. The aim is to be as representative as possible and the list includes professional and amateur historians and archaeologists, antiquarians and others, with a cut-off date of 2000. The first profile was posted in April 2022. For any queries, please contact: celebrating@hantsfieldclub.org.uk.

December 2022 - Rosalind Hill

Rosalind Hill was a medieval historian who spent nearly forty years teaching medieval history at Westfield College, University of London.  Her Hampshire connection was through the family home at ‘Green Place’, Stockbridge.  In 1944, she followed her father and brother as Lord of the Manor, participating in the ancient Courts Baron and Leet and researching the origins and fortunes of both manor and borough. 

November 2022 - Heywood Sumner

Heywood Sumner, though he read law,never went into practice. Instead, he pursued his interests in drawing and design and became a disciple of William Morris and a follower of the Arts and Crafts movement. He developed an artistic style which was both distinctive and fresh and was to characterise all his later published works on the New Forest and surrounding areas.

October 2022 - Rev. William Bingley

George Rose M.P. commissioned the Rev William Bingley to write the county history of Hampshire that Richard Warner had failed to complete and supplied him with Warner’s notes. Bingley was an assiduous researchers who accumulated 6000 pages of notes and an archive of 144 separate items.

September 2022 - C F C (Christopher) Hawkes

Christopher Hawkes describes the Quarley Hill excavations to members of the Hampshire Field Club; September 13, 1938.

Christopher Hawkes was one of the ‘golden generation’ of prehistoric archaeologists responsible, in the mid-20th century, for the professionalisation of the teaching of archaeology in Britain.  His early career involved a campaign of hillfort excavations in Hampshire and publication of many influential papers covering chronology, folk movement, cultural attributes and art.  A Wykehamist, he was Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford from 1946-1972.

August 2022 - Arthur Francis Leach

Arthur Leach wrote widely on the history of education. He was particularly known for his work on medieval schools and for the school histories he contributed to the Victoria County History, Hampshire. In 1899, he also published A History of Winchester College, his old school. The photo, above, shows Leach's house at Winchester College in 1869, when he was at the school, but the names of the individuals are unknown.

July 2022 - Charlotte Mary Yonge

Charlotte Yonge lived at Otterbourne (outside Winchester) all her life but her name was known throughout the United Kingdom, the British Empire, the USA and (via translations of her books) in Europe too. Her best-selling novels were loved by millions. She also wrote many non-fiction works: history, biography, natural history, and folklore; and for over forty years she edited a periodical for girls, The Monthly Packet.

June 2022 - Arthur Temple Patterson

Between 1949 and 1968 Temple Patterson pursued his academic career in the History Department of Southampton University. He was appointed a Reader in Regional History in 1960 and Professor in 1967. While on the staff of the University he published a three part, well regarded, history of Southampton and a centenary volume of the history of the University. When he died in 1983 he was characterised as the ‘biographer of a city’ (Southern Evening Echo 24/10/1983), while Edwin Course wrote that ‘his death … [was] a [great] loss to Hampshire’ (HFC Newsletter, Vol 1. 1984).

Temple Patterson is the subject of a University of Southampton Special Collections blog.

May 2022 - Amy Audrey Locke

Audrey Locke is an example of an accomplished female historian who more than a hundred years ago carried out ground-breaking work on the Victoria County History of Hampshire. The end of the 19th century marked a turning point in the education of women, when for the first time they could be admitted to universities and, except for Oxford and Cambridge, awarded degrees. Audrey was one of those who grasped the opportunity with both hands. Born in 1881 in a relatively humble setting - the daughter of the Head Porter at Winchester College - she won the first Charlotte Yonge Scholarship from Winchester High School (now the public school, St Swithun’s) to Somerville College, Oxford. Here she achieved a 2.1 honours result in exams and went on to work on the Victoria County History, using the Public Record Office and carrying out field research in Hampshire. She was so highly regarded that she was commissioned to write two major family histories, The Seymour Family: History and Romance (1911) and The Hanbury Family (2 volumes, 1916).

April 2022 - Dr. Joseph Stevens

Our first Historian of the Month (April 2022) was Doctor Joseph Stevens (1818-1899). Stevens combined a busy medical practice and activities in public health with a range of publications on both history and archaeology, based on meticulously recorded research. If, after reading his profile you want to know more, than there is also a Hampshire Paper on his life and achievements.