Celebrating Hampshire Historians

Historian of the Month - January - December 2023

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 2023 - Barbara Carpenter Turner

Barbara Carpenter Turner was ...the doyenne (or doyen) of Hampshire history in the second half of the last century... For half a century she played a prominent part in almost every organization that was involved in studies of the past. When the Queen and Prince Philip paid a visit to Winchester in July 1955, it was she who drafted a paper on ‘The City and the Crown’

November 2023 - Elsie Sandell

Elsie Sandell was born in Southampton. During the Second World War she began writing articles for the Southampton Daily Echo. Much of this material subsequently formed the basis of her post-War publications, most of which were targeted at children.

October 2023 - George Minns

Rev George Minns was the founding Editor of the Hampshire Field Club's Proceedings. He was described as a ‘rather autocratic’ editor, but his contributors ‘generally came round to admit that his changes were for the better’. In maintaining the expected standards of scholarship and accuracy ‘he was much helped by his devoted daughter’.

September 2023 - John Horrocks

John Horrocks had a varied career before joining the staff of University College, Southampton in 1912 as one of the two  history lecturers based in the Department of Law.   An active member of the Southampton Record Society he also had  extensive interests ranging from aspects of political thought to the work of the naturalist W H. Hudson and the life and times of Jane Austen. 

August 2023 - William Ravenscroft

William Ravenscroft trained as an architect, becoming FRIBA in 1892, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries two years later. He moved to Milford-on-Sea in 1908 and was the first secretary of the Milford-on-Sea (Historical) Record Society which was founded in 1909.

July 2023 - Austin Whitaker

Austin Whitaker - as Winchester City Archivist, from 1966 to 1983, built up an unrivalled knowledge of the city’s records and supervised their transfer to the County Record Office in 1975.

June 2023 - Robert and Dorothy Jowitt

Robert and Dorothy Jowitt were long-standing HFC members who took a very active part in the life of the Society; they also produced a range of guides on Hampshire and the south-east.

May 2023 - Harry Gidden

The Marlands site of King Edward VI School, Southampton, 1896-1938

Harry Gidden was a prodigious contributor to the first Southampton Records Series.

April 2023 - Leslie Grinsell

Diagram of Popham Beacons from L V Grinsell's article in Proceedings Vol 14, Part 2 1939

Leslie Grinsell was raised largely in Brighton, developing an early interest in archaeology through visits to Brighton Museum ... he came to focus his attention on barrows, realising that these were among the least well understood prehistoric monuments in the British landscape ... that could be studied in depth by an enthusiastic amateur.

March 2023 - Isobel Sanderson

Isobel Sanderson was the first woman to gain a PhD in Science at Reading University. After a teaching career she retired to a cottage in Abbotstone and spent the last twenty years of her life studying local history.

February 2023 - LTC (Tom) Rolt

Tom Rolt was a leading light in the formation of the Inland Waterways Association and the canal preservation movement. He wrote a history of the Waterloo Ironworks, Clatford near Andover.

January 2023 - Thomas Stopher

Thomas Stopher was an architect and surveyor, a prominent municipal leader, Freeman of Winchester, and antiquarian. He left a manuscript ‘History of Winchester Streets’, in which he recorded details of buildings and contemporary events – and gossip! – on central Winchester, 1898-1925. 

Historians of the Month for January-December 2024

Follow the above link to find out who was chosen as 'Historian of the Month' in 2024.

Historians of the Month for April-December 2022

Follow the above link to find out who was chosen as 'Historian of the Month' in 2022; the first ever 'HoM' - Dr. Joseph Stevens - was posted in April 2022.