Celebrating Hampshire Historians

Hagen, Marianna Sophia

1852 – 26 February 1932

Born in Echunga, in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia, in 1852 – only three years after the town had been founded – by 1861 she was living as a young girl in Alresford with her parents, Jacob and Mary. Jacob was a wealthy businessman who had come to England in 1853 after 14 years in Australia, according to the Hampshire Gardens Trust. The family moved to Ropley in 1859, to New House, a Tudor mansion lived in at one time by John Duthy, author of Sketches of Hampshire (1839), and thereafter called Ropley House.

Marianna never married, but devoted her life to the village in many ways, adding in 1883 a Coffee Room to the house, Meadowside, Church Street, to which she had moved after the death of her parents. This is still is use as a village meeting room. She was a devoted temperance campaigner and provided an ‘iron and timber mission hut’ during the building of the Watercress Line, to serve navies.

Sources

https://www.familysearch.org

http://research.hgt.org.uk/item/ropley-house/

Portrait

Contribution to county’s history

In her final years she wrote Annals of Old Ropley (1929), a slim volume which recorded all she knew about the village. There is much on the church, with records of such things as a memorial inscription to a button seller who just happened to die on the road at Ropley, notes on the family home of William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury (1828-1848), notes kept by local people, including ‘Annals of a Village Schoolmaster’ by the vicar’s wife, Mrs Samuel Maddock, and ‘The Women of the Hurdles’ by her husband. There is also a great deal of authentic detail, rather than legend, on the smuggling that Ropley people engaged in.  

Relevant published works

• Hagen, M S, (1929) Annals of Old Ropley

Critical Comments

She had no pretensions to scholarship, but by her efforts conserved details that might otherwise have been lost. Therefore, if possible, her work should be checked against other sources.

Other Comments

The Ropley Society is an active group with access to a great deal of material on their community.

Contributor

Barry Shurlock, 19 October 2021, with the help of Carole Oldham

Key Words

Ropley, Old Ropley, temperance

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