Celebrating Hampshire Historians

Pennell, Rosalie Frances

16.12.1876 - 24.08.1966

Born at Dawlish in Devon, Pennell lived in many other parts of country, including Winchester, and travelled widely. However, she appears to have retained an affinity with the county of her birth where her death was registered. At the time of the 1901 Census she was living with her parents and sister at Dalkeith, Hyde Park Road, Winchester. By 1911 they had moved to Exeter with the census return recording her father as a ‘retired merchant’. Indeed, the family appears to have been relatively well off financially and able to employ servants.

Rosalie never married and was a committed and devout churchwoman with a particular interest in the religious education of children. During the interwar years, an Ancestry source indicates that she ‘dedicated herself to the role of missionary with the Anglican Church ... and educated children in Canada & Australia.’ This is confirmed by a press report of a ‘lantern lecture’, entitled, “In Western Canada with a Sunday School Caravan”, which she gave in February 1931 to the St Mary’s Guild of Youth, Silverton’ in Devon (Western Times, 27 February 1931, p.12); as well as by the titles of two of her books:

• Teaching. A simple help for Sunday School Teachers, etc (published 1925) and
• God-Begot. A little book of teaching for confirmation (1936).

While from 1947 there is a report of her being one of speakers at an event organized by the Exeter Church Teachers’ Association (Western Times, 9 May 1947, p.5).

Sources

• Hampshire Chronicle, 25 September 1909, p.4.

• Ancestry

Portrait.

Hyde Abbey Gatehouse (Wikipedia Commons)

Contribution to county’s history

Although Pennell’s contribution to the history of Hampshire is a relatively modest one, she deserves to be celebrated for her in-depth and ground breaking study of the Abbey and parish of Hyde. As pointed out in a Hampshire Chronicle review of her book: ‘Both the Abbey and parish ... have found a competent chronicler and historian ... Not only is the history exhaustive and obtained from MSS, which are abundant, but the illustrations, copied from old plates and plans, are peculiarly interesting’. The work contains chapters on the suppression of Hyde Abbey, recusants, the poor relief books and Hyde Abbey School, plus a chronological table of events and three appendices providing details of the rents of farms and messuages, charities and a list of vicars. There is also an index.

Relevant published works

• The Parish of Hyde Winchester Past and Present (H M Gilbert & Son & James G Commin: Winchester & Exeter, 1909)

Critical Comments

Other Comments

In the review mentioned above, reference is made to Pennell’s thoroughness, with her work delighting ‘an even larger circle of readers than those in the parish and in Winchester. We congratulate her on this addition to Hampshire history, and hope it may stimulate others to enter on the same labour.’ However, she was relatively modest about her work describing it as ‘a very imperfect story of Hyde parish’. Nonetheless, she expressed the hope that it might ‘yield to the reader some of the pleasure and interest that has been found in gathering it together.’ Although as Pennell points out: ‘The history of Hyde Parish contains no very striking incidents, nor any very prominent characters ... to those who know the parish ... it is not without interest to learn something of the past story ... and to realize ... how the events with which they are so familiar in history, affected their little parish and Church’ (p.86)).

Contributor

Roger Ottewill (14 April 2024)

Key Words

Hyde Abbey, Winchester, Parish of Hyde

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