Although for many years well-known as a school, the longer history of the handsome Greek Revival house now called Rookesbury Park at Wickham is only now being told. As Huguenots, the first members of the Garnier family to come to England proved themselves as diligent professional apothecaries. In the eighteenth century they acquired through marriage a house and fields at Wickham, buying remarkable paintings and creating landscape gardens in the latest mode. Due to the two George Garniers, father and son, their property holdings expanded into a considerable estate.

In the early nineteenth century the Revd William Garnier built the great Greek Revival house at Rookesbury, now still in family hands. Meanwhile his brother the Very Revd Thomas Garnier cut a dash as Dean of Winchester and celebrated gardener.

Specially written for the county, this Hampshire Paper seeks to illustrate with local emphasis the history of the Hampshire Garniers, later Carpenter-Garnier, up to the present day. It is a perfect Georgian tale of hard work and upward mobility; of the re-acquisition of the trappings of gentility, combined with charity, duty and religion; and of a close and united family.