John Marsh was born in Adderbury, Oxfordshire, the son of George Marsh, a master carpenter, and his wife Catherine. It is unknown how or when he arrived in Hursley, Hampshire a distance of some 80 miles from his home. Nor do we know much about his education – he does not appear to have attended…

F.T. Madge, or Canon Madge, as he was usually known later in life, was in a line of Cathedral Librarians that recognized the historical importance of its holdings in the late 19th century. He was the son of Thomas Hellier Madge, rector of Kettering, Northants, whom he followed into the church, He was ordained priest…

Sir Frederic Madden was born at Portsmouth and was keeper of manuscripts at the British Museum from 1837 to 1866. He was the supreme palaeographer of nineteenth-century  England and a researcher and editor of extraordinary energy and quality. He tackled the most arduous and difficult projects and brought them to fulfilment.

Rose Hamilton Moutray Read was the eldest child of Edith and Lt Col John Moutray Read of the 4th Cheshire Regiment. Her brother, Anketell (b 1885) was killed in France in September 1915, while engaged in a rescue mission for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross. This was a strikingly parallel experience to Dorothy…

He came from a family of Winchester brewers and as the eldest son had to the chance to enter the business, but did not take to it and handed the opening over to his brother William (who played a part in saving the city’s muniments by keeping them in a malthouse, HRO, 21M85W/10/1921). In an…

Mudie was a Scot, born in Angus. He was largely self-taught. In sequence he was a weaver, soldier, teacher and then a journalist. He became a reporter for the Morning Chronicle and editor of the Sunday Times. In 1838 he moved to Winchester and was commissioned to write his Illustrated History of Hampshire.  Altogether he…

Michael O’Malley was born in Edinburgh to Patrick and Rachel O’Malley.  During the Second World War he enlisted in 1944 and served as a sergeant in Burma.  He was subsequently awarded the Burma Star.  After the war he worked for the Ordnance Survey in the UK and was relocated to Perth, Western Australia from 1964-1968. …

One of the greatest British soldiers of the 20th century, Field Marshal Montgomery lived for nearly thirty years at Isington Mill, near Binsted. In the immediate post-war years, he restored what was a dilapidated shell into a luxury home surrounded by lawns and gardens and, following a state funeral, he was buried at the Church…

The son of a Dutch merchant who had settled in London, Möens went into the Stock Exchange at a young age, but soon ‘retired’ as a man of means to Boldre, attracted by the yachting at Lymington. He became an antiquarian with a special interest in Flemish genealogy and Huguenot history, but also involved himself…

Born in Camberwell, at the time of the 1911 census Edgar Mitchell was a ‘boarder’ in Croydon and his occupation was that of ‘newspaper reporter’. He moved to Southampton in 1913 to take up a post with the Southern Daily Echo, initially as a sub-editor, theatre critic and leader writer. In due course, under the…