Plunket Greene was born in Dublin, son of Richard Jonas Greene, barrister, and his wife Louisa Lillias (neé Plunket) a writer of children’s stories. He was educated at Clifton College, Bristol and set aside a career in law on account of a severe rugby football injury. With his evident musicality, however, and the development of…

E H Lane Poole was from a distinguished Oxford family. His father, Professor Reginald Lane Poole (1857–1939) was a historian and Keeper of the Archives at Oxford University, while his brother Austin (1889–1963) was a medievalist, and President of St John’s College.

As Porter explains at the begining of one of his autobiographical publications ‘the Porter family had been settled in Rugeley, in Staffordshire, more than a hundred years’ before he was born there. Leaving school in 1852, his father, a tailor, was keen for John to enter the legal profession. However, his son had other ideas…

Prideaux-Brune was Rector of Rowner (Gosport) from 1884 to 1919. Both branches of his family had a long pedigree, the Prideauxs in Cornwall, where he was born, and the Brunes in Hampshire.  The first Brunes appear in the 1270s, and the estate and advowson of Rowner continued in their hands through the following centuries.

W F Rankine was a Scot who spent much of his time in Surrey.  He was at school in Dorking, and taught for many years at Badshot Lea, near Farnham. His interests were wide, covering birds, wild plants, fossils and archaeological remains, and he had ‘the rare gift of instructing and enthusing others’ in these…

The transformation of the inland village of Milford to an up-market seaside resort (incorporating parts of Hordle parish) left an architectural heritage of houses designed by William Ravenscroft. Although many of these primarily Edwardian properties have now fallen victim to the bulldozer and developer, many still remain, including Ravenscroft’s own residence, Briantcroft, in Barnes Lane.

A Benedictine monk of St Swithun’s Priory, Winchester, he is included as an example of one the medieval chroniclers whose works happen to have survived. His proper place is amongst those like Leland and Campden who recorded events and places of their age. He was writing at a time when Winchester was at the centre…

Kenneth Roberts inherited a passionate interest in archaeology and local history from his father Betton. Together they would walk miles in search of earthworks and in visiting churches, and young Kenneth compiled four volumes of notes and sketches recording these encounters. His survey of the cross-dykes at Leydene secured his election to the Hampshire Field…

Rolt was an engineer at heart but his complex character, as well as being instrumental in establishing the canal and railway preservation movements, also found joy in ‘the beauties of the English countryside’.  He was aware of the rapid changes taking place in post-war Britain and the dangers inherent in the economic concept of unlimited…

J Horace Round was one of the pre-eminent historians of his time, a genealogist so expert in the convolutions of the British peerage that he was appointed Honorary Historical Advisor to the Crown.  Another specialism was Domesday Book, and his translation and discussion of the Essex entries was widely regarded as a tour de force of…