William was the fifth of six children of merchant Henry Page and his wife Georgina. Born in Paddington, his education at private schools was cut short by the death of his father in 1875. Subsequently articled to an engineer, between c.1881 and 1884 he was employed in this capacity by the Government of Queensland in…

Pannell was born in Plymouth. His father was a ‘cycle agent and maker’, which may have stimulated his son’s interest in engineering. Pannell began his career in this sphere in 1920 with a firm in Slough and two year’s later joined the Great Western Railway’s Civil Engineering Department, gaining experience of the operation of docks…

Edmund Parsons was, for many years, joint proprietor of Parsons & Hart, a Department Store which took up considerable space (Waterloo House) on the west side of Andover High Street. The business had been started by his grandfather, William Parsons, in 1842.  William Parsons met with an untimely end in November 1858, when he was…

27.11.1902-15.10.1983 A native of Northumberland, Patterson obtained a first-class honours degree in history from University of Durham in 1924, having studied for this at Armstrong College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Initially a schoolmaster and later on the staff of Portsmouth Municipal College, during the war years and the immediate post-War period he was head of History at University…

Born in Northumberland, Alan Merson’s initial intention was to become a Presbyterian minister. However, at Oxford in the 1930s he began a lifelong friendship with the celebrated Marxist historian, Christopher Hill, and this together with the Spanish Civil War led to him joining the Communist Party of Great Britain to which he belonged as an…

Sir Charles Reed Peers CBE FBA FRIBA FSA was an architect and archaeologist who became England’s second Inspector of Ancient Monuments (after Lt-Gen Augustus Pitt Rivers) and the first Chief Inspector from 1913 to 1933.

Born in Norwich, became chorister at Magdalen College 1834, taking a succession of degrees and posts, BA, MA, BD, DD. and Fellow 1853-65. He was ordained deacon in 1846 and priest in 1847. He served as Master of Magdalen School 1846-64 where he succeeded in raising its academic standards.

Born in Kent, his father was a ‘miller’s clerk’ which probably explains one of Reginald’s subsequent academic interests, namely mills and milling. At the time of the 1911 census, aged 7, he was living with his parents in Dover. From 1915 to 1921 he attended Dover Grammar School for Boys, winning the geography prize in…

The relationship between John Milner and Winchester printer and ‘respectable bookseller’ James Robbins (1761-1844) is an early example of a ‘publisher and his author’. When Robbins asked him to write ‘a faithful account and description of Winchester’ he did so. It was a risky match, a Catholic priest and a young untried printer, but the…

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…