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…

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…

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…

Born in Leipzig to a Russian-Jewish family, the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner was educated at the universities of Leipzig, Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt. In 1933, he lost his lecturer’s post at Göttingen University due to the Nazis’ race laws and left Germany for England. In 1942, he became part-time lecturer (from 1959 professor) at Birkbeck…

He belonged to the Benedictine monastery of St Swithun’s, Winchester, living in what is regarded as the earliest period of historical writing, though ‘the beginnings of the true antiquarian scholarship at Winchester’ has been set in the late 17th century (John Crook, 2003). Scholars are certain that his works include two manuscripts generally called Historia…

This celebrated genealogist and publisher, who started life as a solicitor, is included because he was involved in early attempts to collect and publish the records of family history in Hampshire that are now more readily available online from FamilySearch, FindMyPast, Ancestry and the like. For example, between 1899 and 1912 he master-edited 14 volumes…

The son of a clergyman, Charles was born in Fulham. It is not known where he undertook his primary and secondary education (to use modern terminology), but he secured a place at Cambridge to study mathematics, garduating with a first class degree in 1905. From 1906 to 1911 he was a fellow of Pembroke College…

See also: Guido (PIggott), Cecily Margaret (Peggy)