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…

He was one of the many clergymen who transcribed and published parish records in a movement promoted nationally by the genealogical editor and publisher, William P.W. Phillimore (1853-1913). The imprint has been owned, and mothballed, for more than 10 years by The History Press, but ‘with consent’ local history is still published by an independent…

Thomas Stopher was an architect and surveyor (for Winchester College, St John’s Hospital and others), a prominent municipal leader (Mayor of Winchester 1876, 1883, and 1893, Freeman of Winchester, 1910) and antiquarian. He published little, but indirectly did much to foster heritage and local history. Also, as one who often saw old buildings being developed…

Born in Biel, Switzerland, Studer’s  higher education was undertaken at the Universities of Neuchâtel, Berlin and London. Between 1908 and 1913 he was Professor of French at Hartley College (later the University if Southampton). From 1913 until his death in 1927 he was the second holder of the chair of Romance Philology at the University…

Florence was the daughter of Vice-Admiral Suckling, a midshipman at the Battle of Trafalgar.  In 1838 he bought property at Highwood from Lord Palmerston to build a house, the family home.  He died when Florence was 15 years old. The Sucklings had family connections on the mother’s side with Admiral Nelson after whom Florence was…

1907 – 1987 Isabel Sanderson was born in 1907 to a Suffolk farming family. In 1914, the family with all the farm animals and gear were taken by train to Alresford station. Then a short journey took them to Abbotstone Farmhouse, part of the great Tudor mansion built by the Marquess of Winchester*. After Perin’s…

Heywood Sumner was born at Old Alresford where his father was Rector. He came from a prominent ecclesiastical family.  A great uncle was Archbishop of Canterbury, his grandfather Bishop of Winchester and his father became Bishop of Guildford. His mother, Mary Heywood, became famous as the founder of the Mothers’ Union.

02.01.1832 – 21.04.1913 He was a druggist and chemist with a shop at 113 High Street in Old Portsmouth. After retirement he became curator of the Borough Museum, then in the Town Hall, next to the Dolphin Hotel.  According to the journalist historian, William Gates, who acknowledged his influence, he was: ‘A man of genial…