Samuel Best was Rector of Abbotts Ann, near Andover, from 1831 to 1873, and instrumental in founding a (non-denominational) village school, long before such institutions were required by law.  He also created the Abbotts Ann Provident Society, believing that labouring families should not be denied the benefits of Victorian progress.

Capes was a particularly brilliant example of a clergyman scholar at the University of Oxford, where in 1870 he became Reader in Ancient History. He wrote several general works on ancient Rome and other Classical subjects and between about 1905 and his death transcribed and edited six volumes on the charters and records of Hereford…

George Cornwallis-West was the great-great-grandson of John Whitby, the flag captain of Admiral Sir William Cornwallis (1744-1819) of Milford-on-Sea. He was an unlikely historian, but his two historical works are of considerable value. Educated at Eton, he was more interested in hunting, shooting and fishing than academe. He was a champion army horse rider, and…

Bigg-Wither came from a family that had been seated at Manydown Park, Wootton St Lawrence, since 1789, when his great-grandfather, Lovelace Bigg, had inherited the estate from William Wither on the condition that he take on the name of the Wither family, which had farmed lands on lease from the dean and chapter of Winchester…

If anyone can be described as the doyenne (or doyen) of Hampshire history in the second half of the last century it must be Barbara Carpenter Turner (no hyphen). For half a century she played a prominent part in almost every organization that was involved in studies of the past. When the Queen and Prince…

Mary Aylwin Marshall was born on the Isle of Man to Robert Marshall, a Doctor of Medicine and his wife Anna.  She was one of the first students to train at the London School of Medicine for Women, qualifying as a doctor.  In 1928 however, having met and married Thomas Cotton, a Canadian cardiologist, she…

He is being included in the CHH project not because, as far as we know, he made any contribution to the history of the county, but because he was and is an internationally recognized scholar whose work on ecclesiastical history, The Antiquities of the Christian Church, 1706-1722, is probably still unsurpassed. Its importance is emphasized…

The Rev. S.H. Cassan was born in India, where his father, also named Stephen (1758-1794), a barrister originally from Ireland, founded the Bengal Journal, a weekly newspaper, and practised in public administration. Cassan junior went up to Magdalen College Oxford, after which like so many of his kind he was ordained.

Eleanor Swift was a Founder’s Scholar at Royal Holloway College, University of London, going on to take an MA degree in 1929, with a thesis on medieval manorial administration based on the Winchester Pipe Rolls.  Awarded a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship, she worked at the Huntington Library, California from 1931 to 1933 and, on her return,…

A Yorkshireman and graduate of Cambridge University, William Bingley was ordained in 1799, becoming a curate at Christchurch (Hants.) from 1802 to 1817, before moving on to Fitzroy Chapel in London. He published several books on botany and zoology, which were popular and went through multiple editions.