Charles Fox came from a well-established Southampton family and his father, Frederick, inherited enough money to build a country house (The Lawn) at Bursledon.  Charles pursued a career in banking and eventually became manager of the Capital and Counties Bank in Winchester.

He was a son of Richard Lee Furley, a shipowner of Hull and Gainsborough and was educated at Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated with a First in Mods and Greats. He used to say: ‘I owe everything to be elected a scholar of Winchester at the age of 12.’  In his…

Peter Gallup was born in Hampshire and spent his early years at East Meon before moving to Devon.  He attended Lancing College before studying agriculture and forestry at Oxford.  Gallup became a partner in a fruit importing business which ceased trading with the onset of World War II and he signed up, joining the Royal…

Sir Thomas Gatehouse was the son of the minor gentlemen, Thomas Gatehouse and inherited his Danebury estate, in particular lease of Nether Wallop rectory. In 1761 his wife accrued the Headley Park estate of her father, the minor literary figure. William Huggins The younger Gatehouse saw himself among the county elite as he was sheriff…

A prime example of the journalist historian, who clearly had a strong interest in the past, but was also a populariser who saw local history as a useful page filler. He started as a junior reporter with Portsmouth Evening News shortly after its foundation by James Graham Niven in 1877. In the foreword to his…

Edward Gibbon is best known for The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire published in six volumes by 1788, but he also served in the military and in Parliament, predominantly with Hampshire connections.  By the end of his life, he was considered ‘a giant of the Enlightenment’, his work praised for…

Born in London, by occupation he was a ‘collector of inland revenue’ (1901 census). Often quoted is his enormous compilation of 828 pages of local records, Extracts from Records in the possession of the Municipal Corporation of the Borough of Portsmouth, published by the Corporation in 1891. There were appendices on a ‘serious dispute’ amongst…

Harry Gidden was on the staff of King Edward VI School in Southampton for over 42 years from 1883. He had previously been a pupil at the School since 1879. Retiring in 1925, a year or so earlier he had been awarded a PhD by London University ‘for his noteworthy work on the charters of…

Born at the family mansion Englefield House, situated near Reading, Sir Henry was the eldest son of the Sixth Baronet, Sir Henry Englefield and his second wife Catherine (nee Buck). In 1778, aged 26, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in the following year a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Born at Halstead in Essex, Gilbert moved to Southampton with his parents during the 1850s. He married Mary Emma Stanesby in 1867 and they continued to reside in the town for much of the remainder of the 19th century, although for a short period the couple lived in Wandsworth. While in Southampton Gilbert established a…