William Gilpin was a Church of England cleric, schoolmaster, artist and author. He is perhaps best known as a travel writer, and one who originated the idea of the ‘picturesque’.

Her father, William Escombe, was a shipping and insurance agent with the family firm Escombe, McGrath & Company Ltd in Manchester, which provided the family with a comfortable living. They moved to Bishopstoke in 1874, where Dorothy was born two years later.

George Godwin was born in Winchester to Edwin Godwin, a draper, who later became a farmer at Melksham, and his wife Mary (nee Tugwell).  By the age of 22 he had passed through the London College of Divinity at Highbury, being ordained deacon in 1869. The following year he entered the priesthood, the same year…

Félicité Hardcastle was born in Oxford. Her great grandfather was Sir William Herschel and her father, Joseph Alfred Hardcastle, was also a noted astronomer.  When he died, in 1916, she and her mother moved to the New Forest village of Burley.

John Hooper Harvey trained as an architect under his father and under Sir Herbert Baker. He worked before WW2 for the Ministry of Public Works, then as a lecturer in the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College, London from 1950-1959. He was Consultant Architect to Winchester College from 1947 to 1986, and Keeper of…

Francis Haverfield was born at Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire to Rev William Haverfield and Emily his wife (née Mackarness).  His mother died when he was two and his father fell into a ‘hopeless and prolonged decline’.  Deprived of a normal home life, Francis developed an abruptness of manner which was apparently with him for the rest of…

The ‘sporting exploits’ of Colonel Peter Hawker, considered one of the ‘great shots’ of the 19th century, were widely followed during his lifetime, and his Instructions to Young Sportsmen in All That Relates to Guns and Shooting was something of a best-seller.  When he wasn’t pursuing fish, fowl (or beast, for that matter) his diary…

C F C (Christopher) Hawkes spent his early years in London and Northumberland before attending Winchester College and New College, Oxford.

Born in Birmingham, Hearnshaw went to Walsall and Manchester Grammar Schools before leaving school at 14 years old to be apprenticed to a pharmaceutical chemist for five years.

On 6 April 1841, Miss Selina Shirley of Eatington Hall, Warwickshire, recorded in her diary that she ‘walked in the Garden with Sir William [Heathcote] & promised to become his Wife’.  They were married on 18 May.  This was a second union for Heathcote, whose first wife, Caroline, had died in 1835, after bearing him…