Celebrating Hampshire Historians

Oscroft, Alfred

1867 – 31st December 1939

Alfred Oscroft was a place-names authority and polymath. Born in Nottingham, he was awarded a scholarship to the recently founded Nottingham University College, but, instead, trained as a teacher at Saltley College. After a short spell as a teacher, he joined the Royal Engineers in 1891 where he rose to Company Sergeant Major (WOII). He left the Army in 1912 to join the Ordnance Survey in Southampton, where, apart from a return to the Army during WWI to train troops, he worked until retirement in 1922.

Within a short period of retirement, he began publishing articles about Hampshire place names in the Southampton Times and Hampshire Express. Place name research became a significant part of his life and on his death he had assembled a significant manuscript which he supported with extensive illustrations.

He was also a stamp collector, reader, organist and singer and a passionate cricketer, both as a player and, later, a spectator. He wrote poetry, and won a prize for a poem on the accession of Edward VIII.

After his death the manuscript survived bombing and looting and passed into the hands of his grandson, James Oscroft Wilkes. Jim was a distinguished academic working in the United States, and getting the manuscript published became his retirement project. It is tribute to both Alfred and Jim that in an area that is often written with more enthusiasm than scholarship, the work was endorsed by the English Place-Name Society.  Place-Names of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight was published in 2015, and Jim died in 2020.

Sources

• Oscroft, Alfred,  Place-Names of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Portrait

From Place-Names of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight

Contribution to county’s history

Place-Names is an outstanding contribution to understanding the forces that underlie the County’s history.

Relevant published works

• Oscroft, Alfred,  Place-Names of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Privately Published, Anne Arbor, Michigan and Hampshire Archives Trust and Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society, Winchester, 2015

Critical Comments

Other Comments

A copy of Place-Names of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight is available for purchase from the HFC.

Contributor

Dick Selwood

Key Words

Hampshire place names, place names

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