Before I decided to make this website, my original aim was to publish a collection of old photos from around the village, accompanied by a modern update taken recently. Whilst that plan got put to one side for various reasons (most notably: the complexity of copyright!) I came up with the idea of this website, as a way to share some of these photos and some accompanying history that I had collected. Many of the buildings and properties I’ve featured…
Most of what I’ve been able to find out about Brimpton Mill has been thanks to the village’s millenium celebrationg book, ‘The Brimpton Story’ – so if you want more detail on the mill, that’s probably the best place to start your research. There has been a mill on or near the site of the current building since 1086, though very few records of this incarnation remain. What we do know is that even in these early days, the mill…
While the modern parish of Brimpton is made up of three distinct areas (Brimpton Village, Hyde End and Brimpton Common) they don’t all share the same long history. Up until a couple of centuries ago, Brimpton Common was more well known as ‘The Waste’, and only played host to about a dozen dwellings – the majority of what is now Brimpton Common was (as the name might suggest) a Manorial common grazing area, mainly used by transient folk and the…
Unlike a lot of the buildings or areas we’ve looked at so far, I’ve got very little history to share about today’s subject – the road known locally as ‘Manor View’. I say known locally for a reason – despite several efforts to get signage put up to reflect the name, the local council have always refused, claiming that the name is unofficial – preferring to stick with Brimpton Road. As far as I can tell, the stretch known as…
Normally, when I begin to research a property for one of these posts, I like to make a visit to take an up-to-date “now” photo for comparison. Sadly that’s not possible with today’s subject, since all traces of it have been wiped off the face of the earth – or at least the visible earth. Who knows what still lies beneath…? The Fisheries at the bottom of Hyde End Lane seem to have been located on the site of what…
For the first post of 2023, I wanted to take a look back at another of the village’s one-time retail establishments – something the village no longer lays claim to, sadly. Unlike the various Post Offices, pubs and village stores that Brimpton has seen over the years, this one was situated over on Hyde End Lane, in the Eastern-most part of the Parish. Originally opened in 1883 (pre-dating the Forge Stores by some years), the store in Hyde End Lane…
After the recent revelation that Little Park House was once home to both the King of Norway and Princess Diana’s aunt, I got to wondering whether Brimpton had ever had any other famous residents. As luck would have it, my lovely neighbour Doris is the font of all knowledge when it comes to Brimpton history, and has brought me right up to speed. It turns out there have been a number of notable (or in one case, notorious!) Brimpton residents…
Situated at the top of Hyde End Lane, in the western-most part of the Parish, Little Park House is a building with a colourful history. Built back in 1869 by the Shuter family, it sits on land that was originally a part of the massive Crookham Manor Estate. According to the Brimpton Story, it is an unremarkable house from an architectural point of view, built in a fairly common Victorian style. The house originally had its own farm and a…
While it’s far from the oldest building in the village, having been built in 1909, the Brimpton Village Hall is still an important fixture of village life. It plays host to various events, classes, parties and more, and with the closure of all the pubs near the village it’s even more important today than it ever has been. At just 113 years old, there’s not a huge amount of history to share about the hall. We know that it was…
Undoubtedly one of the oldest and most historically-significant buildings in the parish, St Leonard’s Chapel dates back to at least the 12th century. According to Heritage Gateway, the chapel (both a Scheduled Monument and a Grade II* listed building) is constructed of coursed flint with stone dressings and has a tiled roof. There are differing accounts of it’s origin, but many historians believe it to be the church of Shalford Manor, as mentioned by the Domesday Survey – despite Shalford…