Places

Shirley, Hampshire

Shirley was at one time part of the parish of Milbrook, having previously been a Parish in its own right, but dissolved and incorporated into Millbrook in 

However as a manor it has stood on its own, as described in British History Online. An extract below. As a manor, it was also known as Shirley and Hill. The Hill village was at the bottom of the current Hill Lane, near Four Posts, and was part of the Hill and Sidford Tithing.

In the reign of Edward the Confessor Cheping held SHIRLEY (Sirelei, xi cent.; Schyrlegh and Shirlee, xiii cent.) of the king, and it was assessed at 1 hide. Ralph de Mortimer held in Cheping's stead at the time of the Domesday Survey, (fn. 17) and his descendants held knights' fees in Shirley as late at least as 1362. (fn. 18) By the fifteenth century, however, the manor had come to be looked upon as held of the prior and convent of St. Denis, (fn. 19) which held much property in the neighbourhood. In the fourteenth century the manor was held by the family of Shirley. Nicholas de Shirley in 1240 granted the advowson of the church of Shirley, which up to this time had no doubt gone with the manor, to the prior of St. Denis, (fn. 20) and Isabel de Shirley, widow of Roger de Shirley, and Nicholas, Roger, John, and Simon, sons of Roger de Shirley, were also benefactors to the priory. (fn. 21)

Tithe Apportionment - Parish of Millbrook, Hampshire

Note the reference to Depopulation and read more about it here. By 1530 the population of England and Wales had risen to around 3 million. At the end of the 17th century it was estimated the population of England and Wales was about 5 1/2 million. The population of Scotland was about 1 million. The population of London was about 600,000. London went on to become the biggest city in the world for a while. In the 19th century Britain became the world's first industrial society. It also became the first urban society. By 1851 more than half the population lived in towns. As our population approaches 70m it is interesting to think of depopulation efforts at 3 million! The maps of Millbrook clearly show the urbanisation of the countryside.

Following the Tithe Commutation Act 1836 Tithe Maps were produced which recorded both the Landowner and Occupier for most lands. From the Tithe Apportionments records it is apparent that on 4th March 1843 Lady Hewitt was both the Landowner and Occupier of Plot 875, Freemantle Estate, described as House Offices and Pleasure Grounds, with an area in statute measure 6,0,2, about 2.4 Hectares. 

Nathaniel Newman Jefferys was both Landowner and Occupier of Plot 825 described as House Offices and Garden, an area of 2,2,24 imperial, on 4th March 1843. However, one plot does not show the full picture.

A Study of the Parish of Millbrook, Hampshire

My Millbrook Parish one place study The beginning was actually just a restart triggered by a post in the Facebook group of Guild of One-Name Studies by Karen Heenan-Davies on 7 August 2018. 

'I want to do analysis and maps of the BMD and census records to show how my surname Heenan changed geographically over time'

Well that got me thinking about how I had started plotting the Enumerators route of the 1841 Census of Millbrook. It was very rural then.

Link that to thoughts of GIS and BIM, and I join the conversation.

Later that day I start a new Google Map of Millbrook and using the Census images on Ancestry I start plotting the routes and key named places. I also start a spreadsheet which will expand the data extracted from the Census and also provide the upload to ESRI for the interactive ARCGIS Mapping.

Nearly a decade later and the spreadsheet has grown into a suite of integrated spreadsheets, shill growing, and becoming more complex as well as a having a wealth of historical data.

The technical approach has also changed significantly. The system is now firmly based on data. Data is used to populate ESRI StoryMaps directly with Geolocated information directly placed on the map layers. No longer, individual points placed on Google Earth or Google Maps. No more colour washing a map to indicate primary ownership. All done electronically. A separate spreadsheet for Census and another for Tithe has not been replaced entirely, but they are not integrated into a suite of spreadsheets which interact, either directly or via Power Query, for a much more robust and informative system. The derived data is fed into ESRI and here, but no longer as embedded Excel as Microsoft has depreciated that function, if not fully cancelled it. Therefore I will have to look into alternative presentation methods.

Millbrook village at least stayed within the historical County of Hampshire for the span of this story, but was in the administrative Hundred of Mansbridge, Waltham, Redbridge, Buddlesgate or Buddles Gate, the town of Southampton, and the City of Southampton. A complicated history for a static place.

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Millbrook, Hampshire

Millbrook is now a suburb of Southampton, which was for a time its own County Borough, but has returned to being part of Hampshire, England. 

What is my interest in Millbrook? I was born in the General Hospital, which is in Shirley Warren, part of the old parish of Millbrook, and grew up in the reduced size Millbrook, as part of Southampton.

Below is a extract from A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 3. Published online at British History Online.

The original parish of Millbrook, including Freemantle and Shirley, now suburbs of Southampton, contained an area of 3,223 acres of land, 10 acres of land covered by water, 140 by tidal water, and 140 of foreshore. However, by the Southampton Borough Extension Act of 1895, Shirley and Freemantle, already separate ecclesiastically, the one since 1836, the other since 1851, were included in the municipal borough, and together formed into a civil parish, containing altogether 2,651 acres, of which 2,047 acres are land, 8 acres land covered by water, and 100 by tidal water, and 496 acres of foreshore. Hence the modern parish of Millbrook contains only 986 acres of land, 2 of land covered by water, and 40 by tidal water, together with 191 of foreshore.