Nether Wallop in Hampshire

As a result of the Enclosures Act land became available to those who could buy it, and an 1822 survey of the parish shows Lord Bolton's Estate reduced by half, 3851 acres had been sold. In 1847 Walter Pothecary bought Fifehead Manor with its cottages, outbuildings and 575 acres for £ 13,000. Farmers turned arable to grazing and fields that forty villagers had farmed now needed the labours of one\par shepherd.

The growing poverty and unemployment of the labourers stripped of their common fields is evident in the Vestry Records which in 1822 'ordered that even a widower being a pauper and applying for relief be allowed 2s. 9d. per week and a widow 2s. 3d. a week'. 'Married paupers applying for relief be allowed so much as will make up with their wages the amount of a gallon loaf (10 lbs.) and sixpence per head for their respective families'. Farm workers had only barleycakes for their midday meal, thick hard-baked balls so strong it is said the farm lads played ball with them before eating them! A disastrous flood killed two people in the Wallops in 1834 causing more suffering.

But relief was on the way from a totally unforeseen quarter. In 1832 Lord George Bentinck moved the Houghton Stables to a site adjoining the popular Stockbridge Racecourse which straddled the Wallop-Longstock boundary. There at great expense to himself he built Danebury House and Stables, laid out the Gallops, and put trainer John Day in charge. He also planted the trees on Danebury Ring when some curious antiquities were found'.

Throughout the century Danebury House and Stables played an important part in Nether Wallop, providing employment for local skills and trades, even to painters who kept the rails round the course painted white. Many winners of classic races were trained there, and jockeys whose names make history in the world of the Turf.

Day's daughter married the brilliant young jockey Tom Cannon, great- grandfather of champion jockey Lester Piggott. Later he owned Danebury and made it one of the finest stables in England, renowned throughout the world for its breeding and training of racehorses. Tom entertained lavishly, and a baker remembers baking 600 loaves a day for Tom's guests on Race Days.

The Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII was a frequent visitor, who on one occasion, watched his horse Counterpane pass the winning post last-and fall dead! Souvenir hunters pulled out every hair of its tail. On race days Wallop was bustling with life and visitors, traps, carriages and four-in-hands with their postillions, all going to the races, while the inns of Stockbridge and Wallop did a brisk trade.

The first horse box was made in Wallop for Elis, a colt belonging to Lord George Bentinck in 1836, who had entered him for the St Leger. To walk the 170 miles from Danebury to Doncaster and then run in the race would have been too much for him. The Duke of Portland recounts that secretly Lord George had a van made in which Elis was sent to Doncaster, leaving so late that the betting was heavily against him. But Elis won the St Leger and a large sum for Lord George, and great interest was shown in the van used to transport him to the meeting. Danebury inspired Thomas Marshall to invent a starting gate. The last race on the Stockbridge (Danebury) Race Course was run in 1898. Its Grandstand, said to be the oldest in England, is still there with its ghosts of many a nobleman of yesteryear, and sheep graze the course.

The survey made for tithe purposes in 1840 records a rural agricultural community free from industrial development, using only 37 acres for the houses and gardens of its inhabitants, with its arable land increased to over 6200 acres. Except for the Airfield and three small Council Housing estates, comparison of the Tithe Map with today's shows surprisingly little change of plan or development. The inhabitants were living in the same areas then as now, and when fire destroyed cottages or the larger houses they were rebuilt on the same sites but in the contemporary style.

Nether Wallop's tithes were commuted to money payments in 1840. Since Saxon times one tenth (a tithe) of the annual output of the land, hay, corn, wool, livestock, etc. was paid in kind towards the upkeep of the clergy and the church. They were a constant source of disagreement, and by the nineteenth century were an obstacle to an expanding agriculture.

The first census in 1801 records a population of 566, by 1871 it had risen to 954, and a hundred years later in 1971 it was 887 persons. A mobile population seems to have been a characteristic of Nether Wallop through the centuries more so than ever in the 1970s. Commuting began last century with the coming of the railway to Grateley, the gentry drove in their carriages to the station and caught the train to London.

Philip Maggs born 1876 at Gerrards Farm has left us a picture of life in his young days in Lower Wallop, when the self-sufficient community was free from bustle and hurry. The Doctor rode from Broughton on horseback to assist at his birth, while 'Old' Ann Bath, a widow who had reared a family of six on 8s. a week, acted as midwife.

The Mill's water wheel was seldom at rest, and the miller's carter, white with flour, delivered barley meal and animal feed to the farms. The stream was used for watering cattle and horses and filling water troughs; women washed their linen on its banks near Place Farm, while boys fished for minnows in the clear water of the mill pond.

In the Square, Holloway the blacksmith worked at his anvil. The local cobbler made boots and shoes by hand, deftly cutting strips of hide for laces. In their yard the Moulands worked as carpenter builders and without the aid of any gauge converted tree-trunks into planks in their sawpit. Next to the Five Bells Inn bewhiskered Mr. Henny sold drapery and fancy goods.

The eel catcher went round the village with a basket of live eels for sale strapped to his back, which he flayed for his customers on the spot. Winter brought the muffin man carrying a huge tray of muffins on his head and ringing a bell to announce his arrival. On Good Friday a woman sold hot-cross buns from an old perambulator covered with a blanket to keep them warm. Simple things gave pleasure, like the vagrant leading a 'dancing' bear, or an organ grinder, wearing large ear-rings, a monkey on his shoulder. Carting corn to Salisbury Market provided work and fun for several days beforehand. The dark winter evenings were lighted by tallow candles (often home-made) or paraffin lamps, but most villagers were early to bed and early to rise.

Domestic service was honourable and necessary work in Victorian houses which lacked labour-saving devices. Garlogs alone had a housekeeper, cook, kitchen maid, butler, footman, two housemaids, between maid, lady's maid and a governess in the house; four gardeners, a groom and two coachmen (by 1912 two chauffeurs) outside; and on the estate a carpenter, bricklayer, two gamekeepers, farm labourers, and others.

On a medium sized farm about twenty labourers worked long hours for low wages. I quote two agreements taken at random from the employment book kept by Lord Bolton's bailiff:- 'Agreement made 11th Oct. 1907. Chas. M ... agrees to serve for one year from above date at the weekly wage of 5s. per week for the first half year, and 5s. 6d. for week for last half year including Sundays, when working, and £ 1 at Michaelmas 1908'.

'Agreement made Oct. 11th, 1908. George S ... agrees to serve as shepherd at the weekly wage of 15s. for one year, when working, £ 4 over money Michaelmas 1909. £ 2 lambing money. 1s. a lamb tail. 1s. for each lamb bred over the number of ewes in the flock. 1 sack of barley for dog. House free'.

Sheep played an important part in the life of Nether Wallop until World War I. In 1872 20,000 sheep were at Andover Fair, and Hampshire Down sheep from Wallop were at most of the big Sheep Fairs, e.g., Weyhill, Stockbridge.

The Education Act of 1870 made elementary schooling compulsory, and over 100 children from Nether Wallop attended the Endowed Church School. The wages of the schoolmaster and his wife were £ 5O a year (they had a free house), and many 'candles for night school' were used. By 1900 signatures of newly-weds instead of crosses in the Marriage Register reflect the new literacy. The first school manager was appointed by order of the County Council in 1903, and the building was used until 1929. In that school in 1894 the powers of the Vestry Meeting which had dealt with the local government of the parish for over two centuries were transferred to the new Nether Wallop Parish Council which served until 1973.

The twentieth century began with the death of Queen Victoria, for whose Memorial Fund Nether Wallop collected 4s. 10d. In 1902 the whole village joined in the celebrations for King Edward VIl's Coronation. Its highlight was a long procession, Lord Bolton's imposing bailiff on horseback leading, with jockeys and horses from Danebury Stables, followed by the village band in its smart uniforms, and wagons and carts each representing some aspect of village life, all bedecked with flags, banners and royal portraits which wound its way up the High Street and round the village joined by the proud villagers, to whom Edward VII when Prince of Wales was no stranger.

One of the social occasions of the period which was looked forward to with eager anticipation each year by the villagers was the tea party given by Mrs. Pothecary of Fifehead Manor. Tea on the lawn at Fifehead, weather permitting, was followed by a procession led by the Oddfellows and the Hampshire Friendly Society, holding high their banners, the village band playing, and the evening was then spent at the Fair held in the field behind the George Inn, where sack racing, wheelbarrow races, eating hot pastry puddings, and other sports made for jollity.

The Annual Show of the Wallop Horticultural and Floral Society, formed 1902, was another event held either at Fifehead or Garlogs, with many entries from keen competitors.

The income from Lord Bolton's estates supported an ever increasing number of family dependents, and by 1900 the larger properties in his Nether Wallop Estate had been sold or mortgaged in an attempt to meet these commitments. There were also social and political changes which were prejudicial to the landed gentry of the twentieth century.

On 18th August 1911 what remained of Lord Bolton's family Estates situate within the Manor and Parish of Nether Wallop in the County of Southampton, with messages, cottages, farms, etc.,' were sold to George Grant Stevenson for £ 20,000 at the White Hart, Salisbury.

The Paulets or Owlets had been overlords of Nether Wallop for 364 years. The last overlord had gone. Three years later World War I was the tragic end of the era.

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