History of Mapledurwell

The name Mapledurwell means 'maple tree spring'.

At the time of the Doomsday Survey the land was held by Anschill for Edward the Confessor and in 1086 the land became the sole estate in Hampshire of Hugh de Port.  It covered the modern parishes of Newham, Up Nately and Andwell.

In 1172, Adam de Port, great grandson of Hugh, was outlawed for treason and forfeited all his possessions to the Royal Exchequer.  The King gave the manor to Alan Basset and it was then transferred to Hugh de Despenser in 1306.  However, the forces of Queen Isabel hanged him and his son, Hugh the Younger, in 1326 during her military coup, but in 1337 the manor returned to the Despenser family and although it was to remain with this family for two centuries it was intermittently forfeited, when Thomas Despenser was put to death at Bristol in 1400 for taking part in a conspiracy to restore the dethroned Richard II.

In 1529, with the reformation poised to rage throughout Europe and Henry VIII about to marry Ann Boleyn, William Frost of Avington granted the manor to Corpus Christi College in Oxford 'for support to the end of time of a fellow of his own blood'.  The college remained the major landowner from 1616 to 1839 and some of the manor land still belongs to the college.  Winchester College also held parts of the Manor of Mapledurwell.

The long continuity of ownership of the lands of Mapledurwell by Corpus Christi resulted in little change to the village in the 17^th to 19^th centuries in terms of the pattern of road building, woodland, opens fields and commons.  Mapledurwell was untypical of other villages in the area during this time as the land within the village was enclosed very late, remaining as open fields until 1795.  There were a number of small farms in the village in contrast to the general trend of large farms and extensive early enclosure that are found in many part of Hampshire.

The present area of allotment land was awarded to the village under and Enclosure Act of June 1863, demonstrating that enclosure within the parish was not completed until the 19th Century.  The formal procedures of the college statues and internal arrangements for disposal of estate revenue meant a continuity of manorial 'guardianship' of the village long after it had ceased in other places.

Circa 1900 R Clarke painted a soldier on the wall of one the north end of the barn at The Farm.  This was re-touched annually, first by Mr Clarke and now by Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Victoria County History is an encyclopaedic record of England's places and people from earliest times to the present day and is written by historians working in counties across England.  Work is currently being undertaken for VCH Hampshire II and Mapledurwell was selected as the first parish to be published for the New VCH series because of the substantial research that has already been carried out.  To find out more about the history of the village and the people who have researched it, visit the Victoria County History website at www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk/ 

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