THE HAMPSHIRE ANTIQUARY & NATURALIST. 



by a miller of the name of Henry Gill. I do not know any- 

 thing about him further than these few particulars. He 

 held a croft of arable land called Norsbury, i.e. the plot 

 encircled by the remains of the old British camp I have 

 already mentioned, marked by the clump of fir trees to the 

 north of Stoke Charity, and it is entirely owing to the 

 ploughing and other agricultural operations of Henry 

 Gill, his predecessors and his successors, that I did not in- 

 clude a visit to the remains of Norsbury camp in this day's 

 programme for the Club, lor I fear these old agriculturists 

 had no great care for the remains of the earthworks of 

 their British forefathers. At any rate they appear to have 

 done their best to plough down the banks, and fill up the 

 ditches with the refuse of the croft, for very faint remains 

 only of the earthwork exist there at the present day. In 

 1390 Henry Gill held this croft of arable land called 

 Norsbury with the ditches adjacent, also a piece of land 

 called Keneland, and a piece called the Nute in the manor 

 of the Abbot of Hyde in Weston, for which he paid IDS. 4d: 

 He also held this mill of Micheldever, adjoining Westom 

 and a certain meadow, that which we see close there 

 adjoining the said mill, for which he paid the Abbot 

 2is. Sd., but this was "in feoda," so that I think tha 

 mediaeval miller, Henry Gill, would have to pay also his 

 share of the other feudal levies which the Abbot would 

 from time to time be called upon to supply. This small 

 holding, with this little mill, is duly mentioned in the 

 Patent Rolls of the i3th year of Rich. II, i.e., 1390, just 500 

 years ago, when the King confirmed the miller in the 

 tenure of this mill and his little farm. Let us hope he was 

 a good miller, and a happy man. 



The old man formerly the miller mentioned in the 

 paper was present, and appeared much interested in 

 hearing of his ancestor. He had used the mill up to 

 about 30 years ago ; it was also interesting to learn 

 that h had been engaged as one of the labourers in 

 making the railway here more than half a century ago. 



Just as Micheldever church was reached a heavy 

 downpour of rain commenced, so conveniently in point 

 of time that but a trifling change in the programme 

 had to be made. This church is a peculiar building 

 octagonal in shape, the chancel and tower being on 

 opposite sides of the octagon. Here are some fine 

 sculptured monuments to the Baring family by Flax- 

 man, Boehm, and others. In the vestry was shown 

 a chalice, presented to the church, in 1703, by Lady 

 Rachel Russell, wife of Sir William Russell (who 

 was beheaded), also the registers, dating from 1538, 

 the year when their use was enjoined on the clergy. 

 Mr. Shore's researches were again brought into 

 requisition here for the following paper : 



MICHELDEVER. 



The visit of the Hampshire Field Club to Micheldever 

 brings home to us the circumstance of how little has been 

 written of the history of this interesting place. The 

 histories of Hampshire tell us nothing about it, and yet its 

 actual history, although for the most part probably un- 

 eventful, extends over a thousand years. I hope the 

 publications of the Hampshire Record Society will throw 

 light upon the history and antiquities of this manor. Its 

 human antiquities, however, sink into insignificance when 

 compared with its geological record, which tells of the for- 

 mation of these chalk valleys and the removal by natural 

 agencies of those beds of sand and clay which once covered 

 the chalk in this part of Hampshire, and of which some 



patches still remain, at East Stratton, a mile or two to the 

 eastward. I have come upon a reference to the debris of 

 these Tertiary sands at Micheldever a thousand years ago 

 in the mention of a sandpit in an Anglo-Saxon Charter de- 

 fining the boundaries of this manor, but as rain and local 

 floods, and other natural agencies have been at work in 

 addition to man's operations for nearly a thousand years 

 since sand was dug there by the Anglo-Saxons, there must 

 be less of it on the chalk now than there was in those 

 days. 



MICHELDEVER IN CELTIC AND ROMAN TIME. 



The story of Micheldever and its manor is a long one. It 

 has a pre-historic interest and it has a long unwritten 

 history. Its earliest inhabitants probably selected this 

 site as the headquarters of their clan or tribe, from similar 

 considerations to those which were noticed at the las* 

 meeting of the club at East Meon for here again, we find 

 an ancient village settlement at the springs or highest 

 water source of the stream we have been following to-day. 

 Micheldever, or Muchledever, is so named from being at 

 certain seasons a place of much water. We shall pass 

 near some of the highest springs presently, and anv old 

 inhabitant of this village will tell you of the great volume 

 of water which they occasionally send out. The word 

 dever or dufr (water) is a Celtic word more resembling the 

 Cymric or Welsh than the Gaelic language, as spoken at 

 the present day but this word may itself have become 

 modified from a still earlier form, and may possibly have 

 come down from a pre-Celtic people, whose name for water 

 was oure or dour. We only find a few traces in Hamp- 

 shire of a pre-Celtic race, i.e. those people who did not 

 cremate their dead, as those did who erected the tumuli 

 we find in this county ; certainly the round tumuli all 

 show signs of cremation. This still earlier race, whose 

 remains are so few, were those who buried their dead in a 

 flexured or sitting posture in cists, often scooped out of the 

 chalk or made of other material. Of these I have records of 

 a few interments, and from one of these, some years ago, I 

 was fortunately able to secure the bones for the Hartley 

 Museum; This mode of burial can be traced from Britain 

 through Western France to the Iberian peninsula or 

 ancient Spain, and thence to North Africa. From this 

 circumstance these people are known to anthropologists as 

 the ancient Iberians or ancient Basques, and they called 

 water oure, as shown in the name of the river Adour in 

 the Basque country of Southern France. In this county 

 we have our river Oure and our village of Ouerton or 

 or Overton, and the earliest name of this place may have 

 been a wordcompoundedofdour as Micheldour, or Muchel- 

 deure, in the same way as Andover appears to have been 

 also known as Andeure, the letters u and v being inter- 

 changeable. Micheldever still has one remarkable sur- 

 vival of Roman time in the great high road about a mile ta 

 the eastward, which connected Winchester with Silchester, 

 and which is still used in part as a main thoroughfare. It is 

 probably the road which is mentioned in a charter nearly a 

 thousand years ago as the law path or army path. Another 

 remarkable survival of Roman influence prevailed in the 

 outlying dependent manors of this great manor of Michel* 

 dever until the time of the Norman Conquest. Theseont- 

 lying dependent manors were those of Pophatn, Cranbourn, 

 Drayton and Stratton, and in Anglo-Saxon time they were 

 held, by what Sir Henry Spelman, who wrote on tenures 

 ol land two centuries ago, calls Colonical tenures, i.e., the 

 holders of the land were in the same position 

 as the Roman coloni, they could not sell their land or re- 

 move irom the land without losing it. The 

 Doomsday record states that these places were held in the 

 time of King Edward the Confessor as four manors by four 



