Newbury Branch meeting held via Zoom on 12th May 2021
Speaker: Les Mitchinson
The county was Hantescire in Domesday, and later called the County of Southampton. The Victoria County History (online and in libraries) is a good source for history of individual parishes, with prominent and landowning families, coats of arms and manors.
Kelly’s Directories are online and Hampshire editions will give you town and village descriptions, local dignitaries, establishments and institutions and a list of residents and their addresses.
Hampshire archives include:
local census listings before 1841;
BTs and marriage licences;
militia and muster lists;
Tudor and Stuart muster rolls;
Poor law union records.
Use Gibson’s guides to discover what has survived.
Hampshire Record Office is across the road from the railway station in Winchester, with easy car parking. It is normally open weekdays and alternate Saturdays. No booking is needed. The HRO holds registers parish registers for all of Hampshire, Isle of Wight and a few from adjoining counties. Check the IHGS maps for pre1832 boundaries. All mainland registers are on micro. Quite a few are transcribed and indexed in paper catalogues. Also held are tithe and enclosure maps, manorial records, newspapers on micro, and census returns.
The Portsmouth History Centre is within the central library in Guildhall Square, on the second floor, and it is five minutes from the station. Open Mondays to Saturdays, it is good for naval and army sources. You can download the catalogue online. Holdings include the original parish registers for Portsea, Havant, Alverstoke and Fareham.
Southampton Archives has limited opening hours, and closes over the lunch hour, so check before going.
The Isle of Wight Record Office in Newport is open 4 days a week. It has records available nowhere else, but not parish registers, which are in Winchester.
Hampshire Genealogical Society has indexed BMDs on CD, some of which are on findmypast. Burials at Winchester School begin 1400. BTs are not well represented in Hampshire, although they start from 1597. The HRO has few nonconformist records, other than some early Baptist registers and Catholic registers.
Hampshire parishes include several peculiars. Philimore Atlas is good for probate court jurisdictions. Ecclesiastical court records are at Winchester. Quarter Sessions records run from 1607 to 1971 for Winchester, from 1531 for Portsmouth, 1461 for Southampton and 1608 for Newport, and cover petty sessions, bastardy removal, calendar of prisoners and militia records. Records for western circuit Assizes are at TNA.
