Marjorie Chandler was a significant member of the Milford-on-Sea Historical Record Society. She was born in Leamington Spa, the oldest of six children of Frederick Augustus, a jeweller, and Alice Sarah (née Roberts). She studied at Leamington High School and Cambridge University, ‘graduating’ in 1919 with first class honours in Natural Sciences. (Cambridge did not…

The Rev. S.H. Cassan was born in India, where his father, also named Stephen (1758-1794), a barrister originally from Ireland, founded the Bengal Journal, a weekly newspaper, and practised in public administration. Cassan junior went up to Magdalen College Oxford, after which like so many of his kind he was ordained.

Capes was a particularly brilliant example of a clergyman scholar at the University of Oxford, where in 1870 he became Reader in Ancient History. He wrote several general works on ancient Rome and other Classical subjects and between about 1905 and his death transcribed and edited six volumes on the charters and records of Hereford…

The Venerable Bede is known as ‘the father of history’ and is included in CHH as he was probably the first person to mention any place in what became Hampshire. In his The Ecclesiastical History of England, written in about 731, he described the foundation of the diocese of the West Saxons, and later the…

Arthur Bennett was born in Bridge Street, Andover, son of music teacher and church organist William Bennett (1822–1901) who founded a music school there in his early twenties.  Arthur, his brother George and sisters, Agatha and Agnes, were all musically gifted and made their living as teachers and performers at various levels.

He was a genealogist who in 1833 published a substantial volume on the pedigrees of prominent families in the county. It was one of a series of volumes on mainly southern counties that he published between 1830 and 1842, when he was forging a career as a genealogical writer, based on his experience as a…

Samuel Best was Rector of Abbotts Ann, near Andover, from 1831 to 1873, and instrumental in founding a (non-denominational) village school, long before such institutions were required by law.  He also created the Abbotts Ann Provident Society, believing that labouring families should not be denied the benefits of Victorian progress.

Bigg-Wither came from a family that had been seated at Manydown Park, Wootton St Lawrence, since 1789, when his great-grandfather, Lovelace Bigg, had inherited the estate from William Wither on the condition that he take on the name of the Wither family, which had farmed lands on lease from the dean and chapter of Winchester…

He is being included in the CHH project not because, as far as we know, he made any contribution to the history of the county, but because he was and is an internationally recognized scholar whose work on ecclesiastical history, The Antiquities of the Christian Church, 1706-1722, is probably still unsurpassed. Its importance is emphasized…

Captain Charles Cave FRAS, FSA was a man of many parts – an officer during WWI, a notable meteorologist, astronomer and a church historian. Much of his work stemmed from his interest in and technical skills with early telephotography. His term in the Meteorological Section of the Royal Engineers led him to take many photographs…