People
This series of articles offers an insight into the lives and achievements of local residents and sometimes their extended families. Collectively, they constitute the ‘Community’ in which we live, and to illustrate how our society is evolving and changing.
- The Landed-gentry are mainly the owners or families from the three main large, now largely historical, estates, who have also been the more significant ‘custodians of the countryside’ and landscape: the Clark-Jervoise family at Idsworth: Ponsonby or Bessborough’s at Stansted: and Staunton and Fitzwygrams at Staunton Park. They have built or rebuilt the main houses and sometimes rearranged the grounds around them.
- Those Born Locally – the individual people and sometimes their extended families – who were born here or moved here early on. Some of them have been encouraged to describe their lives by Sonya Teale in interviews which have provided an audio archive of thirty-two local residents. The interviews have, yielded interesting information about their childhoods, families, education, employment on the large estates or with local companies, and reminiscences about World War II. The audio archive has been lodged with the County Archives.
- Newcomers, residents who have moved or retired to the village, often bringing important skills or memorable experiences. They have been encouraged to share these experiences. While they may now form the majority of the population, including on the more recent small housing developments, they may more easily be considered as coming from larger ‘clusters’ of residents including; the Navy, Medical Doctors and Nurses, Educationalists, Banking or Business people, and those Professionally qualified. There is also a large but diminishing cluster from IBM which moved its UK Head Office to Cosham in the 19970s and formerly had a large manufacturing plant at Havant, but has subsequently evolved into a more global organisation.
- Notable residents who have made a positive contribution to village life by running a local business or shop, serving on a local council, or leading a local club or society, for example.
- Local Historians
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- Local Artists who have provided memories of earlier times, including before the advent of the camera.
- Census data will be captured and interpreted (from the decennial National Censuses since 1811). It is intended to make this data available and to describe the nature of the Village and the way in which it has grown, as well as the social consequences arising from this.
Editorial: revised July 2020