Local History
Books concerning the history of Winchester and surroundings that we have printed
A Century of Cathedral Music
A Penny For Going
A Rolling Pebble
A Season of Mellow Fruitfulness – John Keats in Winchester 1819
Access One Step – The Official History of the Joiners Arms
Chalk Poets
College Street Petersfield
Come on Winch!
Commander Loftus William Jones
The Liberals in Hampshire a partly history Part 1
Here’s The Hambledon Cricket Club
Here’s to the Men of Alton – World War II
Hospitals of the Petersfield Union
Hyde Days & Holidays
Inspired by Hyde
Jane Austen and Lyme Regis
Jane Austen in Bath
Jane Austen’s family and Tonbridge
Jane Austen’s Steventon
Made in Hampshire
Moving Around
Over & Nether Compton
Parsons & Prawns
Policing Petersfield in Victorian Times
Southampton Water
The Four Marks Murders
The History of Fair Oak and Horton Heath
The Houses – A family chronicle
The Hursley Lads
The Itchen Abbas School Board
The Liberals In Hampshire Part 5
The Liberals In Hampshire Part 1
The Porter’s Daughter
The Spirit of the Marsh
Time Gentlemen Please
Titchfield and ancient Parish
Titchfield
Twenty Missed Beats
Ungentlemanly Conduct?
Where East Meets West
Worthy Causes
Winchester Community Choir
Where East Meets West: The Hidden Charms of Bullington in the Dever Valley
The story of a small parish in Hampshire, typical of many others in the English countryside. It is set against the wider context of dominant events in Britain and Acts of Parliament that provide waymarks for the significant changes that affected the people living here.
This surprisingly rich history provides compelling evidence about the work to preserve England’s heritage, in the face of multiple challenges in the twenty-first century.
Since moving to the Dever Valley in the 990s, the author has carefully chronicled local stories and assembled a coherent history of the area from the Iron Age to the twenty-first century.
The book includes a special section on the 1830 King’s Petitioners, as well as Epigraphs by Lord Denning and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, an illustrated poem by Cicely Fox Smith, three maps and twenty-three colour photographs.
Grant aided by the Hampshire Archives Trust. A limited edition of 100 books printed in colour on silk paper is available for £12 each at P & G Wells in Winchester, or from the author at r.wieloch20@btinternet.com
Rupert Wieloch 2024
The Four Worthys
In 1976 there was a public inquiry into the Department of Transport’s proposal to route the M3 Motorway through Winchester’s water meadows below St. Catherine’s Hill. We were heavily involved in the campaign against the proposal and kept of everything we printed for the M3 Action Group.
Thirty years on and the road had been constructed on the far side of St. Catherine’s Hill thus saving the water meadows, and some of the original participants in the campaign were writing a book about it. I gave my file of ephemera to one of the authors who subsequently became ill, suffered a burst pipe in his house that he was unable to fix, and all the paperwork was destroyed.
I tell this story to illustrate how easily historical information can be lost. Of course, it can be objected that in the grand sweep of history this is of little importance, swamped as we are with so much information about almost everything that it becomes impossible to extract significance from the welter of triviality.
That is why a book like “The Four Worthys” is so necessary. Compiled by professional historian Barry Shurlock, with the assistance of the long-established Worthys Local History Group, the book had its origins in a dissertation for his MA in Book Design at Reading University by Tim Underwood who has worked for, and with, us for more than twenty years. It covers the villages in the Itchen Valley to the north of Winchester of Kings Worthy, Headbourne Worthy, Martyr Worthy, and Abbots Worthy. As Barry observes in his Introduction, there are few places in the country that have so much to tell! Or, because I am a secondhand book dealer and am familiar with local histories from all over the country, there are few places that have been so well researched and recorded, and few books that have been produced that are as well-considered and produced as this one.
The first part of the book looks at each of the villages in turn, and in particular their links to the River Itchen which flows through them all, and the selection of the images is carefully crafted to encapsulate as far as possible the historical development of the area. The second part of the book is thematic, as is often the case with local histories: chapters on Farming, Faith, Transport, Schools, and so on. Again, it is the flow of history that is emphasised, so that (apart from the section on railways!) it is not an exercise in nostalgia, as can so often be the case with this type of book, but a recognition that the moments that are being recorded in the images may be ephemeral but are also adding another layer to the accretion of the lives lived in these places.
Not included in the book is the fact that it was at a meeting in Abbots Worthy Mill, the home of Joyce and Raymond Hitchcock (who do feature in the book), in the spring of 1976 that the plans to disrupt the M3 Inquiry were hatched. The only record of that evening, which arguably changed the future route of the M3, is probably my diary entry.
“The Four Worthys” can be obtained from P & G Wells Booksellers: info@pgwells.co.uk
Twyford Rising: Land and Resistance by Helen Beynon with Chris Gilham (2020)
As dawn was breaking on April 10th 1992 I walked home from the Winchester count. A Conservative government had, rather unexpectedly, been re-elected. I looked out over the valley towards St. Catherine’s Hill, now scarred with a white gash into the chalk, and reflected bitterly that while governments come and go what was being done to this peerless bit of English landscape was forever.
This book tells the story of the campaign to stop the desecration – a tunnel would have cost little more and preserved much of the land of greatest ecological and landscape value (although that is to put the matter into Cost/Benefit terms which have no place in the ethos of this book.) It is a beautifully written narrative, into which are woven the recollections of the activists who placed their bodies in the way of the bulldozers. My only criticism is that the authors do not mention the history of militancy that already existed in Winchester from the attempt, fifteen years earlier, to build the motorway through the watermeadows.
For those who are interested and who have read this far I cannot do better than to quote Helen’s concluding paragraphs: “…what happened at Twyford was, arguably more than any other recent protest in the British Isles, not just for the land, but also of it. The events of 1992 and 1993 were almost unique amongst the road protests of the 1990s: not only did we still have our innocence and believe we could win, but a vital element was just being on the land, living with its rhythms and celebrating the place. The land cast a spell with its beauty, history and peace, with what seemed like the impossibility of losing it and the grief that followed.
Twyford Down became a byword for environmental protest, for the strength of the connection that can be forged between people and place. I have been to meetings and gatherings since where I hear people tell others of what happened on Twyford Down, even though they have only read of it, or heard tell. It seems presumptuous in those moments to step in and say, “I was there” and stake a claim on a legend.
Yes, Twyford Down richly deserves to be part of the legends of these Islands, for it is a lost land now, which once was filled with beauty and hope. Speaking the name alone should be a remembrance of why people speak up for wild places; why they find the courage and passion to take direct action.
This book is just part of the story, told in the words of just some of those who played a part in the tale and in the pictures or leaflets they made. Others will tell different stories, relate their part in the legend. Maybe Twyford Down is a story that will never end, for there will be more gatherings there, the name and the protests will continue to be evoked.
Opening hours
Weekdays
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Weekends
CLOSED
Contact
Phone
01962 854281
Address
22 Hyde Street, Winchester,
Hampshire SO23 7DR