The Moniton trading estate at Worting is a collection of small companies, some at the beginning of their lives, hoping to grow and become larger, repeating the history of what happened on this site in 1926 when Auto Tyre Services was formed, a small tyre company with dreams of becoming larger and more successful.
Following my investigations into the street names of Basingstoke, they have led me to the name of Walter de Merton, the namesake of Merton Road in South View. Unfortunately, there is little information about the birthplace of Walter except that it was possible that he was born in Basingstoke as his family were landowners in the area, and that he was educated in Merton, Surrey; but - there is a lot of information of his life.
Woolworths! A name that everyone knew with a branch on every high street in Britain and abroad. A typical story of ‘from small acorns large Oak trees grow’. Two brothers, Frank Winfield aka ‘The Merchant Prince’ and Charles Sumner aka ‘Sum’, created, perhaps, the largest business empire in history with over 5,000 stores around the world,
Music teachers throughout the world are familiar with the musical notation method of sight-singing tuition called Tonic Sol-Fa, brought to the attention of the public in The Sound of Music with Julie Andrews as Maria teaching the Von Trapp children the rudiments of music with the song Do-Re-Me.
Many aspects of the area and its traditions go back a long way in history but not many are as historic as the Overton Sheep Fair now held four yearly.
Preston Candover lies on the B3046 on the southern edge of the catchment area for The Basingstoke Gazette. It is not often mentioned as part of Basingstoke history, but I would like to highlight a particularly interesting small church in the heart of the village.
On entering Tadley from Basingstoke on the A340 a rather simple chapel building comes into view, at the rear of a graveyard, which looks rather like a small single-story house. In fact, that is exactly what it was designed to be - a chapel disguised as a house.
With Hampshire being a principal hop growing county and a major brewery situated in Basingstoke since 1751, that of John May & Co, it comes as no surprise that at the time of the 1911 census, and a population of only 11,540 people, there was a total of fifty-three pubs in the Basingstoke area.
IN THIS final week of looking into interesting facts in the book The Making of Basingstoke by Eric Stokes, we look at the typhoid epidemic of 1905.
In this second week looking at the local history book The Making of Basingstoke by Eric Stokes we travel to the recorded details of trades in the 15th century. The book divides these into five sections:
