Basingstoke flashback: Brookvale history – dating back to 1659

It’s quite unusual to have a good history of land these days but if you have your deeds then they may go back far into history. This article looks at the area where the housing development of Queens Road, Alexandra Road and others in Brookvale began.

The deeds which I have seen, refer to a  piece of land between Highfield Chase in Worting Road and BCOT north side. This land was bought by builder Henry Mundy in 1903. The then vendor was John Mares, a well-known businessman of the time, with a clothing manufactory in New Road (south of Joices Yard), much of which survives today and is turned into flats. 

John Mares' 'Peltinvain' raincoat (Image: .)

John Mares had become the owner of the land in 1899 purchased for £2,100 from the trustees of the will of the late George Lamb of Worting. The then trustees were  Wyndham Spencer Portal from Laverstoke Park,  George’s widow  Margaret Lamb and sons,  Thomas of Worting and George Henry of Knightsbridge House, Kingsclere.

READ MORE: Basingstoke Flashback: Down Grange's sporting life

The land was a little over 10 acres bounded on the north by land belonging to Samuel Bircham and the LSWR  and Lower Brook Street and on the west by Dr Hawkesley Roche Hayes and to the east, the trustees of Queen Mary’s School.

These two sites help us – Dr Hayes lived at Highfield House, whose lands extended from Deep Lane to where Highfield Chase is today and on the other side, BCOT, the north side is where Queen Mary’s Grammar School was before its move to the new premises in Vyne Road in 1940 (now the Vyne School).

Land between Deep Lane and Queen Mary's Grammar School (Image: .)

The Manor House in Winchester Road, which John Mares built. (Image: .)

This land was then all pasture. Deep Lane is an ancient track that George Willis says ‘joined the upper and lower ways’. It was important to have alternative routes when the Loddon valley was soggy.

But the trail of the land can be traced back further. As long ago as 1659 three people, all called Reeve so possibly two brothers and their sister; Richard, Johann (Joan), and Lawrence are all cited as owners of two and a half acres in the field known as Salisbury Field.

1762 Map showing Salisbury Field and Deep Lane. (Image: .)

One hundred years later the land is referred to in connection with the Enclosures Act of the 26th year of the reign of King George III, which is 1764 or close to it. The Enclosures are a very significant moment in how ordinary people subsisted on the food and livestock which they grew and pastured.  It meant that townspeople, who had wide strips of land in various fields surrounding the town – Salisbury Field was just one of these – lost their land, which was bought up promptly by either wealthy landowners or aspiring local businessmen.

The 1762 map of the town shows how the land has been acquired by the ‘squirearchy’ – Lord Limington [sic], Esquire Limbrey, and others,  with three large fields belonging to ‘Oxon’ College. This will probably be Merton College, Oxford. At that time, it was evident that the Oxford colleges were significant land buyers during the Enclosures. Even today, Merton College is one of the largest landowners in the country. 

New flats in the Mares factory complex today. (Image: Newsquest)

Commissioners were appointed to oversee the ‘sharing out’ of land. Basingstoke’s wealthiest men ended up with over half of the parish, with smaller allotments, as they were called, to local men such as Doctors John Covey and John Lyford, and the May family of brewers.  Pembroke College, Oxford had 215 acres. The total acreage surveyed by the Commissioners was 3,519 acres 3 roods and 8 perches (about 1424 hectares, I think!).

Quite how it came into the hands of  George Lamb and eventually his heirs,  is fudged in lovely legal language “, and reciting that by divers means assignments and other acts in the law deaths of parties and other intervening circumstances and events”  but that was sufficient.

On George Lamb’s death, the land was willed in trust to his sons John Workman Lamb, a fine cricketer apparently! and to George Henry Lamb,  and to George Lamb’s daughters, Jemima, Eliza, and grandchildren.  George Henry Lamb was a soldier and active in the Crimean War, a Knight of the Legion of Honour in the 49th Regiment of Foot who fought at Inkerman and Sebastopol. He lived at Kingsclere.

Next week – who built  Brookvale?