Architecture and Artefacts

Norman Churches

Norman doorway in Easton church Hampshire

Hampshire is blessed with magnificent Norman churches whose wide arches are beautifully decorated with all manner of carving and whose fonts are square and strong.

Bramley Church Wall Paintings

The Bramley church of St James has the most magnificent Medieval wall paintings, hidden from view for nearly 300 years beneath a lime wash, they are simply beautiful.

Eastney Pumping Station

The Eastney Pumping Station in Portsmouth is a wonderful example of Victorian engineering, housing a Watts Boulton steam beam engine. It now operates as a museum.

Bishop Fox is a man little discussed when it comes to the Tudors but he was a great statesman and ultimately Bishop of Winchester in 1501, serving under the two great Tudor monarchs King Henry VII and King Henry VIII.

Winchester Palace Southwark

Winchester Palace in Southwark was the London home of the Bishops of Winchester from the 12th to the 17th century.

Agincourt and Michelmersh

Agincourt and Michelmersh The 12th/13th Century church of St Mary’s in Michelmersh would have looked out over the adjacent field, filled with the soldiers and archers who would be accompanying King Henry V to battle at Agincourt. Scattered in fields and villages north of Southampton, King Henry V started to gather his troops, ready to…

William of Wykeham

William of Wykeham, born a humble man in the market town of Wickham Hampshire, he became Chancellor of England twice and Bishop of Winchester. He founded Winchester College and New College Oxford.

Baptismal Font Odiham

The church of All Saints Odiham has a lovely round 13th century font

Margaret Beauchamp

Margaret Beauchamp, who became Margaret Beaufort, was grandmother to King Henry VII and two hundred years after her death is remembered in a Hampshire church in Farley Chamberlayne.

John Buckett’s Headstone

The John Buckett headstone in the old church yard in Stockbridge is as full of character as the man in whose honour it was raised.

Portchester Castle

Portchester Castle is breathtakingly beautiful, sitting on the northern shore of Portsmouth Harbour. Its Roman walls and bastions are as imposing today as they must have appeared seventeen hundred years ago.

The Tichborne Family Chapel

The Tichborne family chapel in the church of St Andrew’s Tichborne is a rare survivor of a Roman Catholic in a pre-reformation church. It has a very different look to the rest of the church.

Site of William the Conqueror’s Palace

William the Conqueror's Palace Winchester

Stroll up a tiny alley way in Winchester to see a vestige of what once was the site of William the Conqueror’s palace and a little way along the church of St Lawrence where his chapel once stood.

Marc Brunel in Portsmouth

The incredible engineers, the Brunels, father and son are in-extrinsically linked to Portsmouth through deed and birth Marc Isambard Brunel was a frenchman who fled the French Revolution and in 1793, fled to America and became chief engineer of New York City. By 1799 he had married Sophia Kingdom and they had three children, Sophia,…