This thesis has adopted a methodology that few others within the field of urban-historical geography have implemented. The application of a Geographical Informnation System (GIS) to the examination of the chosen data has allowed a raft of analytical techniques to be employed. These are used to examine both the functional and morphological structure of the city - two elements usually considered in isolation - and explore possible causative factors relating to its development. Particularly useful in this examination are trade directories which provide a data source that to a large extent, has been overlooked within academic research. The detail of information they contain allows them to be linked to complementary material such as rate books and Ordnance Survey maps. This rich archive forms the basis of three period pictures that this research has developed to gain insight into the city of Winchester during the twentieth century. The study recognises and attributes change to a number of operators including religion, monarchy and military. The emergence of a further dominant influence, the planning system, is clearly illustrated by its impact on the towns cape of the city and the functions which lined its streets. Mapping rateable values illustrates that low value areas, predominantly residential, were fundamentally influenced during the study period. The redevelopment of these sites proved instrumental in allowing the historic core to develop into a Central Business District (CBD). The implications of this decision have been explored, as many functions were dependant on this residential population.

The value of property studies of a considerable time span is undisputed and yet such investigations are rare. Keene's Survey of Medieval Winchester is a notable exception. That project focused on the medieval period and ended in 1550 and so remained divorced from the present experience. This thesis brings the study of property histories into immediate relevance by bridging the early modem and modern period and by formulating a blueprint methodology for the study of property histories. The methodology has been tempered by application to a sizeable case study: all the properties in Winchester High Street. These tenement histories form an appendix. This study has great relevance to the study of other local and urban historical environments. Winchester High Street was the backbone of Hampshire's county town, both economically and topographically. The interrelationship between its structures and their use has been explored using a range of methodological approaches. The successful linkage of primary source material has established shifting occupational and spatial trends over a long time span.

By the beginning of the fourteenth century, the class of landlord pre-eminent in the localities were the knights and esquires. Much debate has occurred over whether these lords were primarily identified as a county elite or whether the county is a false construct. This thesis proposes that the knights and esquires resident and with primary interests in Hampshire formed a landed and political community within a county of communities. They were a close-knit group of some fifty families who held the major county offices sometimes for many generations and formed marriage alliances within their group. The nature of this community was determined by the domination of the county by the WinchesterB ishopric and other ecclesiasticallo rds who held the richeste statesa nd had done so since before the Conquest and would continue to do so until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. There were no great estates belonging to the crown or to the nobility in Hampshire. As a result of this pattern of landholding, many landowners looked to the counties bordering Hampshire, particularly Wiltshire, and this fostered a regional, rather than purely county, outlook. The resident knights and esquires co-existed with other communities in the county. Many landholders with knightly status had estates in Hampshire even though they were based in other counties. Most of them did not hold office in Hampshire, but nevertheless formed a permanent presence alongside those resident lords. These lords had estates from all over England, though most from neighbouring counties, reinforcing the regional, rather than county, outlook most landlords had. This thesis covers two centuries. Continuity is a key theme. The long view illustrates how important heiressesw ere to the survival andd ispersalo f the family estate.I n line with nationalt rends,t he numberso f Hampshirek nights and esquiresd ecreaseds; everal estates suffered dispersal. The resultant parcels of land were not enough to support knightly status. Dispersal and wastage were not, however, means by which outsiders and self-made men could enter this county community. With very few exceptions, most of the familiesa t the start of the sixteenthc entury owed their statust o marriagesb ased on social parity and careful accumulation. The wealthiest estate remained in the hands of the Church; buyers could not amass and maintain blocs of territory. This ended when the Dissolution of the Monasteries opened up the land market and the nature of Hampshire landed society changed irrevocably.

The pipe rolls of the bishopric of Winchester not only impart in-depth detail about England's wealthiest see in the Middle Ages, but also provide an account of the demographic, economic and social conditions on the estate. This thesis examines evidence from the pipe roll of 1348-9 for the impact of the plague on seventeen Hampshire units of account of the bishopric of Winchester. The work has involved both interpretation and analysis of the pipe roll: its physical appearance, palaeography and subject matter within the text, the findings of which can be found in chapters one and two. By using other pipe rolls of the bishopric of Winchester both before and after 1348-9 the work also compares and contrasts. This analysis focuses specifically upon information relating to the plague of 1348-9, and assesses the immediate impact of the Black Death on Hampshire. The work begins by exploring the pipe roll as a historical document, combined with a review of previous historical writings on the Black Death. This review is followed by an investigation of the physical aspects of the pipe roll as well as the financial and administrative structure of the account. Chapter three assesses the number of heriots received and debates their value for measuring mortality. Chapter four addresses the Black Death's influence on wages as well as other forms of remuneration, while chapter five considers the impact of the Black Death upon both marriage and entry fines. Chapter six addresses the fair of St Giles and the influence of the Black Death upon the bishop's income received from the fair. The Conclusion establishes that the pipe roll supports the hypothesis that the bishopric of Winchester was profoundly affected by the arrival of the Black Death in 1348 and that this has implications for the broader analysis of the impact of the plague in the fourteenth century. Study of the pipe roll of 1348-9 has therefore enabled this work to assess, for the first time, the effects of the Black Death upon seventeen units of account on the Hampshire estate.

This thesis contributes new and unique evidence to the debates surrounding population changes in late medieval England. Through the use of documentary evidence it investigates both mortality and life expectancy rates of the students of Winchester College and New College, Oxford, from 1393 - 1540. In so doing it provides the largest single closed population group examined to date for this period and, importantly, the first sample to follow the experiences of children and adolescents. Source materials are analysed, with particular attention paid to their applicability to the study. Research methodology is also considered, in particular database construction and design, essential parts of the manipulation and analysis of such a large dataset. The records of the two colleges are examined in detail, and analyses presented focusing on the admission rates, departure information and mortality rates within each institution. The latter identified changes across the study period and also possible correlations with national disease outbreaks. Analyses of age data for the scholars contribute valuable interpretations of how the two institutions functioned over the course of the study period and how their administrative practices responded to changing mortality patterns and recruitment demands. Life expectancy rates for the scholars are calculated and analysed. Significantly the life expectancy rates of the Winchester sample demonstrate a better experience than that of previously published monastic samples. The Winchester sample follows scholars out into the wider medieval population (post-education), perhaps providing data that is more representative of the wider community than the monastic studies. Interpretations support the hypothesis that underlying mortality patterns were the cause of changes in life expectancy, and that these patterns were likely to be observed across the population. The conclusions from this large and original dataset are placed within the context of the wider historiographical debates. The need for new, relevant and more diverse samples is emphasised to advance the interpretations of population changes and the economic and social history of late medieval England.

This thesis has been designed to provide a close examination of protest in central southern England over the fifty years between the Gordon riots of 1780 and the Swing unrest of 1830-31. It is limited in area to the counties of Hampshire and Wiltshire where, apart from certain specialised studies, research into protest has not been extensive. This geographical area encompasses a variety of economies both agricultural and industrial; all affected by war abroad, an increasing population, and new technology and changing work and social relations at home. Over the last fifty years, the study of 'history from below' has largely been the province of left wing historians. This thesis has considered social relationships and the changes brought, from a neutral standpoint, where incidents of protest have been assessed in the light of their time and place rather than from any ideological position. The research has employed a diverse selection of sources, with a qualitative and quantitative approach being employed. It has been structured to initially analyse the three main reasons for protest: economic, social and ideological. It has then taken a concentrated period of the seven years between 1797 and 1803, and examined all forms of protest in Hampshire and Wiltshire over a shorter and crucial time. Finally, protest in and around one market town, Marlborough, has been extensively analysed to show the changing inter-relationships of town, rural hinterland and aristocratic estate. The conclusions reached, as well as highlighting a largely neglected area of research, contribute to an understanding of the later industrial protest in the midlands and north of England from 1811, as well as providing context for the major unrest of the Swing riots of 1830-31.

This project involves the study of bastard feudalism on the estates of the bishopric of Winchester in the period 1280-1530. Among the many theses and books on late medieval noble families and on county communities none has been so well-documented as the bishopric of Winchester. No county that was dominated by the Church has yet been studied. To date, work on ecclesiastical estates has not concerned itself with their political significance. Yet Winchester was the greatest and best recorded episcopal estate, with many parallels, and there were other counties such as Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, and Kent, also dominated by the Church. The thesis builds on modem work on the nobility and bastard feudalism. The ecclesiastical patronage of the bishops has been analysed for the whole of the period covered by this study. The main part of the study, however, is based on the bishops' piperolls and account books, which survive almost without interruption from 1208 and form a resource of unparalleled richness and bulk. The changing nature of the estate administration has been discussed at length. The study has concerned itself with the identity and remuneration of officers, with leaseholders and with annuitants. It suggests that the bishops clearly were bastard feudal lords, even if their use of retaining practices was not quite the same as the lay nobility. This material has been compared with evidence oflocal office-holding in order to build up a picture of the bishops' power in central southern England. The bishops retained many local officers. The records of the central courts have been sampled to establish how frequently the bishop sued offending tenants and officers. The thesis thus contributes to regional history, to the understanding of bastard feudalism itself, and to the role of ecclesiastical landowners. Finally, it tests the hypothesis that bishops evolved during the middle ages, from being major magnates akin to the lay nobility into the renders oflands that were exploited for financial and political gain by the local aristocracy who appropriated the patronage, manpower, and resources for themselves. Such developments are clearly observable on the Winchester estate before the Reformation, and presaged the major changes that were to come during the second half of the sixteenth century.

This thesis demonstrates that experiences of Protestant dissenters in the period from c. 1640-c.1740 were of significant importance in the religious history of Hampshire. Modern scholarship has overlooked the value of Hampshire as a case study of Protestant nonconformity in the period, and this thesis therefore represents a major contribution to an understanding of provincial dissent in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The thesis demonstrates the extent of dissatisfaction with the national church in the period 1640 to 1660. This period also saw the rise of radical religious groups, whose success in the county is examined. After the Restoration, persecution of dissenters became widespread, with occurrences often influenced by national events and legislation. But a close examination of the Hampshire evidence shows variations in the persecution of dissent across the county, due to local factors. Hampshire’s dissenters represented a significant minority in the population of the county, but no previous study has demonstrated how the distribution of dissent varied throughout the county. The distribution appears to have been influenced by many factors, but, in Hampshire as elsewhere, dissent was strong in towns, increasingly so in the eighteenth century. Previous studies of the social status of dissenters have not encompassed Hampshire, so this study makes an important contribution to existing analyses of social status by examining the evidence to demonstrate that the county’s dissenters were of the ‘middling sort’, but that this status did broaden in the years following Toleration. The experience of Hampshire dissenters after the Toleration Act has not been the subject of extensive study. This thesis examines unused sources to show how far the county’s dissenters were affected by external challenges from the Anglican church and by internal controversies. The conclusion is that Hampshire’s overall experience of dissent was influenced in some respects by national events, but at the same time not inevitably swayed by them.

This thesis will explore the theme of travel and communication in early medieval Wessex by examining the physical means, the routes of communication, by which people, ideas and goods moved through the landscape. Whilst there is good evidence for the distribution of Anglo-Saxon type-sites in the landscape, such as towns, manors, wics, assembly places and churches, of the thoroughfares that connected these places, their character and function, relatively little is known. There is as yet no document that sets out the map of Anglo-Saxon roads for Wessex. Employing the rich topographical data that survives in Anglo-Saxon charter boundary clauses, this research project sets about reconstructing aspects of the early medieval route network in ten case-study areas from Hampshire, Devon, Dorset and Wiltshire. The project addresses a number of issues that arise out of the boundary clause evidence. These include critically assessing the role the Roman road network played in the seventh to eleventh centuries and developing an understanding of the hierarchy of routes that had emerged by the tenth century. The impact of improved river crossings is also considered as a factor in the development of the route network, along with the manner in which routes were signposted and inscribed and how access through the landscape was controlled. Finally, the thesis addresses elements of how the nexus of communications changed to reflect developments in the early medieval economy and the concomitant shift in the patterns of trade.

This study of Sparsholt village concentrates on the period from 1841 to 1901, using the decennial Census Enumerators' Books (CEBs). Sparsholt, population around 400 post-1850, is about three miles (five kilometres) northwest of Winchester in the Hampshire downlands, a region of arable farming. For most of the century there were just two major landowners, the Dean and Chapter of Winchester Cathedral and the Hervey Bathurst family of Clarendon Park, Wiltshire; both absentee. In that respect, Sparsholt was therefore neither a typical 'open' nor 'closed' village. The thesis demonstrates that meaningful findings can be obtained with a village having a population of under 500 in 1901, an important issue as the populations of 61.5% of villages in England and Wales were so sized. These results are achieved by linking data from the seven CEBs to a wide range of other local and national sources, considering particularly the impact of the agricultural recession in the last quarter of the century. In contrast, most CEB-based rural studies examine much larger communities, but investigate only one to four CEBs at most, make less in-depth use of other sources and generally do not cover the period of the agricultural recession. In developing Sparsholt's microhistory, the study initially tracks its demographic profile and occupations from the CEBs, and then models its changing socio-economic structure by using other sources and analytical approaches. The latter is achieved by relocating the population found in the 1851 CEB on to contemporary tithe maps and then following the development of each of the main farms and trade or craft businesses and the owners thereof for the rest of the century. Clear evidence is found for the impact of the agricultural recession in the last two decades of the century. The effect is seen through the increase in the average age, changing gender balance and widening birthplace profile of the village. There was also a greater variety of occupations pursued and a progressive consolidation of farmland into the hands of major landowners, who were not traditionally farmers, as historical farmers and owners exited the business. Additionally, increasing democratisation in the village's affairs is observed through electoral enfranchisement and successful trades or craftsmen largely replacing the earlier land-owning farmers in the administrative activities of the village.