ALTHOUGH many resist the idea that hard copy print products – call them books! - are on the way out, there are obvious advantages with digital files.

Whereas, for example, sourcing Anglo-Saxon charters once required a dusty encounter in an academic library, much can now be achieved online from the ‘electronic Sawyer’, a version of Peter Sawyer’s annotated list and bibliography, hosted at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College, London.

The charters themselves, however, are published in a mammoth 30-volume operation by Oxford University Press. Sean Miller’s Charters of the New Minster (later Hyde Abbey) has been in print since 2001 and covers 34 pre-Conquest documents, including the will of Alfred the Great.

More than 1100 years ago Alfred’s son Edward the Elder gave the village of Micheldever and a fishery to the New Minster, which had been built alongside the Saxon cathedral to take the remains of Alfred and his wife. It was part of a generous endowment.

Interestingly, in the early 11th century the monks of the New Minster ‘just to be sure’ made a forgery of the charter that granted Micheldever to the monastery. Called ‘Sawyer 360’ it is now in the archives of Winchester College.

So started a long association of Micheldever and surrounding areas - stretching down to Abbots Worthy - with Hyde Abbey that lasted until the dissolution. The estate was then bought by Thomas Wriothesley, later the 1st Earl of Southampton, a powerful land-grabbing lawyer who eventually chose to live in Titchfield Abbey, where the impressive ruins of Place House still stand.

The aristocratic ‘seat’ in the area did not in fact end up in Micheldever, but on the site of the abbey grange in nearby East Stratton, where the long story of the earls of Southampton, the dukes of Bedford and most recently the merchant banker family of Baring unfolded over 400 years.

It is a fascinating and intriguing story that was carefully and lovingly researched nearly a century ago by the Rev. Alfred Milner, whose History of Micheldever is so rare that when it appears online it can cost £100. He was prompted to write the book after receiving a message early in his term which read: “Micheldever is the old home of my wife’s people; please scrub their tombs.”

Milner lived at the tail-end of a world in which professional men such as clergymen and doctors had the learning and the time to apply themselves to impressive works of local history. Another example portrayed in John Isherwood’s paper published by the Hampshire Field Club is Dr Joseph Stevens of St Mary Bourne, who went on to be the first curator of Reading Museum.

Milner’s great asset was that he was able to hide his learning and the History of Micheldever is a good read. Many people will therefore be delighted to learn that instead of shelling out £100 they can now read the book for £10 by buying a password-protected PDF (suebell0906@gmail.com).

The book has been scanned for reading on a tablet or laptop by Stephen Bowman and Tim Underwood for the Dever Valley Local History Society and the Micheldever Station 180 Group, whose celebration to toast the anniversary of rail arriving in the village was cut short by the pandemic (though it is planned to be held in May next year).

The new digital edition is dedicated to Peter Clarke, who lived for many years in Wonston and more recently in Alresford, author of Parsons and Prawns, the story of Micheldever station, and Dever and Down, a history of the villages along the Dever Valley.

An interest must be declared: East Stratton local historian Patrick Craze and I have written a new introduction. The book is made available to stimulate research beyond its cut-off point of 1800 and to add to its findings with the many archives and other resources now accessible.

Milner writes about the various families who held important places in the village – the Stansbys, Clerkes, Bristows, and the maverick Henry Massue de Ruvigny, who sacrificed his estates in France but did rather well in England, where he was created Viscount Galway. And there is the mysterious Benjamin Whitaker, Chief Justice of South Carolina, whose life probably needs further investigation.

Especially valuable parts of the book include village plans of 1730 and a record of the procedure for holding local courts, recorded on the back of one of the rolls by the steward. These were the Court Leet of the Micheldever Hundred with its grand jury and the Court Baron of the Manor of East Stratton with its homage jury of local residents.

Milner’s History of Micheldever is not alone in being a candidate for an e-stocking. Another book now hard to find is Andrew Rutter’s Winchester: Heart of a City, sponsored by Winchester City Trust and published in 2009 by P & G Wells. It is a personal account of the buildings of the city based on 24 years working for the Hampshire County Council and a ‘conservation area appraisal’ carried out in 1997.

Winchester: Heart of a City can be tucked into anyone’s e-stocking for £15 by visiting: www.cityofwinchestertrust.co.uk. Downloaded onto a tablet it can be searched and act as a constant companion on the streets of the city. Another valuable candidate to make the e-stocking really bulge is The Land of the English Kin, a study of Wessex and Anglo-Saxon England published this year to honour the work of Professor Barbara Yorke, recently retired from Winchester University.

This fascinating tome edited by Alex Langlands and Ryan Lavelle casts huge amounts of light on what used to be the Dark Ages and can be downloaded free (yes!) from https://brill.com/view/title/35112. Amongst many other things, it presents Micheldever as one of the river-based royal territories that formed the basis of early medieval administration.

For more on Hampshire, visit: www.hampshirearchivestrust.co.uk.

barryshurlock@gmail.com.