VILLAGE histories roll off the press in a steady stream. They are obviously of major interest to people who live in the places featured. The New Hampshire Victoria County History Project is the prime mover, with several books (called ‘shorts’) already published and a number of others in the pipeline.

A recent newcomer published by the Andover History and Archaeology Society is Penton Mewsey: The History of a Hampshire Chalk Downland Parish, the first account of the place ever written. It tells the story of a charming small village lying alongside Penton Grafton, which borders Wiltshire and the parish of Foxcotte, as well as tiny parts of Abbotts Ann and Monxton.

In an act of great public altruism, the parish council has already purchased 145 copies and given a free copy to every household in the village.

Job done, you might think, but like many such histories Penton Mewsey is well worth reading by those who live elsewhere. For a start, it demonstrates how much the writing of local history has advanced in recent years and is a model for authors planning monographs on their own locality.

The book’s main qualities are that it is well organized, thoroughly researched, fully referenced, generously illustrated, with excellent maps, indexed and, above all, very readable.

This is to be expected from its author, John Isherwood, a retired Andover solicitor and former chairman of the Hampshire Archives Trust who at the age of 60 returned to Merton College, Oxford, where he had graduated nearly 40 years before, to study for a master’s in English Local History.

There are sections where John the lawyer explains aspects of local history in a clear and authoritative manner rarely found elsewhere. Hence ‘law and order’ gets a thorough treatment, including the origins of the hundred court and the somewhat muddled way in which justice was meted out– the manorial court, occasional JPs’ sessions, church courts and even proceedings under the law of the Forest of Chute.

Meagre court records that have survived for Penton Mewsey from the 1430s show it to have been a violent place, not unlike a present-day urban jungle, with personal assaults, knifings and verbal abuse. The village stocks were apparently in use until well into the 19th century, with a record of repairs in 1811.

An extraordinary case brought before Winchester Consistory Court in 1555 involved two men tried for breaking a law that forbade “fighting and quarreling in churches and churchyards”. In a violent fracas, one struck the other with a sword, for which he was given “the usual penalty of amputation of his ears”, but later saved by a royal pardon.

Small places struggled to get clergy who might foster civility. When the Bishop of Winchester Robert Horne visited Penton Mewsey a few years later he reported that the Hugh Tuncks the rector was unmarried, of ‘moderate learning’ and did not preach, though licensed to do so.

Tunks had been encouraged to marry his servant, allegedly a ‘maid’. Aged 70, he was less than enthusiastic and, caught up in the religious turmoil of the day, he told the court: “I am called [a] papist and so hooted at that now I am disposed to marry…”. Unsurprisingly, the ceremony never took place.

In 1804, when invasion by the French threatened the country, local inhabitants were not keen to volunteer for the militia. But as the squire explained in a letter to Warren Hastings – his former East India Company boss – there was a satisfactory conclusion.

“Neighbouring parishes are suspicious and very unwilling to assemble. I at length got them together and before we parted had the satisfaction of seeing them almost Mad with Patriotic Enthusiasm.”

In the mid-1800s the most active JP amongst the Andover magistrates was the Penton Mewsey rector Christopher Dodson, who had a merciless reputation. It was he who had presided over the scandalous Andover Workhouse, which was run like a penal colony by a former sergeant-major at Waterloo, with inmates so poorly fed that they ate gristle from bones being crushed for fertilizer.

The ‘big house’ in the village was Penton Lodge built in about 1760. An illustrious owner from 1852 was the engineering contractor William Cubitt, who with his brother Thomas built much of Bloomsbury for the Duke of Bedford. He was elected MP for Andover in 1847 and served until 1861, with another year of service before his death in 1863. In 1860-61 he had been Lord Mayor of London. He is sometimes confused with a contemporary namesake, the engineer Sir William Cubitt!

There are many traces of prehistoric settlements in this small village on the chalk, including Bronze Age barrows and Iron Age features. In recent years more have been discovered, including 17 ring ditches spotted from the air in 2002 and an Iron Age complex with a banjo enclosure revealed in a geophysical survey two years ago.

From about the 10th century Penton Mewsey settled into the sort of classic Hampshire village that grew up in many places on the downs, relying almost entirely on corn and sheep. Originally worked as open fields, the land was progressively enclosed and, as in many other places, agriculture changed over the centuries from strip farming to today’s huge farms with contract harvesting.

More change is now apparent. An Iron Age farming site will soon house a solar farm, one of two in the village, and the southern tip of the parish edges into Andover Business Park.

Penton Mewsey: The History of a Hampshire Chalk Downland Parish is a valuable example of the research and writing of local history which is being studied by the Hampshire Field Club in an ongoing project, ‘Celebrating Hampshire’s Historians’. Run by Dick Selwood, the aim is to put online profiles of those historians who over the years have made significant contributions to the story of the county.

Already the steady progress of successive generations of writers is apparent, each adding to the process that has led to books like Penton Mewsey. What is astonishing is the variety of individuals who have contributed, not only the obvious candidates – antiquarians, clergymen, travellers, archaeologists and suchlike – but librarians, bibliographers, archivists, book collectors, and now a solicitor.

Penton Mewsey owes much to the structure of the VCH shorts, but has the added dimension of a personal approach that is eminently readable and very well illustrated. Copies can be obtained from johnisherwood0@gmail.com and Andover Museum.

VCH shorts on Mapledurwell, Steventon, medieval Basingstoke, and Cliddesden, Hatch and Farleigh Wallop are available from: jeanmorrin@outlook.com.

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

barryshurlock@gmail.com.