Place:Stratfield Saye, Hampshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Stratfield Saye is a village and civil parish in the Basingstoke and Deane District of Hampshire. The parish includes the hamlets of West End Green, Fair Oak Green and Fair Cross. Beech Hill in Berkshire was a chapelry of Stratfield Saye.

The name means "Street-Field of the Saye family", the street being the "Devil's Highway", the Roman road from London to Silchester which forms the northern parish boundary.

Stratfield Saye House was built around 1630 as the Pitt family home, from fortunes made by Thomas Pitt (1653-1726). His grandson and great-grandson, William Pitt the Elder and William Pitt the Younger, both became famous Prime Ministers of Great Britain in the late 18th century. It has been the home of the Dukes of Wellington since 1817.

The parish church, near the house, is an unusual domed Georgian building with the plan of a Greek Cross. It contains memorials to the Barons Rivers and to most of the Dukes of Wellington, except the famous first duke. His hatchment may, however, be seen.

Some older sources use the alternative spellings Strathfieldsaye, Stratford Saye, and Stratford Sea.

Research Tips

• GENUKI has a list of archive holders in Hampshire including the Hampshire Record Office, various museums in Portsmouth and Southhampton, the Isle of Wight Record Office and Archives.
• The Hampshire Online Parish Clerk project has a large collection of transcriptions from Parish Registers across Hampshire.
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 together with tables listing the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered, along with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. Do respect the copyright on this material.
• The three-storey City Museum in Winchester covers the Iron Age and Roman periods, the Middle Ages, and the Victorian period.
• Volumes in The Victoria County History Series are available for Hampshire through British History Online. There are three volumes and the county is covered by parishes within the old divisions of "hundreds".

A collection of maps on the A Vision of Britain through Time website illustrating the English county of Hampshire over the period 1832-1932 (the last two are expandible):

• The Hundreds of Hampshire, a map from HMSO Boundary Commissioners, dated 1832
• Hampshire showing parishes in their Rural Districts as of 1900, a map from the Ordnance Survey
• Hampshire showing parishes in their Rural Districts after the alterations of 1932, a map from the Ordnance Survey

• A group of maps of the post-1974 municipal districts or boroughs of Hampshire on Wikipedia Commons