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Alverstoke is a small settlement contiguous with the town of Gosport, on the south coast of Hampshire. It stretches east-west from Fort Blockhouse, Haslar to Browndown Battery, and is centred 0.5 miles (0.80 km) east of the shore of Stokes Bay and near the head of a creek which extends a mile westward from Portsmouth Harbour. Until the early 19th century, the parish of Alverstoke measured some 4.5 miles from north to south, and 2.5 miles from east to west, covering most of present-day Gosport. The parish still stretched north, adjoining Fareham and Titchfield parishes, south to the Solent, east as far as Portsmouth Harbour, and west to the parish of Rowner, into the 20th century. However, large parts of the north and east of the parish were split into separate parishes between 1840 and 1913. By 1932 Alverstoke was considered to be part of Gosport Municipal Borough and in that year absorbed both the civil parishes of Rowner and Lee on the Solent. In the late 19th century Alverstoke became built up, and some of the fields separating it from Gosport disappeared. Both parishes then formed part of an Urban District, which prevented the need for creation of a civil parish. Today, the ecclesiastical parish, which was once a large agricultural one containing the villages of Alverstoke and Gosport, comprises a smaller and mainly residential area now within the Borough of Gosport. By the early 19th century, as seaside towns became fashionable for polite society, an area known as Angleseyville was developed and named in honour of the Marquis of Anglesey. This new area was to contain a racecourse, chapel, baths and pumphouse, and genteel gardens, a hotel, and fine townhouses emulating the grand Georgian crescents of the day. Although the hotel was erected first, such that purchasers could see what would be built, the scheme overall was not a financial success, and was therefore only partially completed. Its St. Mark's Chapel had never become more than a chapel of ease to the local parish church only a quarter of a mile away, and was demolished by the early 20th century. Nonetheless, its small burial plot still contains 261 known burials, including many with high society connections: nine admirals, eight generals, two baronets, and various members of the Churchill, Nelson, Jellicoe, Walpole and Bonham-Carter families (and which started being used as a graveyard even before the chapel's dedication). [edit] Research Tips
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