Place:Ellingham, Hampshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Ellingham is a small village near Ringwood in Hampshire, England, west of the New Forest National Park. Ellingham is most famous for the story of Alice Lisle, who was executed by the infamous Judge Jeffreys in 1685, on the charge of harbouring fugitives after the defeat of the Monmouth Rebellion.

The parish contains the hamlet of Rockford. The village and surrounding countryside are a large tourist attraction in the summer months. Much of the area around Ellingham was once farmland and woodland, but since the 1950s sand and gravel extraction has created a series of lakes known collectively as Blashford Lakes.

Ellingham was a civil parish until 1974, when the parish was amalgamated with the parishes of Harbridge and Ibsley within the New Forest District of Hampshire.

Ellingham remained in the Lisle family until the death of Charles Lisle, who died unmarried in 1818. His nephew Edward Hayles Taylor, who took the name of Lisle in 1822, sold the manor soon afterwards to the Earl of Normanton, whose family seat was (and still is) at nearby Somerley.

Rockford (Moyles Court)

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Moyles Court, the manor at Rockford, from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"MOYLES COURT, an old mansion, now a farm-house, in Ellingham parish, Hants; among wooded hills, 3 miles N of Ringwood. It was the seat of the Lisles, one of whom, Col. Lisle, was one of the judges on the trial of Charles I.; and it gave shelter to certain fugitives from the field of Sedgemoor, at the hand of the Colonel's widow, Lady Lisle, who, for that act, though herself of undoubted loyalty, was condemned to death at Winchester by Judge Jeffreys. Her story is graphically toldin Lord Macauley's " History of England;" and is the subject of a fresco in the new palace of Westminster, where she is represented concealing the fugitives. A monument of her is in Ellingham churchyard."

Research Tips

• Victoria County History of Hampshire, volume 4, chapter on Ellingham.
• 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