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Around New MiltonUseful informationRegistered charity no. 1105860 |
ABOUT NEW MILTONNew Milton is a town of over 23,000 people situated on the south coast of England, almost directly inland from the western tip of the Isle of Wight. The seaside resort of Bournemouth lies ten miles to the west and the major port of Southampton twenty miles to the north east. The villages of Milton, Ashley and Barton have, over the years, expanded until they now form the town of New Milton.
New Milton Town Council is responsible for maintenance of most of the open spaces within the town. It has developed excellent sporting facilities, including the recently opened Fernhill Cricket ground and the magnificent Fawcetts Field Sports Ground, over the last few years. Fawcetts Field, which is the home of the local football club, also houses athletics facilities. It is also a great place to just take a stroll, and enjoy the clean local air. These facilities were developed, at no cost to local residents, by making use of developer's contributions. The woodland areas in our care are very maintained to high standards to ensure their natural beauty is preserved for the benefit of all. New Milton is relatively young, the present town centre evolving from the coming of the railway to Milton in 1886, and we celebrated New Milton's Centenary in 1996 with a full programme of events The Town Council offices may be contacted by telephone on (01425) 619120. Ex-patriot Miltonians may like to view an online record of New Milton and its surrounding areas in old and new photographs. HISTORY OF NEW MILTONAlthough New Milton celebrated its Centenary in 1996, the land on which it stands has a much older history, It was the arrival of the railway station in 1896 which created a geographical and topographical shift, as the older hamlet of Milton moved gradually and almost imperceptibly north and east to reflect the tide of progress and prosperity. The early yearsThe area is remarkable in that, within one parish, there has been found evidence of almost every period of pre-history. The Roman army of General Vespasian was certainly in the area around 43AD, and various Roman relics have been found locally. Hunting, fishing and farming were the obvious means of livelihood of the Germanic inhabitants of the area during Milton's first millennium. Milton and its surrounding villages and manors were listed in the Domesday Book (1086). The name Milton derives from Middletune, meaning middle farm. The Jutish or Saxon settlement was in the midst of other tuns, namely Barton, Wootton, Chewton and Becton. Milton is one of only a handful of Hampshire villages with a storehouse of mediaeval deeds. For this we must thank John Fromond, owner of a scattered estate centered on Fernhill, which he bequeathed to Winchester College in 1445, along with documents which take local history back to around 1200. A church, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene and linked with Christchurch Priory was built at Milton in approximately 1260. Parish records date from 1654, less than a decade after the end of the Civil War, when Milton had been caught between the conflicting loyalties of Royalist Christchurch and Republican Lymington. The compilation of Forest Claims in 1670 was a source of importance for identifying local landlords and farmers. From 1708 there are records of settlement orders concerning the poor, apprenticeship indentures and bastardy orders. Poor Law records date from 1760, with lists of overseers and churchwardens from that time, and giving details of the rates paid by each landowner, and how the money was spent. A Poor House was built in the 1790s, to be destroyed by fire only a couple of years later. Its replacement was built, apparently a few paces east of the existing George Inn at Milton Green, and the remaining parts of this building were removed as recently as 1984. Children from this Poor House were employed at a cottage in nearby Chewton between 1806 and 1818, making tiny chains for the insides of watches. Many local men undoubtedly tried to eke out a meagre existence by particpating in illicit poaching and the landing of smuggled goods. In 1780 the local Customs & Excise Officer, Mr Bursey, was murdered at his Chewton cottage by smugglers. The author Captain Marryat visited the area in 1821, and may have extolled its virtues to his brother who was in the army. The Captain's brother subsequently bought Chewton Glen House, where the author's Children of the New Forest was written. The Chewton Glen is now one of the most prestigious hotels in the country. Smuggling continued to be a menace well into the 1860s, when Coastguard Cottages were built at Barton.
Milton grows
The population at the first census (1801) was only 522, including possibly
100 living west of Chewton stream, but by 1881, with the Chewton area excluded,
the population had grown to 1,489. Roughly 100 years later it has risen
to around 23,000. The 1841 census provided much information for local historians,
giving names, ages and occupations of everyone living in the parish. In
1843 just over 100 fields were handed over to the newly created parish
of Highcliffe. The railway arrived in 1847 at Christchurch Road (later Holmsley), then the nearest stop to the developing and fashionable town of Bournemouth, but Milton was to wait a further forty years before it joined the railway network. Milton Station was built on the new main line to Bournemouth in 1886, seeing its first train in 1888.
Some highlights of the last 100 years
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Bashley
village (pictured at the turn of the century) situated on the town's
northern boundary lies within the New Forest Heritage Area and still
remains a quiet rural village. The cliffs at Barton-on-Sea are world
famous, in the archaeological field for the fossils which are to be found
in the clay there, dating from 40-50 million years ago. Read a short
history of New Milton below, based on the original writings of our local
historian, Arthur Lloyd.
The present Church of St Mary Magdalene, dating (apart from its Stuart
tower) from the 1830s, replaced the mediaeval church. In the porch there
is a staged effigy of Dorset soldier Thomas White, along with his actual
sword. The new brick nave, Gothic windows and chancel cost £2,000,
but less than 100 years later the chancel was entirely reformed with a
barrel vault. A northern side aisle, incorporating in its windows the rounded
shape of the chancel with the Gothic of the rest of the nave, was added
in 1959. Although it's likely that the church and various nonconformist
Sunday schools existed in the parish before 1800, the first record of day
schools is in 1833, when five such schools (presumably dame schools
in cottages) were known.
This was the area west of Chewton Bunny as far as Belvedere
Mansion (replaced by Wolhayes), which became the Marydale Convent
School, demolished in 1970. The area included Chewton Common and land in
Walkford.
A new sub Post Office was built just
north of the railway bridge, which the Postmistress, Mrs Emma Newhook,
named New Milton Post Office. The Civil Parish Council and the postal authorities
agreed to the name in 1896, and the railway adopted the name for the station
the following year. There had previously been some controversy about the
name of the station, as Milton became confused with Wilton, near Salisbury.
And there were other Miltons in the country (56 to be exact), whilst calling
it Barton would have been worse since there were 84 of them! Other names
were tentatively put forward for the district, concluding in 1931 with
an attempt to rename the civil parish Milbarton. The station provided
a focal point for new business and housing development.
The water tower, designed, like the station, in Tudor style, was built
in 1900, the same year that Britain's first reinforced concrete bridge
was built at Chewton. Brick kiln works began to flourish in the area as
bricks could now be easily conveyed to rapidly growing Bournemouth.