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Registered Charity No 1000447

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The Basingstoke Heritage Society works with the following kindred organisations. . Simply click on their name to establish links to their own web sites.

Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council

The Basingstoke Willis Museum

Milestones Museum

The Friends of the Willis Museum

The Basingstoke Archaeological & Historical Society

Destination Basingstoke

The Surrey & Hampshire Canal Society

Civic Voice

The Hampshire Building Preservation Trust

The Viables Community Association

The Brookvale Community Association

The Vyne at Sherborne St John

The Basingstoke War Memorial - Regimental details, grave locations and home addresses of men listed on the town memorial

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General Data Protection Regulations 2018 – please click here for the BHS Data Privacy Policy

Do get in touch - we like to hear from you.

Your committee needs YOU. We welcome members who are interested in joining the committee to help the Society’s future. Our monthly meetings at Queen Mary’s last for less than 90 minutes and are varied and interesting. You are welcome to come along and see if you could help. Contact Debbie for details.

St Michael’s C

hurch is undergoing great changes, both in its way of worship and alterations to the interior of the building. Clearly, worship changes are not our concern, but the church is now routinely locked. This is because valuable instruments and sound system electronics require this security. We had some difficulty accessing the plans for change, which are not the concern of either the Borough or of Heritage England, although of course the church is Grade I Listed. You can look at the proposals here Application 2023-086050 - Online Faculty System (churchofengland.org) . The society’s comments included our dismay at the locked church. We write often about memorials and local history within the parish church as well as damage done to the church in the Civil War and in WW2. At the moment, the church is a cluttered mess; the War Memorial chapel which dates from after WW1 and was paid for by local people, is full of a jumble of moved church furniture. This chapel contains 2 beautiful memorial windows to two brothers, killed in the First World War. Paul Simmons was killed age 21 in Iraq in 1915 and his older brother, Frank is buried in the Jerusalem War Cemetery in Israel. The pulpit, which is intended for removal, was paid for by subscription in memory of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, who died in 1873 and had been Bishop of Winchester. He was the son of William Wilberforce who campaigned to end the trade in slaves by British plantation owners.

Curiously the

screen to St Stephen’s chapel was paid for by the manager of the Victory Inn, in memory of his son George who died in 1925.

The society has commented on the relocation of the Corporation pews in the north aisle, which have lovely poppyheads with the town’s arms showing St Michael driving Lucifer out of Heaven.

This interesting feature is known as a squint and is a reminder of the church from before the Reformation.

We fully understand that internal modernising work will mean that the church will inevitably be closed, but we do hope that it will be open daily in the future.

The society intends to put up a blue plaque in Crossborough Hill to commemorate Basingstoke’s first woman mayor. Her obituary, which was in the Gazette, was very detailed and showed what a great deal she did for the town. She was Councillor Edith Alice Weston OBE and became mayor in 1937 – described as filling the roles of both mayor and mayoress! A councillor from 1929 to her death in 1956, she was also a county councillor. Her house in Crossborough Hill was given to the Basingstoke High School for Girls and is known as Weston House.

Andrew Watten continues to scan the colour photos discovered on eBay. Here are The Victory pub, the Town Yard with gasholder, and a wistful one of the horse-trough near The Barge Inn. basingstoke.wiki - Main Page

Some of the photos are on Facebook on various sites and attract many comments – some very helpful and interesting – but many just saying how lovely a town Basingstoke used to be. Comments come from older residents of the town - many from people who don’t live here any longer and who look back with nostalgia to the town of their youth. Suggesting that the coming of the railway in 1839 was hugely significant for the future of the town fall on mostly deaf ears!

Two of the comm

ittee met with council officers to discuss what could be done about the loss of one of the town centre interpretation signs. This was sited just in front of former Lloyds Bank in Market Place, but was moved so often for works that it was hardly ever in place. The last straw has been consent for Vaultz, who now have the building and have an approved outside space. The council believe that we could either re-locate this sign or a new one in front of The Willis museum. We are hoping that they have the sign safe and sound somewhere as it is one of four, with information and images supplied by us.

Yes, it’s Jane again. Next year there will be another celebration – this time of her birth in 1775 – 250 years since she was born in Steventon. We need ideas for noting this occasion.

Recently on Facebook someone ‘discovered’ the plaque to John Howard on The Wheatsheaf pub and a comment followed from a relation of Howard, who lives in the town, but didn’t know about the plaque.

Here is a link to

a new website "About All Saints' Church": https://www.allsaintsbasingstoke.net/. This website documents some of the history of the church on Southern Road which may be of interest to our website visitors.