THE Hampshire Field Club has won a place in a celebration of the centenary of the Institute of Historical Research. It is one of only 24 local bodies nationwide to have been chosen. It will make important contributions to a prestigious national organisation that is the centre for historical research and directs such projects as British History Online and the Victoria County History.

The project, Celebrating Hampshire’s Historians (CHH), will generate a website-based collection of profiles of ‘historians’ – in the broadest sense of the word – who over the years have made significant contributions to the history of the county.

Former HFC president Dick Selwood will lead the project with proposals from the 100 local history groups or more and similar societies involved in recording and promoting the heritage of the county. The organisations will also be featured on the website in an overview of historical activity in Hampshire.

He said: “The core audience for CHH will be the members of the contributing organisations, helping to make them aware of activities complementary to their own. In addition, through promotional activities with schools, community groups and other stakeholders in Public History, a broader audience will be encouraged to visit the site and follow up on areas of interest.

“We hope that participant organisations will draw attention to the CHH website, which will provide material for their newsletters, blogs, social media etc. This will potentially reach a very large audience. The hope is that the media will report the project stage by stage, as well as the finished product. There will be regular reports on the HFC website and Facebook pages. Visitors to the website may also be invited to post comments and vote for their favourite historians.”

CHH will cover the lives of many individuals – mostly motivated by their passion for the past, and generally working on their own – who little by little have told the story of the county and its rich history. It will include antiquarians, archivists, authors and editors, archaeologists, collectors and others.

The HFC has won a place against stiff competition. On its website the IHR says: “Following a huge response to our Open Call, we are delighted to announce events organised by partners across the country, bringing together universities, museums, archives, artists, musicians and volunteers to engage local and national communities with the discipline and practice of history.

“All [projects] approach history in imaginative and creative ways: addressing urgent challenges, discovering or amplifying marginalised stories, promoting inclusivity, engaging diverse communities, and informing and inspiring the next generation of historians.”

The HFC proposal meets many of the objectives of IHR, which is concerned with celebrating “the discipline and practice of history, in all its forms and wherever it is found, and its contribution to public life in the UK and beyond”.

It aims not only to consider the practice of history in the past, but also to “open a conversation about the future of history over the coming century”. It is particularly interested in “inclusive, diverse and engaged histories” and in involving “diverse participants and communities”.

Hampshire is a perfect setting for the CHH project. It is arguably the historically richest single county in the country. Its past embraces the Anglo-Norman origins of the kingdom, when France and England were being defined. And in Winchester, it had a diocese that once stretched from the Channel Isles to Southwark and was virtually a Christian kingdom.

The Hampshire coast is second to none for defence, as exemplified by ‘fortress Portsmouth’ and the age of Nelson. Its maritime invention is unequalled – flying boats, hovercraft and high-speed motor boats. And its commerce has always been a key national asset, from the Saxon port of Hamwic and medieval Southampton, to cruise liners and the container port.

On top of that Sam Cody and the story of Farnborough – plus the Spitfire – put it at the head of the development of British aviation. It is also rich in literary associations – Jane Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, Conan Doyle, Cobbett and others.

Add to all this the findings of archaeologists, the unique history of the New Forest and an extensive manorial and estate history, from the West Saxons onwards, and you have an historical treasure-house. Hence, it is hardly surprising that it stands at the head of those counties which have recorded and displayed their history.

Cherishing this heritage, the HFC has been active since 1885. It publishes an annual peer-reviewed academic journal, Hampshire Studies (Proceeding of the Hampshire Field Club), a newsletter, monographs and Hampshire Papers.

It is sharing the stage with a range of exciting projects selected by IHR, including Black History Month in Buckinghamshire, a medieval pageant and a Thomas Becket trail in Canterbury, the RAF as ‘freedom fighters’, a study of the social media ‘infodemic’ and public health, hidden histories of Chester and others.

Amongst those expected to feature in the CHH project are people like the ‘aerial’ archaeologist, O.G.S. Crawford, the Winchester City archivist J.S. Furley, the Catholic bishop and historian John Milner, the St Mary Bourne historian, country doctor and curator, Dr Joseph Stevens, and the pioneering landscape archaeologist G.B. Grundy.

To take just one example, in the early 1900s Audrey Locke was a researcher and writer for the first edition of the Victoria County History. Her grandfather was a chimney sweep and her father head porter of Winchester College. She attended Winchester High School for Girls (now St Swithun’s School) and in 1899 won the first Charlotte Yonge Scholarship, which gave her a place at Somerville College, Oxford.

After graduation (not strictly allowed for women at the time!) she worked on the VCH. Her main contributions on Hampshire, were in Volume III, on the hundreds of Selborne, Fawley and Buddlesgate. She carried out fieldwork on bicycle and made many sketches, now held by the HFC. Later, she produced In Praise of Winchester: An Anthology of Prose and Verse (1912). The Porter’s Daughter by Winifred Dawson charts her life and work (Sarsen Press, Winchester, 2014).

Other historians in the crosswires include Romsey historian Florence Horatio Suckling, the Lymington writer (and would-be county chronicler) Richard Warner, the founder of the HFC, T.W. Shore, and Winchester College archivists, T.F. Kirby and H. Chitty.

There are many others whose contributions to the county’s history in all its forms will be fine-combed by the HFC. One of the great attractions of history is that there are so many different ways of telling it, and the interpretation of even long-known archives is always advancing. Science may reach clearcut conclusions (think of E= mc2), but historians will never finish telling the story of Hampshire!

barryshurlock@gmail.com.