A recording of a manor was first found in a Saxon charter dated 985AD and was owned by Mottisfont Priory. The church of St Mary has mostly 12th century features and nearby is Manor Farm which comes from the 13th century.

St Mary's has a wooden bell tower from the 15th century that is separate from the main building which has three interesting memorials. The first being a Crusader knight lying cross legged  with a stag at his feet which normally suggests that he was a King's Forester and he is dated from the 14th century.
Another is to General Sir William Ogle who was a royalist and who defended Winchester Castle against Cromwell's parliamentarians in 1645 and local legend has it that his ghost gallops through the village on horseback! The third memorial is to Trustram Fantleroy and his wife and dated 1538 and this is said to be the earliest example of a memorial with detached kneeling figures in the county and was first seen at the beginning of the 16th century

St Mary's church Michelmersh.

In 1415 over 600 knights and archers set up camp in a field immediately south of the church, on their way to the Battle of Agincourt and the Duke of Gloucester is said to have reviewed them, the field is known locally as Agincourt Field,

Opposite the church is Old Michelmersh Farm with its very old an unusual five bayed weather boarded granary which is said to be the largest of its type in Hampshire and like her local granaries it has a hipped and tiled roof and sits on saddle stones, It was in this barn that the famous children's TV series of Wurzel Gummidge, which starred the late Jon Pertwee as a rascally scarecrow and Una Stubbs as his Aunt Sally,  was filmed and also scenes were shot in neighbouring villages.

These barns are now owned by a private company and are leased out for local weddings and barn dances etc and the gentleman that showed us around on our visit pointed out that one side of the large barn was still on staddle stones but the other side was not as the barn was on a slope, and in fact the top of half of a bricked up doorway can be seen at the rear. Opposite this doorway is a small granary that is on staddle stones and is the perfect resting place for the labrador dog that happily ran up to lick our hands!!!

On the Romsey to Stockbridge road can be found  the Bear and Ragged Staff inn; this name is not so unusual as one might think. The signboard depicts the coat of arms of the Earls of Warwick with their motto incorrectly reading: "Vix ea nostra vox" - 'vox'
should be "voco" ("I scarcely call these things our own'). It seems that the first Earl was known as the 'Bear' for having strangled one single-handed, and another earl, not to be outdone, slew a giant with a tree-shaped club, hence the 'Bear and Ragged Staff.

IMAGES OF MICHELMERSH

The church of St Mary
The wooden tower		The porch
Some stone jars on a sunlit windowledge		The richly carved chest
The Font		The crossed legged Knight who is believed to be Geoffrey de Canterton.
The foot of the knight rests on a stag		The monument to Sir William Ogle Viscount Caterlough in Ireland
The memorial to Trustram Fantleroy		Church Close
The pretty cottages that line the quaint lanes through Michelmersh
The Bear and Ragged Staff		A field of rape on the outskirts of Michelmersh
The huge entrance to Michelmersh Barn		A small granary standing on staddle stones
The roof timbers of the large barn are mainly Elm and Oak and the barn is often leased out for country dances and weddings etc. It was a location for the filming of Wurzel Gummidge a popular children's programme about a scarecrow, starring the late Jon Pertwee		There are many small narrow lanes leading to and from the village and most of them are abundant in wild flowers, here we see bunches of Bluebells lining the roadside

ALTERNATE SOURCE

Michelmersh is a scattered village, spread out on the slope of the hill above the road from Romsey to Stockbridge.

The original village grew up around the church, but over the past 100 years or so has spread considerably as agriculture was joined by sand extraction and the making of bricks by hand as the principal employment in the locality. The South Hants Waterworks (Southampton Corporation Waterworks) and the Southern Railway were also local employers. Nowadays, many locals go further afield to Romsey and beyond to their daily job. The brickworks is still flourishing and provides much needed employment together with its traditional occupations.

The village celebrated the millennium of the charter of the parish in 1985. The charter was granted by Ethelred the Unready and the original parish included Braishfield and Awbridge. The church, dedicated to 'Our Lady', but known as St Mary's, was built in the 13th century on Saxon foundations. The square wooden tower was added later in the 15th century.

Sir William Ogle, a staunch Royalist, and a former Governor of Winchester Castle, became linked with the village in the 17th century through his second wife Sarah, who owned Manor Farm. He moved from Manor Farm to the Dower House, now known as the Old House, and legend has it that it is his ghostly carriage which can be heard moving along the lane at night.

Michelmersh is proud of its prize winning Silver Band, formed in 1886 as a Temperance Band; a number of its present members are direct descendants of founder members. The band still tours the village and surrounding areas on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day and can be heard regularly practising in their band hut.

Fairs used to be held by the Bear and Ragged Staff, the local 17th century inn on the main Romsey to Stockbridge road. Today the Pumpkin Club meets there regularly and holds its annual competition which draws people from far afield.

From the days when the school flourished and the village had its own baker's shop with its own bakery on the premises where villagers regularly took their cakes to be baked, to the present day when most people have cars and travel to Romsey three miles away for their shopping and the daily school bus picks up the children and returns them at tea-time, life in the village has changed considerably. Happily, members of village families are still prominent in village life.

HISTORY OF ST MARY'S CHURCH