| Mention Odiham and we automatically think of RAF
Odiham which is the home of the huge Chinook helicopters we see in the
news ferrying soldiers to the war front. William
Lily was born here in 1468 and he set off for Jerusalem then rturned to
Italy and finally settled on the Island of Rhodes for five years, while
he was thre the Turks had captured Constantinople which had been the
last sactury for classical learning for hundreds of years and
manuscripts dating back to more ancients times were stored thre, Whtne
the Turks took the great home the scholars fled taking with they what
they could carry. Lyle lived with a group of these exiled soldiers and
began studying Greek before returning to England with a vast quantity of
informateion in his memory and piles of manuscripts.
He later built a school and was the first teacher of
Greek in London and Deal Colet founded St Paul's School due to the great
work of Lyle who took on the job of being the first tutor and stayed for
eleven years, Among his pupils were Sir Thomas More and Erasmus.
Lyle died when the village was overcome by the Black
Death in 1523 but his grammar is still in use at his old school.
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All
Saints church
(Photo kindly contributed by John Dove) |
(Photo kindly contributed by John Dove)
Stop, gentle reader, hither
turn thine eye
To learn whose mortal part beneath doth lie,
There is a memorial in the churchyard for Robert May,
who it is said founded the grammar school for the poor boys of the
village.
'Thus
taught, good reader, to thy home retreat, With rival ardour let thy
bosom beat'.
There are also two graves of French
prisoners of war from the Napolionic Wars here and they have been kept
in good order by the local people. One of them contains the following
inscription "He was a
prisoner of war; Death hath set him free."
The Robert May School buildings
now the Mayfield Junior School
(Photo kindly contributed by John Dove)
Also under a wood roof by the wall of the churchyard
can be found the old stocks and the whipping post which still has
manacles in three different sizes.
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The Pest House Odiham
The Pest house lies in the
south west corner of the churchyard of All Saints Church. It is a
small single room building of brick and tile, with a style of
brickwork suggesting that it was built at the same time as the
original adjacent almshouses built under the bequest of Sir Edward
More about 1625.
Pest is the old word for plague and like other Pest Houses built
in England, it was used to house local inhabitants or travellers
suffering from the plague, smallpox and other infectious diseases.
They were commonly built on the outskirts of towns and villages.
The sufferers remained in the Pest house until either they
recovered or they died. The siting near Odiham churchyard shows a
nice sense of convenience, either for thanksgiving on recovery or
for burial.
There are said to be some five other surviving Pest Houses in
Great Britain. The one in Odiham lies in the parcel of land willed
for the almshouses in the More bequest, which is now in the
ownership of the Odiham Consolidated Charities. The Trustees have
consigned the care and maintenance of the Pest House to the Odiham
Society.
Its use to house infected parishioners continued until about 1780.
Thereafter it was used to house indigent parishioners as an
extension to the almshouses. Towards the end of the 19th century a
staircase and a small loft were built at the southern end, and an
iron cooking range was installed. A new door has been inserted
replacing a window in the north wall to give direct access to the
churchyard. It continued in this use until the early 1930’s.
By the mid-1970’s the roof timbers were badly decayed and in
danger of collapse, the brickwork was loose in many places, and
the staircase and loft were badly infected with woodworm and dry
rot.
In 1978 when the new almshouses were being planned by the
Consolidated Charities, the suggestion was made that the Pest
House might be demolished, but a Pest House Rescue Committee was
formed, and in early 1979 the newly formed Odiham Society took
over, as one of its earliest tasks, the preservation of the Pest
House as part of the historical heritage of Odiham. Their aim was
to restore it, as near as possible to its original condition, and
to maintain it so that it could stand as an important, if somewhat
macabre, record of part of England’s social history.
The contents include a carving chair kindly donated by the
grand-daughters of a former resident of the Pest House who died
there in 1915. The desk was recovered from a rubbish dump at the
Mayhill School (the original Robert May’s Grammer School). The
cabinets contain various articles found locally, including a
selection of items retrieved from an old well in King Street.
The two carved blocks of stone in the fireplace come from King
John’s Castle and are of an earlier date than the castle as seen
now. It is worth noting their remarkable state of preservation and
clean cut lines.
The two stone boulders were found with some 20 others when a 14th
century pit at the Castle was excavated in 1984. They are missiles
made for firing from a siege engine in attacking or defending the
Castle, possibly when it was besieged by the Dauphin of France in
1216.
The small garden has been created from a bank of stone and rubble.
In it are planted some of the medicinal herbs as used in the 17th
and 18th century. These were obtained from the Chelsea Physic
Garden, which was founded about the same time that the Pest House
was built. In summer the shrub roses and the little weeping copper
beech tree are a charming feature.
The maintenance of the Pest house and its surroundings costs money
and any donations put into the wall safe are most gratefully
received.
(Text and photograph reproduced by permission of
THE ODIHAM SOCIETY) |
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