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Selborne a delightful village will forever be associated with the naturalist Gilbert White and thousands of visitor come here to see his home or to visit his grave in the churchyard which lies in The Plestor which is an old name for the village green and comes from playstow which in the middle ages meant a playground. This White described as a square piece of ground that had a vast oak tree with seats around that was blown down in a 1793 during a storm . Most people are surprised when they find that White is buried with just a simple stone marked G. W. and the date of his birth instead of an elaborate monument, but this is how he wished it to be. There is also the grave of The Trumpeter, who was in fact John Newland the leader of the agricultural riots that took place in 1830 he was called The Trumpeter as this was what he called his supporters with and after the riots he took refuge in woods that surround the village and escaped. The rioters attacked the poorhouses in the village. The next day this same group walked to the neighbouring village of Headley and with help from the men of Headley and other local parishes attack the poorhouses there. The attack at Selborne scared the vicar so much that he reduced his tithes by half then and there from six hundred to three hundred pounds a year! As a punishment seven men were transported to Australia, and Holdaway and not Newland was said to be the ringleader and he was transported as well but Newland got six months in Winchester prison. (For more information see:"
One Monday in
November, the story of the Selborne and Headley Workhouse
Riots of 1830" by
Opposite Whites house is The Wakes which was originally a butchers shop and in 1756 White wrote in his Garden Calendar that he had planted four lime trees in front of the house to hided 'the sight of blood and filth from ye windows' and today only two of these trees survive. Gilbert White wrote The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, and this became recognised as a classic of natural science. He was born here in 1720 in the vicarage in which his father lived and after graduating from Oriel College in Oxford he was ordained as a priest, but was never inducted as a vicar of Selborne, but while in the village as well as studying and writing he took an interest in the village school which had been founded by his grandfather. The village today is still very much the same as it was in Gilbert Whites day though a lot of the countryside is now in the hands of the National Trust. There is a unique piece of Victorian ironwork in the shape of a water fountain at the southern end of the village, this is in the form of a lion's head and is flanked by windmills, and the water flows from the mouth of the lion into a trough and is inscribed "Presented by, (no name)!"A nearby door is inscribed with "This water supply was given to Selborne by voluntary subscriptions in memory of Gilbert White 1894'. Behind the door is a ram worked by hydraulics which pumped the water to stand pipes in the village until the village was supplied with piped water in 1934.
There are two pubs in the village which do a good trade, three shops one of which includes a post office a sports ground and a village hall. Outside the church in the Plested can be see what remains of a giant Yew tree which some people say is over a thousand years old and there is the grave of The Trumpeter. The yew has been cut down due to a gale in January 1990 and the wood has been used to make the new altar, in the porch there is a slice of the tree in a glass case on the wall showing how thick the trunk was.
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