| Tichborne | |||||||||||||||||||||
Tichborne Manor is first recorded in a grant of land to Denewulf, Bishop of Winchester in 909AD by King Edward the Elder and in 938AD Athelston gave some land at Tichborne to the monks of St Peter and St Paul at Winchester. King edgare granted the manor to Winchester Cathedral in 864AD. Tichborne, which comes from Itchen bourne' or the village on the banks of the stream of the River Itchen is not recorded in the Domesday Book as it was probably included with Twyford. The Tichborne family has owned the manor from the 12th century onwards and the present Manor house is Tichborne House which is from where the Tichborne Dole whereby 50 bushels of flour which was bequeathed to the villages, is distributed every year on Lady Day (25 March), this ceremony started back in 1150 when Lady Tichborne lay on her death bed and Sir Roger agreed to provide a charity from as much land as his wife could walk round holding a lighted torch. Lady Mabel got out of bed and crawled round an area of land, which is stil called The Crawls, before the torch blew out and before she died she prophesied that the House of Tichborne would fall if this charity would ever be discontinued. A few hundred years later and this is what happened, the distribution of bread was allowed to lapse and the prophesy cam close to bing true as the last male Tichborne had a family of seven daughters. But the situation was solved and the charity once more continued.
The village is quite picturesque with lots of thatched cottages and the pub is also thatched, the village church dedicated to St Andrew sits on a hill overlooking its flock :It was in the 19th century that an heir to the family was lost at sea on route to Australia and years arrived who claimed to be the missing heir. A trial was held in the High court to establish his identity and he was found to be an impostor. Controversy raged over this case and the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, 'Trial by Jury' is said to be based on this famous case. WEBMASTERS NOTE: there is some discrepancy here as one version says he was an Australian and the version below states he was from Wapping The Trial was held in 1871
and the Tichborne family denied the claim of a Wapping butcher who
claimed he was Sir Roger Tichborne the missing heir, and with a lot of
expense and a trial that lasted for 188 days the Crown found the
defendant guilty of fraud. He was in fact Arthur Orton and he had a
hundred witnesses to testify that he was the missing heir to the estate After staying there for two years he left on a ship for England but the ship was lost with all hands. Leave was granted presuming he had perished and a new heir succeeded and the family were happy that justice had been done, that is all except on, this was Lady Tichborne the mother of Sir Roger, who had dwelled on a secret enmity against the other members of her husband's family. She would not believe that Roger had died, and for years she searched for him by placing advertisements in both English and Colonial newspapers. And she kept a candle burning in his room every night. It was eleven years after the loss of the ship that she learned that a man who was a butcher at Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, Australia had claimed to be Roger. And she started to write to him determined that he was her missing son. The Claimant, Arthur Orton was an ignorant man though very courageous and full of resource, and he started to raise large sums of money in Australia on wht he called his 'expectations'. Contacting an old Negro servant of Sir Roger he got as much information as he could and later met people who had know Roger to glean as possible and by the time he arrived in England in 1866 had amassed a great structure of falsehood. He went to Paris to meet Lady Tichborne. Orton was a huge man weighing around 24 stones while Sir Roger was a little man with sloping shoulders, narrow head and a beaked nose. But Lady Tichborne for some reason accept him as her long lost son and she took out sworn affidavits before she died. There was never any proof that she believed Orton was her son and she had become so infatuated about the hatred of the family that she did not care less. The case could have been settle by just a single question, and that was for Orton to bare his arm as the Tichbornes had a man ready to testify that he had tattooed Rogers arms before he set sail. After the trial had gone on for 102 days Orton was found guilty and was immediately arrested and charged with perjury and after 188 days he was sentenced to 14 years in prison. HISTORY OF ST ANDREWS CHURCH
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