titchfie

It is possible that this area has been inhabited from around the 7th and 8th centuries as this is where the surviving parts of the church lead us to. The market was recorded in the Domesday Survey and the Abbey founded in 1232 by the Bishop of Winchester,

When Henry VIII order the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Abbey passed to Thomas Wriothesley who converted it to a private residence.

During the 16th and 17th centuries Titchfield was a prosperous town that rivalled Fareham, but with the draining of the estuary in 1612 to provide more grazing land for cattle this reduced Titchfield's status as a port.

Fareham Common was enclosed in 1807 and was cultivated and it is now the residential area of Heathfield.

There are many buildings of interest here, and many of the houses have facades of Georgian brick but a few half timbered buildings that are old can still be found.

Titchfield Abbey stands about a mile north of the town and is now called Palace House and this in in the care of the Department of the Environment. The ruins date from the 13th century when Abbey was founded and more are from the 16th century after Wriothesley changed it to a residence.

During the middle ages it was a major market town and the abbey later took possession of 15 manors that included over 60 villages and in the 18th century the population had risen to around 3,000.

The Earl of Southampton made what was to be the second oldest canal in the county when he damned the mouth of the River Meon with a bank of shingle in 1611. It was constructed to transport goods to and from the mill and to give water to water meadows via a sluice on either side. The canal still exists and can be found by the old sea lock under the bridge on the coastal road.

IMAGES OF TITCHFIELD

Most Saxon churches are made of wood but the one here is of stone and
this was strange as the Saxons did not have a word for building in stone
but soon they began to build cathedrals and Minsters, the majority of which
have since disappeared a lot through the invasion of the Danes. The bottom
section of the tower at St Peter's though is probably the only part to survive
in the whole of Hampshire it was part of the porch and it still is though the
porch here was later extended to form a tower in the 12th or 13th century


The Old Lodge		Cottages in the village

The Bugle Hotel		The Wriothesley Coat of Arms

The Parish Reading Room		Sign above the Bugle Hotel

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE PARISH OF TITCHFIELD

THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ST PETER