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The Parish of Wickham is in Titchfield Hundred and it was divided into two manors during the reign of Edward the Confessor, but the Domesday Book records the land as being held by Hugh de Port. The overlordship continued in the de Port barony in descent passing in succession to the St John, Philbert and Paulet families. In 1616 William Paulet, the Marquis of Winchester, still held the manor then after this date the rights of the overlord have lapsed and the manor then passed through many families, the most notable of which were the Corbetts and the Garniers. During the Middle Ages the manor was held under the de Ports by the families of de Scures and then the Uvedales, all were families that often held the office of High Sheriff of the county. The town was the birth place of William Long who was known as William of Wykeham and was the founder of Winchester College and New College in Oxford, he was born in 1324 and in 1367 became the Bishop of Winchester. The square is thought to date from the 13th century when Henry III granted Roger de Scures, Lord of the Manor. a market and also a fair. By the 16th and 17th centuries the Wickham acquired from somewhere the form of urban status and was then referred to as a Borough. What must surely be the most prominent and interesting of the buildings in Wickham is Chesapeake Mill, so called because the building has used timbers from the American Ship 'Chesapeake' which the British ship H. M. S. Shannon capture in 1813. There was also a famous iron foundry here that made high quality tools but this has been long gone. The Meon Valley Railway also served the town in 1903 and made communications a lot easier but the line has closed. With a population of over 4,000 the square is believed to be the second largest in the country and it is surrounded by shops and some beautiful Georgian houses, with some houses from the 16th century just off of the square. The church is dedicated to St Nicholas and stants on what was a Celtic and also a Saxon burial ground. It was built in 1120 but since then there has been so much restoration in the Victorian era that it lost most of its mediaeval interest. The old Victory Hall which later became a brewery stood alongside the River Meon but has now been made into flats, there was a fire here that did a lot of damage but it was rebuilt and on the back is a plaque which states: 'Wickham Brewery rebuilt ANO DMI 1887 being the Jubilee Year of the Reign of H.M. Queen Victoria'. In 1910 the brewery closed and the Victory Club came into being, this was formed to commemorate the victory of WWI and it housed evacuees in World War II who were brought in from Portsmouth and Southampton which had suffered severe bombing. It was in this period that Wickham saw some drastic changes, 'Beverley' was t urned into a Naval maternity hospital, the Kings Head was an army Headquarters, and Rookesbury School was a billet for Canadian soldiers, a garage was commandeered by Army engineers and a lot of these remained here after marrying local girls! IMAGES OF WICKHAM
There are three cottages named The Old Barracks and it is thought that they were once used as officers quarters during the war and there is a notice which reads:
CHURCH OF ST NICHOLAS
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