Haslemere Town and Swan Barn

In this video Cynthia and I take a walk round Haslemere to have a look at the buildings that are there in the high street.
We also look at the Haslemere Town Well where Haslemere's last water carrier Hannah Oakford charged a penny ha'penny per bucket of water to deliver water to the houses in the town.
Hannah died in 1898

The Haslemere Riot of 29 July 1855 during which Police Inspector William Donaldson was murdered, becoming the first police officer serving in the Surrey Constabulary to be killed in the course of his duty. Inspector Donaldson is remembered each year at a ceremony of the last Sunday of July

Information from Wikipedia
Early history
The earliest evidence for human activity in the Haslemere area is from the Neolithic. Flints dating from 4000 to 2400 BCE were discovered during archaeological surveys conducted prior to the construction of the Hindhead Tunnel. There may have been a settlement in the area in the mid-late Bronze Age[22] and a Romano-British cemetery was discovered on the site of Beech Road, to the north of the town centre, at the start of the 20th century.[23][24]

Governance

Town Well – one of the old wells which served the area (at the end of Well Lane)
Neither Shottermill nor Haslemere are directly mentioned in Domesday Book, but the land on which the two settlements are now located was divided between the Farnham and Godalming Hundreds respectively. The south western corner of Surrey is thought to have been sparsely populated in the 11th century, but it is possible that some of the mills listed under the entry for Farnham, were located on the Wey in the Shottermill area.[25]

The first indication of a settlement at Haslemere is from 1180, when there is a record of a "Chapel of Piperham".[2] The chapel belonged to the Parish of Chiddingfold, part of the manor of Godalming and is thought to have been either on or close to the site of the current St Bartholomew's Church.[12] There may also have been a settlement on Haste Hill, to the south east of the town centre, and there are references to "Churchliten field" and the "Old church-yard" in records of the area.[26]

The first use of the modern name Haslemere is from 1221, when permission for a market was given to Richard Poore, Bishop of Salisbury, indicating that the settlement was sufficiently large to be considered a town.[2] In 1397, Richard II granted a charter to the settlement, confirming the order from 1221 and permitting an annual fair to be held in the town.[27] The town remained in the possession of the Bishops of Salisbury until c. 1540, when it was purchased by the Crown.[28]


The bust of Elizabeth I by Malcolm Stathers was installed in Charter Walk in 2001.[29]
The first indication of a settlement at Shottermill is from 1285, when reference is made to a Manor of Pitfold, covering the extreme southern portion of Farnham Hundred. From 1344, the manor was held by Edward III, but was granted to the Convent of Dartford in 1362. The land remained in the convent's possession until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536,[30] when it reverted to the Crown. A new charter was issued to Haslemere town by Elizabeth I in 1596. Today, this special status is celebrated with the Charter fair, held once every two years in the High Street.[31]

Reforms during the Tudor period replaced the day-to-day administration of towns such as Haslemere in the hands of the vestry of the parish church.[32][33] The vestry was charged with appointing a parish constable, running a lock-up, maintaining local roads and administering poor relief.[34] In 1839, many administrative responsibilities were transferred to the Hambledon Rural District Council and in 1863, the civil parish of Haslemere was created, although local elections did not take place until the following year. In 1896, the Surrey Times praised the town's authorities, writing: "No parish council in the country has done better work than the Haslemere council. Sanitation, allotments, charities, lighting, roads, footpaths and waste lands have all been thoroughly and prudently looked after."[35] A further change took place in 1913, when town was removed from the Hambledon Rural District and the Parish Council was promoted to the status of an Urban District Council (UDC).[36] Initially the UDC was based at the Town Hall, but moved in 1926 to a building on Museum Hill, which had been vacated by the Haslemere Educational Museum.[37]
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