July 4, 2026|

Wickham’s Historic Gardens

Wickham people have always been busy gardening…

Many of the houses around Wickham Square still have large “burgage plot” gardens dating back to the fourteenth century. These long, narrow plots provided space for families to grow fruit and vegetables and keep pigs, geese and hens. An early deed even refers to “Garlykmongers field” on Winchester Road. Was this named after wild garlic (“ransoms”), or was garlic cultivated there as a crop? We may never know, but it is a reminder of Wickham’s long gardening tradition.

The earliest recorded formal gardens in the village belonged to the Manor House, now demolished, which once stood opposite the church.

There was a fine avenue of trees leading from what is now the Hoads Hill roundabout to the Manor House with formal gardens next to the house and dovecotes, fishponds and orchards in the grounds. Cherries, raspberries and grapes were all grown.

There were two other fine landscaped gardens then too.

There was an eighteenth century country house on the site of what is now Little Park Mansions on Titchfield Lane, with formal gardens extending down to where Park Place is today’

Captain Moses Baxter’s new country house on Titchfield Lane (now the site of Little Park Mansions) 1725

Another house stood north of Southwick Road, close to where the village cricket pitch is today, with extensive landscaped grounds. This house was called “Rokeby” or “Rokesby” and the Garnier family lived there before they demolished it to build Rookesbury House in the nineteenth century. Rookesbury House is still owned by the family today, surrounded by parkland and woods – originally with its own folly tower and a walled vegetable and fruit garden.

Charles Wynne’s house on Southwick Road (near the site of the Cricket Pitch) with landscaped gardens, 1725.

Beverley House on Southwick Road by the Church had particularly fine gardens in the eighteenth century. They were vandalised by the “Waltham Blacks” apparently in a dispute over the allocation of church pews in 1722! They did recover however and featured in the Gardeners Magazine in 1834. The Church Fete is still held in the gardens today.

1834 plan of Beverley garden

In the nineteenth century, South East Hampshire diversified into vegetable, fruit and cut flower production for the growing London market – carts carrying strawberries queued from Wickham Station to outside the Church and local individuals like ‘Teddy’ Roberts and Alf Stubbington built up large local fruit and vegetable businesses in the twentieth century – most people in the village would have been involved with growing fruit, vegetables or flowers for sale, many with large allotment gardens. Children gathered spring primroses in the woods for sale at markets in Cosham and Portsmouth. As a result Wickham today still has many local market gardens and garden centres.

Fruit picking at Frith Farm

More recently village photographer Stan Woodford enjoyed photographing Wickham’s gardens in the late twentieth century ranging from flowers on Meon Park Council Estate to Admiral Norman’s grand gardens on Hundred Acres. Wickham and Knowle Parish Council regularly ran garden competitions which were very well supported and have recently been restarted.

Mrs Richard, Hanover Bungalow – 1960s