Havant

Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R)

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Map of Hampshire

Havant () is a town in the south-east corner of Hampshire, England between Portsmouth and Chichester.

Variants

• Hamafunta - Havant was known around 935AD as 'Hamafunta' (the spring of Hama)

Location

Its borough comprises the town and its suburbs including the resort of Hayling Island as well as Rowland's Castle, the larger town of Waterlooville and Langstone Harbour. The old centre of the town was a small Celtic settlement before Roman times and the town's commerce, retired and commuter population swelled after World War II so as to be usually considered economically part of the Portsmouth conurbation

History

Archeological digs in the 19th and 20th centuries uncovered evidence of Roman buildings – near St Faith's Church and in Langstone Avenue, along with neolithic and mesolithic remains.

Havant was known around 935AD as 'Hamafunta' (the spring of Hama), referring to the spring to the south-west of St Faith's Churchyard and a settlement was made at the crossing point of tracks from the Downs to the coast and another east–west along the coast.

In 1086 (at the time of the Domesday Book), Havant was a village with a population of around 100. In 1200, the monks of Winchester Cathedral were granted the right to hold a market at Haveunte. Around 1450 an annual fair was held on the feast of Saint Faith.[4][5]

For much of its history water played a vital part in local commerce, with many water mills, and parchment manufacture and brewing.

Much of Havant was destroyed by fire in 1760, leaving only the church and the adjacent late 16th or early 17th century cottages. The cottages are now known collectively as "The Old House at Home", and are used as a pub. It is claimed that the two main beams in the lounge bar were recovered from the Spanish Armada, and that the "Bear Post" within once had the last dancing bear in England tethered to it. The fire allowed widening of roads and easier passage of stagecoaches through the town: the Bear Hotel and Dolphin Hotel were notable coaching inns. In the early hours of 25 October 1784 Havant suffered a minor earthquake, and a similar event occurred on 30 November 1811.

Hall Place, on South Street is a grade II-listed house, larger than others in the four main streets. It was rebuilt in 1796 by John Butler, replacing a seventeenth-century house reputed to have been built with stone from the slighted Warblington Castle. The classically Georgian house, of buff colour bricks from Dorset, passed in the 1820s into the ownership of Mr Charles Beare Longcroft, solicitor of established civic fame, whose wife's grandfather, John Cressweller (or Crassweller), had purchased the house from John Butler in 1803 and whose family parted with it in the middle of the 20th century.

Early English in style, the oldest undisturbed parts of the church of St Faith, such as the chancel, date from the early 13th century. Some of the foundations are believed to date from Roman times. The vestry is 14th century and there is a monumental brass to William Aylward, 1413.

By 1768 Havant had its first postmaster trading from various offices until the present post office in East Street opened in 1936 (one of a handful in the UK with the cypher of King Edward VIII above the entrance). In 1976 a Royal Mail Christmas postage stamp depicted an angel design from a medieval embroidery in the Victoria and Albert Museum owned by the Victorian-established Catholic Mission in the Brockhampton neighbourhood.

In 1847 Havant was connected with a station on the railway to Portsmouth and Brighton via Chichester and this was followed by the Portsmouth Direct Line to London in 1859. The branch line to Hayling Island ran from 1867 until the mid-1960s rationalisation.

The first hospital in the town opened in 1894 in Potash Terrace as a fever hospital, closing in 1939. A war memorial hospital opened in 1929 in Crossway; in 1935 a fine frieze of Wedgwood tiles depicting nursery rhymes was added to the children's ward.

The resident population rose in 'Havant and Waterloo Urban District' from 26,367 in 1939 to 74,552 for this direct predecessor to the borough in 1961. The rate of population increase has decreased since 1961 but population approximately doubled in the 50 years to 2011, with less cultivated land and fewer housing schemes and little non-hillside or direct coastal land available for development. Geography

The old centre of the town is on a classic crossroad configuration, with the four streets being named North Street, East Street, South Street and West Street, and St Faith's Church at the crossing. One axis is a known Roman road and a few artefacts along the route point to the other also being so.

The major A27 road with various crossings sections off the coastal village suburbs of Langstone /ˈlæŋstən/ and the south of Bedhampton. Its north is Leigh Park, a three-ward suburb originally of council housing laid out before 1960 through the co-operation of the local and Portsmouth authorities (the other designated area being Paulsgrove occupying west Cosham), beyond which is Staunton Country Park in the South Downs National Park. To the east is Emsworth, a much smaller contiguous town. To the west is Portsdown Hill and part of Bedhampton. The A3(M) passes to the west.

There are several natural springs in the area, including one a short distance south-west of the church on West Street at the end of Homewell. This used to be the home of the premier parchment making facility in Southern England (closing in 1936) which later became a glove making factory and leather processing plant. The Treaty of Versailles was written on Havant parchment.