Big houses/estates around South Stoneham?

[Penninah]

Thanks for that, it may well be!
I think the only way of being sure would be a trip to the Records office in Winchester to see what records for staff at the local big houses survives!
 

[bucgad]

My father was from West End and one of his ancestor's son's was a market gardener there in mid- late 19th century.
The area around there was much more rural than it is today and there were lots of fields for market gardeners.

[lookingforold]

What was your father's name? I went to school in West End and lived close by in the village, (now town!) of Hedge End.

[bucgad]

My maiden name was BUCKLE and dad's mother's surname was WILTSHIRE her sister's family ran the newsagents their surname was STUBBS.

[lookingforold]

Would you have any connection with the R. Buckle who was the landlord of a Public House in Botley, Hants?

[bucgad]

I don't know of any connection.

[Moonraker55]

I'm coming into this thread very late for which I apologise but there were a number of large houses in South Stoneham, particularly around the Portswood area. I carried out a study on the origins of the name of a local pub in the Highfield area and it caused me to discover a number of moderate to large sized houses - most of which are now gone.

The area included Highfield House, Portwood Lodge and Portswood House, Westwood House as well as South Stoneham itself. The subject of my study was a Lieutenant-Colonel William Charles Drummond who was resident at Myrtle House, sometimes called Myrtle Cottage, which is a deceptive name for the grounds include all the land lying bounded by Bowden Lane, Brickfield Road, Portswood Road and a line west of Somerset Road. The 'cottage' was on the grounds of what is now Portswood Primary School. It is unlikely that Colonel Drumond or his neighbours in the burgeoning villas at the top of Highfield would have done their own gardening.

The ideas about market gardeners are perfectly valid and are likely to be the solution to your quest, but it remains that there will have been a reasonable number of gardeners for reasonable sized houses in the area.

regards
John

[Penninah]

Thank you very much for your message! I need to take another look into this, perhaps a visit to the ro would help in time. I am curious as to where he worked.

Regards,
Penninah

[hill18]

When I was at school in Eastleigh back in the 1960's we used to run cross-country races around the South Stoneham area and much of the course was through market gardens between South Stoneham Lane and the Eastleigh Airport.