Ibsley is a village in

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...

, England. It is about 2.5 miles (4 km) north of the town of Ringwood. It is in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

Ellingham, Harbridge and Ibsley Ellingham, Harbridge and Ibsley is a civil parish in the west of the English county of Hampshire. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 Census was 1,171. The civil parish was formed in 1974 by the amalgamation of the three titular village ...

Overview

The village of Ibsley lies to the east of the River Avon on the main road between Ringwood and

Fordingbridge Fordingbridge is a town and broader civil parish with a population of 6,000 on the River Avon in the New Forest District of Hampshire, England, near the Dorset and Wiltshire borders and on the edge of the New Forest, famed for its late medieva ...

, and has some picturesque thatched cottages.Hampshire Treasures Volume 5 (New Forest) Page 103
To the southeast is a series of lakes known collectively as Blashford Lakes, which have been created as the result of sand and gravel extraction since the 1950s.Blashford Lakes
, Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust Ibsley was a

until 1974, when the parish was amalgamated with the parishes of Ellingham and

Harbridge Harbridge is a small village located some four kilometres north of Ringwood and a similar distance south of Fordingbridge, in southwest Hampshire, England. It is in the civil parish of Ellingham, Harbridge and Ibsley. Overview The village of H ...

. The hamlets of South Gorley, Furze Hill, and Mockbeggar were all part of Ibsley parish.

History

Ibsley is listed in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

of 1086 when it was held by a certain Ralph from Hugh de Port. The name of the settlement at that time was Tibeslei and it means "Tibb(i)'s wood/clearing".Ibsley, Old Hampshire Gazetteer
In the 14th century Ibsley was split into two moieties divided between John atte Bere and William de Melbury.Ibsley - Victoria County History of Hampshire
/ref> That part which John atte Bere had owned was by the end of the 14th century in the possession of William Stourton. His son John, who later became the 1st Baron Stourton, inherited the estate in 1414. It then descended with the

Baron Stourton Baron Stourton is a title in the Peerage of England, It was created by patent in 1448 for John Stourton. In 1878, the ancient barony of Mowbray was called out of abeyance in favour of the twentieth Baron Stourton. About two weeks later, the ...

s, until William Stourton, 7th Baron Stourton sold the manor in 1544 to Robert White, from whom it descended with Rockford in Ellingham to the Beconshaws and Lisles. In the 19th century it was sold to the second

Earl of Normanton Earl of Normanton is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1806 for Charles Agar, 1st Viscount Somerton, Archbishop of Dublin. He had already been created Baron Somerton, of Somerton in the County of Kilkenny, in 1795 and Visco ...

, and became annexed to the

Somerley Somerley is a large Georgian Grade II* listed English country house that is situated in the civil parish of Ellingham and Harbridge with Ibsley in the New Forest district in Hampshire, England. It is 2 miles (3 km) west of the New Fores ...

estate. That part which William de Melbury had owned had by the 16th century passed to the Berkley family. John Berkeley sold the manor to William Batten in 1556. It was sold to Jeremiah Cray in 1697. It stayed with the Cray family in the 18th century, but by the 19th century it was joined to the other manor, and also became part of the Somerley estate. The church of Saint Martin was rebuilt in 1832, replacing an earlier 17th-century church.Church of Saint Martin
- Pastscape It is of brick with some stone dressings. It is now deconsecrated and was in use as an art gallery as of 2008. A bridge across the river avon was built in the first part of the 19th century.It was almost completely rebuilt in 1930. It is largely made from

Purbeck stone Purbeck stone refers to building stone taken from a series of limestone beds found in the Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous Purbeck Group, found on the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset in southern England. The best known variety of this stone is Purbeck ...

and crosses the river with three arches.

RAF Ibsley

Mockbeggar Lakes and Ibsley Water from Ibsley Common, New Forest - geograph

RAF Ibsley was a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

airfield near Ibsley. It was opened in 1941, and it was used by both the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

and

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

. During the war it was used primarily as a fighter airfield. After the war it was closed in 1947. The airfield appeared in the wartime propaganda film ''

The First of the Few ''The First of the Few'' (US title ''Spitfire'') is a 1942 British black-and-white biographical film produced and directed by Leslie Howard, who stars as R. J. Mitchell, the designer of the Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft. David Niven co ...

'' as the main wartime base in the production. Most of the airfield has since been quarried away by gravel extraction, and much of the site is covered by the Blashford Lakes nature reserve. One lake is overlooked by the derelict, windowless control tower with other remnants scattered around the nearby countryside.

Notes

External links

Ellingham, Harbridge and Ibsley Parish Council
{{authority control Villages in Hampshire New Forest District