Michelmersh is a small, scattered village in

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

, England some three miles () north of

Romsey Romsey ( ) is a historic market town in the county of Hampshire, England. Romsey was home to the 17th-century philosopher and economist William Petty and the 19th-century British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, whose statue has stood in the t ...

. It forms a

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 authority ...

with Timsbury that forms part of the

Test Valley Test Valley is a local government district and borough in Hampshire, England, named after the valley of the River Test. Its council is based in Andover. The borough was formed on 1 April 1974 by a merger of the boroughs of Andover and Romsey, a ...

district. The

Monarch's Way The Monarch's Way is a long-distance footpath in England that approximates the escape route taken by King Charles II in 1651 after being defeated in the Battle of Worcester. It runs from Worcester via Bristol and Yeovil to Shoreham, West Sus ...

long-distance footpath crosses the parish, passing through the churchyard of the 12th century St Mary's Church. The Georgian former rectory,

Michelmersh Court Michelmersh Court is a former rectory in the village of Michelmersh in Hampshire, southern England. A Listed building#England and Wales, Grade II* listed building, it is now a private house. Built in the late 18th century, it was altered and exte ...

, is Grade II* listed and was for many years the home of Sir David and Lady Carina Frost. The parish is located to the east of the

River Test The River Test is a chalk stream in Hampshire in the south of England. It rises at Ashe near Basingstoke and flows southwards for to Southampton Water. Settlements on the Test include the towns of Stockbridge and Romsey. Below the village o ...

on the northern edge of the

Hampshire Basin The Hampshire Basin is a geological basin of Palaeogene age in southern England, underlying parts of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset, and Sussex. Like the London Basin to the northeast, it is filled with sands and clays of Paleocene and yo ...

, with

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Chalk ...

in the north.British Geological Survey, 2002, ''England & Wales Sheet 299: Winchester'', 1:50,000 Geology Series, Keyworth, Nottingham:British Geological Survey, To the south and east of the village this is overlain by

Palaeocene The Paleocene, ( ) or Palaeocene, is a geological epoch that lasted from about 66 to 56 million years ago (mya). It is the first epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name is a combination of the Ancient Greek ''palai� ...

sands and clays of the

Lambeth Group The Lambeth Group is a stratigraphic group, a set of geological rock strata in the London and Hampshire Basins of southern England. It comprises a complex of vertically and laterally varying gravels, sands, silts and clays deposited between 56-55 ...

. At the southern are younger deposits of

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene' ...

age, sloping from a ridge of the Nursling sands into a valley of

London Clay The London Clay Formation is a marine geological formation of Ypresian (early Eocene Epoch, c. 56–49 million years ago) age which crops out in the southeast of England. The London Clay is well known for its fossil content. The fossils from t ...

. It has a brick and tile works, and extensive former sand pits on Casbrook Common, now used as a

landfill A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...

site. The name Michelmersh is derived from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

''micel'' + ''mersc'', meaning ' large marsh'.Mills, A.D: ''A Dictionary of English Place-Names'', page 229. Oxford University Press, 1991.

In popular culture

Michelmersh is known for being one of the main locations for the filming of the 1980s British TV series ''

Worzel Gummidge Worzel Gummidge is a scarecrow in British children's fiction, who originally appeared in a series of books by the English novelist Barbara Euphan Todd.

''. Other locations include nearby villages of Stockbridge,

King's Somborne King's Somborne is a village in Hampshire, England. The village lies on the edge of the valley of the River Test. Location King's Somborne is a large parish covers , of which are covered by water. Most of the ground is low-lying, with a high poi ...

and

Braishfield Braishfield is a village and civil parish north of Romsey in Hampshire, England. The name is thought to be derived from the Old English ''bræsc'' + ''feld'', meaning 'open land with small branches or brushwood'. The hamlet of Pucknall lies due ...

Notable people with a connection to Michelmersh

* Mary Watson, one of the first two women to study chemistry at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

External links

DetailsMichelmersh and Timsbury parish

Gallery

File:Church Road Michelmersh.jpg, Church Road, Michelmersh File:Michelmersh brickworks.jpg, Michelmersh

brickworks A brickworks, also known as a brick factory, is a factory for the manufacturing of bricks, from clay or shale. Usually a brickworks is located on a clay bedrock (the most common material from which bricks are made), often with a quarry for cl ...

File:Casbrook Common1.jpg, Casbrook Common

References

Villages in Hampshire Test Valley {{Hampshire-geo-stub