Grateley is a village and civil parish in the north west of
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.
The name 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 settlers in the mid-5th c ...
''grēat lēah'', meaning 'great wood or clearing'.
The village is divided into two distinct settlements, apart: the old village and a newer settlement built around the
railway station
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a prep ...
on the
West of England Main Line
The West of England line (also known as the West of England Main Line) is a British railway line from , Hampshire, to in Devon, England. Passenger services run between London Waterloo station and Exeter; the line intersects with the Wessex Ma ...
.
The hamlet of
Palestine adjoins the railway station settlement, although it is located in the civil parish of
Over Wallop
Over Wallop is a small village and civil parish in the Test Valley district of Hampshire, England. The village lies close to the border with Wiltshire, approximately northwest of Stockbridge.
Over Wallop is the westernmost of the three villages ...
.
Grateley lies just to the south of the prehistoric
hill fort
A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...
of
Quarley Hill. The parish covers with 616 people living in 250 dwellings. The village has one pub, a thirteenth-century church dedicated to
St Leonard, a primary school, a school for children with
Asperger syndrome
Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a former neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of beha ...
, a railway station, a small business park, a golf driving range, and is surrounded by farmland with ancient footpaths and droveways.
King Æthelstan issued his first official law code in Grateley in about 930 AD.
Recorded in the early 12th century
Quadripartitus
The title ''Quadripartitus'' refers to an extensive legal collection compiled during the reign of Henry I, king of England (1100–1135).Wormald, ''Making of English law'', p. 236 The work consists of Anglo-Saxon legal materials in Latin transl ...
text,
[ name="foo" ] which referred to a ‘great assembly at Grateley’ (magna synodo apud Greateleyam).
The legestaive assembly and construct of the Grateley law code acted as a manifestation of the peripatetic nature of
Anglo-Saxon kingship.
In the 20th century Grateley was one of many ammunition dumps during the World Wars.
The economic history of Grateley is agricultural, but less than 10% of the village population now rely upon agriculture as an occupation.
Notes
External links
Villages in Hampshire
{{Hampshire-geo-stub