Minley is a slightly depopulated rural, well-wooded village in the

Hart District Hart is a local government district in Hampshire, England, named after the River Hart. Its council is based in Fleet. The district also contains the towns of Blackwater and Yateley, along with numerous villages and surrounding rural areas. ...

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

, England. It has the only church of the

C of E C, or c, is the third letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''cee'' (pronounced ), plural ''cees''. History "C ...

ecclesiastical parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

of Minley and 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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

of Blackwater and Hawley. It straddles on the A327 road between the M3 and Yateley. Outlying retail parades of Blackwater and Farnborough are about between all three places, on Minley Road and the east end of Sandy Lane (in

Cove A cove is a small bay or coastal inlet. They usually have narrow, restricted entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often situated within a larger bay. Small, narrow, sheltered bays, inlets, creek (tidal), creeks, or recesses in a coast ...

and Hawley).

History

Minley is included 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 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

Minley entry in Open Domesday
(archived) of 1086 as Mindeslei, in the Holesete Hundred, Hantescire (Hampshire) as a manor in Yateley, assessed at 2 hides and at 20 shillings (£), and was still held directly of the monarch by Alsi son of Brictsi. Spellings of Minley include: Mundeleya, 1189–1199 which resembles continued Welsh orthography with its use of u for i (as next to n of the time it looked identical to m, see

Middle English orthography Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...

); Mundele, 1236; Mendeley, 1280; Mynley, 1516 and Mindley in the 18th century. Minley ferm (Farm) is shown on a general whole-county map, of a near-national series, by Norden from 1607 as well as Crundall Hundred. Per the Domesday Book, the manor was land/estate of 2 hides (likely about 240 to ); now however, Minley Manor (more formally Minley Manor House) is the mansion house built by

Henry Clutton Henry Clutton (19 March 1819 – 27 June 1893)Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , was an English architect and designer. Life Henry Clutton was born on 19 March 1819, the son of Owen and Elizabeth Goodinge Clutton. He studied with Edwa ...

in 1858–60, later for some time with its own demesne grounds used by the Royal School of Military Engineering. Guillemont Barracks east before Minley Road, on its north side, abutting Hawley and Cove, were built in 1938.Mary and John: the early years, Volume 2 by Michael John Laekas
/ref> After they were decommissioned by the British Army, they were bought by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

in 1997 for £36m.db Real Estate news January 2011
/ref> The company built three office buildings on the site, but after two phases were complete and the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

burst in 2000, phase 3 ended mid-build. The whole site became known as Sun Park. The steel superstructure of the underway extra buildings stood until March 2015. After the company was bought by Oracle Corporation in 2009 the facilities and staff relocated to Oracle's Headquarters in Thames Valley Park, Reading. Property company Landid bought the former headquarters in January 2011. In 2013, its planning application to demolish the part-built structures and to build 150 homes there was refused; the next year's application to build 48 homes on the southern half succeeded. As to the rest in January 2015 planning permissions were granted for the demolition of the existing part-built structures and erection of 150 homes, construction of internal roads, provision of open space, school parking area, landscaping and associated infrastructure. In 2018 Hart District Council granted planning permission for the demolition of the existing office buildings and comprehensive redevelopment of the site for the construction of 313 homes along with internal roads, open space, landscaping and associated infrastructure (Sun Park Phase II). Gibraltar Barracks, further north on the Minley Road, were built in the 1970s and are still in use.

References

External links

Minley Historic Rural Settlement publication, including tithe map of 1846

Photograph of Church of St. Andrews, Minley
{{authority control Villages in Hampshire