Phelps’ Parks

Phelps’ Parks is defined in a legal agreement dated  4th October 1766 held in the Hampshire Archives (19M61/914). The earlier  churchwarden  and Poor Law records make frequent references to ‘Phelps’  the Town tithing which may have been the fields marked in green in the 1794 map.

The 1740 map suggests that the farmhouse was on the site of Waldegrave House. The 1766 agreement was between the Waldegraves and The Doroty Yorke who was a widow but it was part of a larger agreement between John Stocker and Robert Kingsmill. The 18th century records show a number of people paying rates for Phelp’s Park but they did not include any members of the Phelps family.

A Thomas Phelps was listed as paying rates and acting as an Overseer for a holding called Alfords which may have been in the East End Tithing but he may have been resident in Emborough or Ston Easton.

There are also references to the family in paying rates for land in the East End  but the Phelps appeared to have been based in Emborough so that may have been a different property.

Thomas Secombe may have taken responsibility for part of Phelps Parks in 1754.

The 1840 tithe map identifies a field called Phelps on Lower Street which was roughly the field marked 384 in the 1784 map but the boundaries, and perhaps the name, changed between 1794 and 1840.

The Hampshire record 19M61/914 is a summary of several agreements and Phelp’s Park was defined (loosely) in an agreement with Anthony Stocker and it makes reference to a ‘roofless tenement’. There is a barn and what may have been a farmyard sitting forlornly on the  plain above Kings Hill which may have been where the Phelps farmhouse was.

However, all of the arguments for where the Loxton farm house may have been also applies to Phelps’. It could have been anywhere but the reference to Dorothy Yorke makes the site of Chewton House or  Chewton House or the most likely place for the Phelps’ farmhouse.