This page has a link below to the slides used by the speaker at the Whiteparish History and Environmental Society talk on 19th February 2026. It is also being updated (as of 20th February) with a narrative version of some of the talk. In addition other Cowesfield pages are being updated and new ones uploaded. See the notes below under "Detailed account of the talk" for the latest status.
[This link is for private use only] Powerpoint presentation. Caution: if edited here, remember to save to the correct location in 'U3A Local History', not to the 'Downloads' folder
Detailed account of the talk
Some of the content of the talk will be addded below, but I'm focussing on putting content into the relevant Cowesfield pages and making those directly available. See Cowesfield Esturmy introduction for one of these new pages. I'll keep updating the notes here as the work proceeds.
2. Outline of the talk
3. Clarifying names of places and the Hundred
I need first to define exact meanings for Cowesfield, Whiteparish and Frustfield, as the first in particular will be used below in several different contexts.
Cowesfield has perhaps three separate meanings.
- It is the name applied today to a hamlet marked by road signs on the A27. Until the road signs were erected in recent years (20??) to mark a stretch of 40 mph speed limit, this hamlet has been known for several centuries as Cowesfield Green and continues to be marked as such on maps. I will talk in detail below about Cowesfield Gate and its history, and clearly we think of this too as part of Cowesfield, even though it is outside the marked area and was historically in Alderstone manor.
- Historically Cowesfield is the name of two manors at the time of the 1086 Domesday Book and a third manor that was formed about a hundred years later. In the Domesday Book two manors were listed as Cowesfield, one as Landford and the other manors in the Hundred were referred to as Frustfield.
- Thirdly Cowesfield is used as the name of each of three manors, two Saxon and one Norman, these being Cowesfield Esturmy, Cowesfield Spilman and Cowesfield Louveras. These manors and their history are the subject of this talk.
Whiteparish is the name of the village and also of the parish. As a village this started life as a nucleated settlement in Alderstone manor, the manor that contains the church, and spread each way along the A27 road: towards Salisbury as houses were built in Whelpley manor along the north side of The Street" and towards Romsey as houses were built in Blaxwell and Cowesfield Esturmy manors.
Frustfield was the name of a Hundred, an administrative area of Wiltshire that occupied the place of the modern parish. Frustfield Hundred contained what are now the parishes of Whiteparish and Landford and part of what is now Redlynch parish, and served military and judicial purposes under common law. As mentioned above it was also the name given to four other manors in the Hundred, Moor, Whelpley, Alderstone and Blaxwell, as well as two other small landholdings that we haven't been able to identify conclusively with later settlements.
4. Cowesfield within the parish of Whiteparish
Whiteparish before the boundary changes of 1885 and 1886 with Cowesfield highlighted in red
5. A closer view
6. The three Cowesfield manors: Esturmy, Spilman and Louveras
7. Evolution of the names
8. A wider view, the eight Whiteparish manors
9. Manors without manor houses?
10. Frustfield and Cowesfield
11. A 'Hundred' of small manors: value in 1086
12. The three Cowesfield manors in more detail
13. Cowesfield Esturmy
14. Cowesfield Esturmy map
15. Cowesfield Esturmy boundary by the Parish Lantern
16. Cowesfield Esturmy boundary looking west
17. Cowesfield Esturmy boundary at Pains Firework Factory entrance
18. Cowesfield Esturmy History and Origins
19. Cowesfield Esturmy later story
20. Cowesfield Esturmy in the 1840s
21. Cowesfield Green Farm in 1842
22. Cowesfield Esturmy sale in 1940 and 1941
23. Cowesfield Spilman
24. Cowesfield Spilman
25. Cowesfield Spilman
26. Cowesfield Spilman
27. Cowesfield Spilman
28. Cowesfield Spilman
29. Cowesfield Spilman
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
[Working here - 20.2.2026. More to be added in the coming days.]
Heading3
Paragraph templates
Image caption to add here