A Whiteparish local history page from younsmere-frustfield.org.uk
Cowesfield is the name of an area in Frustfield Hundred and within the parish of Whiteparish consisting of three manors, two dating from before the Norman Conquest and one from slightly later. The history of Cowesfield and its manors, grand houses, parks, settlements, farms and estates is covered on this website by over 40 separate web pages. This page introduces and links directly to some of these, from which there are links to the remaining pages. All these pages can also be accessed directly from the Alphabetic Index, with many grouped together in a block, under "Cowesfield".
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Left: Cowesfield (red) surrounded by Alderstone (blue)
Right: The three mediaeval manors of Cowesfield identified
The extent of Cowesfield today (2021) is loosely defined by the "Cowesfield" signs on the 40 mph signs on the A27 Romsey Road just east of Bushey Cottages and Meadow Court. Historically, Cowesfield extended right up the hill and included what is now the Parish Lantern pub. The track to Blaxwell Farm is the boundary between Cowesfield Esturmy and Blaxwell manors. As well as leaving out a significant part of historical Cowesfield, this present boundary marker leaves roughly half of Alderstone manor within Cowesfield. Alderstone manor is central to the village and includes the church, but half of its area is detached and lies to the east of Cowesfield as you pass along the A27. Both Cowesfield Gate and Bunny Lane are part of Alderstone manor, an area that from 1812 to 1949 included the Alderstone Manor house of Broxmore House and its extensive park.
[Add map here]
Cowesfield Tithing served all three original Cowesfield manors, with a shared chapel [further detail here] in Cowesfield Spilman, whose chaplain was appointed in turn by each of the three lords of the manors. We have records of the appointment of Chaplains between the dates of 1306 and 1464. The chapel had ceased to exist by 1546, when the other two chapels in the parish at Whelpley and Moor were seized by King Henry VIII, and only its approximate position is known today.
The original Cowesfield consisted of three mediaeval manors, Cowesfield Esturmy, Cowesfield Spilman and Cowesfield Louveras, the first two established as Saxon manors and recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, the third dating from slightly later.
The three Cowesfield Manors, left to right: Esturmy, Spilman, Louveras
See Google Earth M-touch for latest boundaries - still changing 13.4.2021
kmz files are saved in Cowesfield/Google Earth Cowesfield Boundaries
Background image (c) 2021 Google
Areas as traced above: Esturmy 551 acres (223 Hectares); Spilman 465 acres (188 Hectares); Louveras 536 acres (217 Hectares); Common 72 acres (29 Hectares) [Working values - update later].
Cowesfield Green represents the core part of the Cowesfield common woodland and pasture associated with the two western Cowesfield manors, Cowesfield Esturmy and Cowesfield Spilman. Cowesfield Louveras, being a later manor, extended eastwards rather than southwards, into woodland along the county boundary (Gatemoor Copse), so didn't share the same woodland and pasture. The east and north sides of the triangular green were Cowesfield Spilman land and the western side Cowesfield Esturmy. [Investigating the possibility that the part of Alderstone to the east of Cowesfield was taken out of common woodland at a known date by St Edmund's College (they asked for and were granted permission to cut down as much woodland as they needed).]
Over time, the clustering of houses around the green led to the name Cowesfield Green being adopted as the name of the settlement, a name that was already in use by 1842 and probably very much earlier, and is shown on all modern maps. Since the Cowesfield road signs were erected by Meadow Court and Bushey Cottages in ?about 2000?, the generic Cowesfield appears to have become more used than the names Cowesfield Green and Cowesfield Gate.
Cowesfield Gate is a group of houses within Alderstone Manor on the A27 at the point where Cowesfield Common ends. As you leave Whiteparish on the A27 you join the line of the 1753 turnpike road as you follow the bend in the road to the right past the track that leads straight on towards Testwood Cottages (Cowesfield Spilman) and Lower Cowesfield Farm. The road then rises into a wood that is the last section of Cowesfield Wood. Just before you emerge from the wood to drop down the slope towards the county boundary there is a prominent entrance driveway on the left that goes to Morrisholt Farm. This drive and all the properties east of it are part of Alderstone Manor and not part of Cowesfield.
It has often been stated by writers that Cowesfield Gate was the site of a turnpike gate, but the turnpike records are very complete and unambiguous on this topic - there was no toll gate at this point, the only gates in or near the parish being on what is now the A27 opposite Lascars and on Common Road just north of the school. Instead, it seems most likely that a gate stood across the road at this point to prevent stock on Cowesfield Common straying east onto Alderstone land. The houses shown on the 1842 Tithe Map were entirely on Alderstone land, and this remains the case today, the area of housing having extended towards Romsey and including the mushroom farm, Bluebells and Littlewood on the south (right side) of the road and the lodges and houses clustered around the old entrance to Broxmore Park and House on the north (left side) of the road (heading towards Romsey) all being situated on Alderstone land, and not part of Cowesfield.
On the 1842 map below, Cowesfield Spilman is in red, with a red ring round Testwood Cottages (the original manorial centre). The unenclosed part of Cowesfield Wood is in yellow and the eastern part of Alderstone Manor is blue. From the bottom of this map section an old road to Broxmore House passes straight up the map through Testwood Cottages, and the turnpike road, now the A27, bends to the right and crosses through the wood. The houses and other properties at Cowesfield Gate are in the top right corner of the map. Among these houses before going downhill, a track on the left leads to Morrisholt Farm: this is the old main road to Sherfield English, passing Ash Hill House on its way to Church Lane, and then going past the site of the original Sherfield English church near Manor Farm.
From Cowesfield Gate the A27 runs downhill and on to the county boundary. By turning left into Bunny Lane you pass back from Hampshire into Alderstone manor and up past the site of Broxmore House and Park to Rowden's Farm. All of this is part of Alderstone.
Cowesfield Gate in 1842 (top right on the blue background)
Alderstone manor (blue); Cowesfield Spilman manor (red); Cowesfield Wood (yellow)
By the turn of the 20th century the separate names of the three manors were falling out of use and simply being replaced by "Cowesfield". Hence the presence of Cowesfield Manor for the manor house of Cowesfield Esturmy and Cowesfield House as the manor house for Cowesfield Spilman. Kelly's Directory, published between 1848 and 1939 refers in various editions to Cowesfield Manor and Cowesfield Louveras Manor, but is far from accurate in these respects, selectively reporting only one or two of the eight lords of the manor in each edition and and failing to list most of the Whiteparish manors at all. Maps too show some surprising errors over the years, with the labelling of Cowesfield Spilman as Cowesfield Esturmy in 1773 fairly typical. For the interested, there are many more interesting variants of place names on that particular map. While not up to later surveying standards, it is nonetheless of great value as a source of early detail.
Cowesfield House was built as a farmhouse in the late 16th century, turned into a modest country house in 1767, and subject to much a much grander makeover in 1815. It was demolished in 1949. See Cowesfield House for further detail, where there are also links to related pages on the park, the lodges, the farms and the owners, as well as a detailed analysis of the land given to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1620, which was the subject of a later court case in 1771.
From time to time individual landowners have held two of the three Cowesfield manors, together with other manors elsewhere in most cases. From 1427 to around 1600 Cowesfield Esturmy and Cowesfield Spilman were under the same owner, then from 1777 onwards Cowesfield Esturmy and Cowesfield Louveras were in common ownership until 1842 and beyond. The three separate manor names gradually fell from use and were replaced simply by "Cowesfield", even though the lordships of each of the three manors continued. This is very much an echo of the very earliest records, where the manors were all referred to as "Cowesfield", with the context clarifying which one. Cowesfield Manor (Cowesfield Esturmy) on Cowesfield Green is a renaming of what had been Cowesfield Green Farm in 1842 to Cowesfield Manor Farm by 1878. Full details of individual landowners and their holdings can be found on the web pages for the manors, estates and farms [links to be added here].
[Private - see here for more detail of the two manors on Cowesfield Green to be incorporated here]