A brief history of Chineham
During the construction of Great Binfields School, various archaeological finds indicated occupation dating back to 2000 BC, including a 600-800 AD Anglo-Saxon settlement.
Records for the area go back to the reign of Edward the Confessor, when Chineham Estate formed a detached part of the Parish of Monk Sherbourne. At the time of the Doomsday Book, around 1086, Aghemund held the Manor of Chineham from Hugh De Port, who owned Monk Sherbourne. Adam De Port then granted the Manor of Chineham to William (with permission from the Priory and Convent of Monk Sherbourne) and William’s son inherited the Manor from his father.
In 1272 the Lord of the manor was William de Chineham, who died in 1316, to be succeeded by his son Richard. It would appear that Richard was not a popular figure, as the manor was burned down in 1317! On Richard’s death in 1346, the estate passed to his son, John, who subsequently passed it to William Brocas.
In 1431 it passed to William Warblington of Sherfield on Loddon. William died in 1460 but his wife Margaret survived until 1484, at which point the manor passed to William Puttenham, son of Henry Puttenham (who was William’s cousin). In 1552 it then passed to Richard, grandson of William Puttenham but for a period after this date the history is vague.
In 1747, Thomas Cowslad, a member of a family which had been long established in Basingstoke, appears to have looked after the manor for a short time until it passed to William, Earl of Dartmouth circa 1755. George Viscount Lewisham, the eldest son of the Earl of Dartmouth, took possession in 1786 and subsequently it was sold to Mr and Mrs Hasker, who then sold it to Lord Bolton,who passed it to the next Lord Bolton.
By the mid 1800’s Chineham was just a small farm or hamlet and an abandoned medieval moated site (east of Farm View Drive).
In the 1960’s Chineham consisted of around 70 dwellings, mostly bungalows, wooden shacks and railway cottages, along the Reading Road. At Basingstoke town end of the village there was a transport café (now an Indian restaurant), a boarding house and a coal office. In the centre of the village were the village shop and a 2-pump garage. Along the road to the left there was a sweet and general store (now a tool shop) and then a little wooden church (now replaced by Christ Church on the other side of the road). The heart of the village was the small village hall, which fell down in the late 60’s and at that time there were no funds to rebuild it. At the end of the village stood the Toll House (still there today but cut off from Chineham by the A33 bypass which was built in the late 70’s).
In the late 70’s construction of the current development began and all that is evident of the old development today is a brick and flint farm building dating from the 19th century, which is located just off the old Cufaude Lane path in the centre of Chineham.