Nomansland, Wiltshire
Coordinates: 50°57′14″N 1°38′24″W / 50.954°N 1.640°W
Nomansland is a village situated at the north edge of the New Forest in Southern England, on the border between Hampshire and Wiltshire. The village is part of the parish of Redlynch, adjacent to Landford.
History
The first traced reference to the name was in 1609, when Noemans Walk was listed in a survey of trees felled in the New Forest.(1) This remote locality on the edge of the New Forest and Hamptworth Common was not colonised until the mid-1780s, the arrival of squatters being noted in 1787 by two of the surveyors responsible for the first official map of the New Forest in the 1789: '...several people are taking possession of it & inclosing it very fast...' they recorded (2) . The first reference to Nomansland in a parish register was not until 1796 (the death of widow Young, in Whiteparish register), but the names of the early settlers can be retrieved, because fourteen children born to them in the 1780s and 1790s and still alive in 1851 recorded their place of birth as Nomansland in the national census of that year. Of the ten or so settlers ( with approximately an acre each), the most important were four pairs of brothers :King, Dibden, Batten, and Winter, who, with their children, were responsible for much of the population growth of the colony up to the mid nineteenth century. The nineteenth-century population peaked at 172 in the 1851 census. Only one of the squatters, Shergold, was examined (and discharged) by the New Forest encroachment commission of 1802, the others probably being considered to have squatted in Hamptworth, outside the New Forest boundary.(3)
1 TNA:PRO E178/3097 ms 36-50, published in Reeves, R P (ed) To Inquire and Conspire: New Forest Documents 1533-1615 New Forest Ninth Centenary trust/New Forest Museum & Library, 2008. 2 Survey of Ashley Walk, Castle Malwood Walk, Bramble Hill Walk, Eyeworth Walk, and Broomy Walk, part of the New Forest in the County of Southampton, referring to a Plan of the same made by A & W Driver, 1787 3 Proceedings [1802]of the New Forest Commission. Return Made by Commissioners acting under the Acts of the 39 & 40 George III….as to incroachments, &c in the said forest. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1853. Case 626, pp 149-50 (printed version of NA:CRES 40/8 New Forest encroachments...cases 1-654)
Notable People
Lani Boyce - Deputy Member of United Kingdom Youth Parliament 2010-2011
Rebecca Warde - Member of United Kingdom Youth Parliament 2007-2008
Notes
External links
Media related to Nomansland, Wiltshire at Wikimedia Commons