About St. Mary Magdalen, Sheet
About St. Mary Magdalen, Sheet
About the Village of Sheet
The original village of Sheet lay between the two outlying mills beside the river Rother and its tributary the Ashford Stream, focusing on Village Street. Nowadays it extends South and West towards the town of Petersfield.
The historic ownership of the tithing of Sheet is complex:
"SHEET (Sithe, Shite, and Schyte, xiii cent.; Shete, xv cent.; Shett, xvi cent.)
formerly formed part of the great manor of Mapledurham, and was granted by Aumary, earl of Gloucester, son of Aumary, count of Evreux, to Eustace de Greinville, to hold to him and his heirs of the grantor and his heirs by the service of the third part of a knight's fee. The tenement of Richard the miller with the mill and the suit and multure of the men of the manor of Mapledurham and Petersfield was included in the grant, as also the annual payment of two cart-loads of brushwood and one sufficient tree at the Feast of St. John the Baptist from the wood for the maintenance of the mill.
The overlordship was changed in 1210, in which year Aumary conveyed to Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, all the fee which Eustace held of his gift in Mapledurham, to hold to the bishop and his successors in free alms.
In 1237 Eustace granted to the prior and canons of Selborne in free alms all the land which he had by the gift of his lord Aumary, earl of Gloucester, in the manor of Mapledurham with the mill, saving to the bishop the service of the third part of the knight's fee, and his gift was confirmed by Peter des Roches in the same year.
After the death of Eustace, his widow Joan received as her dowry the third part of fourteen marks' rent from the tenement in Sheet, but this rent she quitclaimed to John prior of Selborne and his successors in 1251 on her marriage with Stephen Symeon.
In 1281 Prior Richard and the convent of Selborne farmed out to Abbot John and the convent of Dureford all their lands and tenements at Sheet for a rent of fourteen marks.
From this time onwards until the dissolution the abbot and convent of the Blessed Mary of Dureford continued to hold these lands and tenements, which developed into a small manor, for this fixed annual payment, and their connexion with this parish can still be traced in the names Adhurst St. Mary and St. Mary's Well. The prior and convent of Selborne sometimes had some difficulty in securing the payment of the rent, and in 1425 brought an assize of novel disseisin against Thomas abbot of Dureford and John Atte Wode about a tenement in Sheet, the result of which was that the latter were forced to enter into a bond for £40 for securing the punctual payment of the fourteen marks. In spite of this, however, they owed Selborne Priory over £50 fee-farm rent in 1462.
The abbot and convent of Dureford in their turn leased out their property in the parish at various times. Thus in 1466 they granted all their lands and tenements in Sheet, which they held at fee-farm of the prior and convent of Selborne, to Nicholas Huse and others to hold for twenty years at a rent of £9 6s. 8d.
Again in 1532 they leased out to Launcelot Sympson of Petersfield the site of their manor of South Sheet and all the houses built there, with all the meads, leasures, &c., as wholly as Martin Frayll held them, except one moor let to Magdalen College, to hold for the term of sixty years at a rent of 40s., while in the following year Richard Massam of Henley, who was probably acting for Magdalen College, obtained a ninety-nine years' lease of a moor in Sheet for a rent of 8d.
Thus at the dissolution most of the property which Dureford had held at fee-farm of Selborne was let on lease. Like most of the Dureford property the manor of Sheet was granted to Sir William Fitzwilliam, afterwards earl of Southampton, in tail male, and on his death without issue reverted to the king, who in 1546, in return for £1,569 15s. 2d., granted to George Rithe and Thomas Grantham 60 acres called Martyns in Petersfield now or late in the occupation of Launcelot Sympson, together with other lands, tenements, rents, and services formerly belonging to Dureford Abbey.
In the same year George and Thomas sold Martyns, 10 acres of moorland in the occupation of Magdalen College, and a cottage, to Roger Childe of Sheet, described sometimes as a yeoman, and sometimes as a miller, who two years later sold the property for £42 to William Standish of Oxford and others. William was an Oxford notary who was regularly employed by the college, and no doubt he was the college agent in the purchase; but it was not until 1556 that he conveyed the property to the college, the delay in conveying being probably due to the uncertainty of the time; when it was doubtful, first whether the colleges would not go the way of the monasteries, and then whether the monastic possessions might not be reclaimed. Magdalen College still owns Sheet Mill and a great deal of landed property in the parishes of Petersfield and Sheet."From: 'Parishes: Petersfield', A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 3 (1908), pp. 111-21.
URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=41939&strquery=sheet%20hampshire.In simple terms: Much of the land was held by nearby Durford Abbey until the Reformation. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Abbey's land at Sheet passed to the Crown and eventually, in 1556, to Magdalen College, Oxford, which still owns land in Sheet and Petersfield. The Village of Sheet appears on an old map by Norden 1607, but not on the 1579 Atlas of England and Wales by Christopher Saxton.
Tithing of Sheet.
In 1674 John Lock by his will charged certain lands with the yearly payment of 50s. for maintenance of a sufficient person to teach poor children of the tithing to read the English tongue. The rent-charge, which is payable out of a farm in Sheet, called Westmark, was at various times in arrear, which arrears on recovery were invested in £130 10s. 4d. consols. The income was applied for educational purposes.From: 'Parishes: Petersfield', A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 3 (1908), pp. 111-21.
URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=41939&strquery=sheet%20hampshire.Until fairly recent times the economy of the village was very dependant on the two mills, used for fulling wool; the manufacture of tools and weapons from locally produced iron; leather tanning, which took place at The Vale on the Ashford Stream below the church, and farming.
Sheet has had strong links with the transport of goods and people since early times. For many years cattle and sheep drovers crossed the River Rother at Sheet. In 1711 the Sheet to Portsea Turnpike Act was passed to maintain the road from Sheet to Portsmouth primarily for military purposes. The old toll house by the Rother was pulled down in 1932 when the A3, Portsmouth Road, was widened. The London South Western Railway opened in 1859, the village then expanded North along School Lane to the school, which moved here in 1897 ‑ the same year as the Chestnut tree was planted on the Village Green to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond jubilee.
Sheet was originally a small village clustered around the village green and much of this infrastructure remains today. A steady development of housing during the past thirty years has tramsformed the area around the village, this community being on the outskirts of the market town of Petersfield, in fact the two have grown together . Further development is planned...
The parish of Sheet is largely "dormitory" in nature, since almost all local industry and shopping facilities are centred in Petersfield, which also houses a modern community hospital, medical and dental surgeries, library, railway station (from which many commute to London), and a twice weekly general market. Sheet has two local authority schools - one primary and one junior, a co-educational independent secondary school, a village hall, homes for the elderly and some sheltered accommodation. The high cost of housing often causes both parents to work to survive.