PARISH HISTORY

The Catholics, in this small corner of Hampshire, were originally served from Tichborne House. The Tichborne family were granted their estate in about 1135 and have lived there ever since remaining loyal to the Catholic faith through the difficult years of the Reformation. The, now, Anglican Parish Church of St. Andrew' s, in the village of Tichborne, is one of only three in the country which has a Catholic Chapel within it. This was a privilege granted to Sir Benjamin Tichborne in 1621 by King James I, in recognition of Sir Benjamin's help in securing Hampshire for the king at his accession in 1603. This is where the Tichborne family are buried and a Catholic service is still held there once a year. When the old 16th century house was rebuilt in 1802, a Catholic Chapel, dedicated to St. Margaret of Scotland, was built into the new Tichborne House and this acted as the Parish Church for the local Catholic population. In the early 1950's another private chapel, dedicated to Our Lady, was established nearby in Alresford House by the Constable-Maxwell family and this was also initially served from Tichborne. (This chapel was eventually closed in 1992 with the sale of Alresford House.) Father Charles Ritchie (Chaplain to Tichborne House from 1946-1954), realising that the Catholic Parish of Tichborne would eventually outgrow the Chapel, had the foresight to buy a large field in Alresford for £400, for future development. This field was to become the site of the present church of St. Gregory the Great. In 1957 Archbishop King sent Canon Alban Burrett to be the Parish Priest of the newly founded Alresford Parish, the first priest not sponsored by the Tichborne family. The Constable-Maxwells helped to underwrite the expenses of the new parish by buying No. 45 Broad Street to serve as a Presbytery and establishing a convent of American nuns in Medstead, to support him. After endless fund raising and the sale of part of the land for development, a church was finally commissioned from the architects Melhuish, Wright & Evans; the builders were Jenkins & Co. of Southampton. It was opened in September 1968 and consecrated in 1975. The church of St. Gregory the Great is now a listed building as it is an excellent example of the ideas introduced by the second Vatican Council. The altar is centrally placed, with the font just inside the entrance, and it is lit by an enormous centrally placed lantern. It also has some fine Stations of the Cross and a figure of the Resurrected Christ, sculpted by a later member of the same Constable-Maxwell family in 1988.

TICHBORNE HOUSE

Tichborne House has been the seat of the Tichborne family for more than eight hundred years, the present owner Mr. A. Loudon being the grandson of the last baronet Sir Anthony Tichborne. The original house was in existence at least by the year 1293, when permission was granted for divine service to he held there and, shortly after this, there is explicit reference to a private chapel at Tichborne House. This chapel is reputed to have been the scene of one of Henry VIII's marriages.

The present house was built in 1803 and has an attractive porch of four Tuscan columns with a triglyph frieze. It is from this porch that the Tichborne dole is distributed every Lady Day by the head of the Tichborne family to all the parishioners of Tichborne and Cheriton; a gallon for each adult and half a gallon for each child. 

THE TICHBORNE DOLE 

Every year on the Feast of the Annunciation (Lady’s Day) the parish priest carries out the traditional Blessing of the Tichborne Dole. The Blessing is open to the public. The Dole is a ceremony of great antiquity. According to legend. it was originated by Lady Mabella, wife of Sir Roger Tichborne who lived here in the thirteenth century. As Lady Mabella lay dying she asked her husband that he would grant her means to leave a charitable bequest in a dole of bread to be distributed to any poor folk who should apply for it at Tichborne House on Lady Day. Sir Roger, somewhat heartlessly, agreed to give for this purpose the corn from all the land which his dying wife could crawl around while a brand was burning. Too weak to walk, Lady Mabella succeeded in crawling around a twenty-three acre field which his still called 'The Crawls’ to this day and which is situated just north of Tichborne Park and beside the road to Alresford.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Dole Day became a very rowdy affair, attracting the dissolute and dishonest from far and wide. This, at least, was the belief of the local gentry and magistrates and in 1796 the dole was temporarily discontinued. Local folk however, remembered the final part of the Tichborne legend. Lady Mabella had laid a curse on any of her successors who should fail to distribute her charitable dole. The penalty for such failure would be a generation of seven daughters, the family name would die out and the ancient house fall down. When part of old Tichborne House fell down in 1803, this was seen as an ominous portent and the cursed seemed to have been fulfilled when Sir Henry Tichborne, who succeeded to the baronetcy in 1821 produced seven daughters but no male heir.

ST GREGORY'S

Father Sebastian Ritchie, chaplain to Tichborne House, saw the need for a new church in the growing town of New Alresford, and donated the land on which the church now stands. A church was designed and built in Grange Road, following the ideas of the 2nd Vatican Council for the layout of the building. 

In mid-summer 1968 the Bishop of Portsmouth, The Rt. Rev Derek Worlock, offered the first Mass in St Gregory’s assisted by the parish priest. Canon Alban Burrett and many of the Diocesan and local clergy. The church was consecrated on 11 July 1975.

The chapel of St Margaret at Tichborne Park  is still used for a Mass on an irregular basis - see the newsletter for details.