As lords of the Manor, the Delme family managed Titchfield through some difficult times, bringing mixed blessings to the area. Whilst practising the worst imaginable vandalism of Titchfield Abbey and leaving it in ruins, they continued to foster the village interests until the end of the 19th century.
They were Walloons of Belgian and French extraction; who came to Norfolk from the northern province of Lorraine to escape religious persecution. Peter Delme was the third son of Pierre Delme and Sibella Nightingale's nine children. He became a London merchant of some substance and proceeded to follow in his father's footsteps. He married Anne Matcham, daughter of a Southampton grocer and went on to become a governor of the Bank of England and a pillar of society. He enjoyed a privileged life, was knighted in 1714 and in 1723 was made Lord Mayor of London. He died in 1728.
The next Peter Delme, the first to figure directly in the Titchfield story was only 18 years old when he took on his father's affairs and set out to continue with great success. Two marriages brought the estates of Eltham in Kent and Earlestoke in Wiltshire to the Delme dynasty. In 1741 he brought his influence to bear in Southampton, giving £500 for its political discernment and a set of 8 bells to Holyrood Church. He was elected Member of Parliament and became a freeman of the town. Peter completed a momentous year in 1741 by buying Place House and the manor.
Peter was a patron of the arts, a connoisseur of books, sculpture and was influential in London societies such as the Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London.
A survey of the estates in 1753 shows 14 enclosed farms along the Meon valley producing grain, market-garden crops including the novel cabbage, dairy farming and large herds of sheep. Garstonfield remains an allotment. Tanning, a major Titchfield trade, its works stretched along the banks of the Meon from the great mill to Bridge Street.
Just when it seemed that he was achieving success, his death at the age of 59 through apoplectic fit, was announced in the newspapers of 1770. History records however that Peter Delme had shot himself when his finances were not in good shape.
The Delme Dynasty was saved again by inter-marriage. The next Lord of Titchfield Manor was another Peter Delme who married into nobility. His wife was Lady Elizabeth Howard, third daughter of the fourth Earl of Carlisle, was from noble stock and became one of the ladies-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. Lady Betty was beheld as one of most beautiful ladies of her day and Peter commissioned Joshua Reynolds to paint her and their two sons.
Lady Betty did not much care for her Titchfield Palace, she must have found the journey to Hampton Court difficult as the village was remote and not served by the best roads. Peter, too as Member of Parliament for Morpeth shared their options of being on horseback or riding in a coach with rudimentary leather strap suspension.
Within a year or so, Peter Delmé was house-hunting again. He discovered another grand residence, one somewhat easier to reach from London on the new turnpike roads. Cams Hall, unlike Place House, was virtually new. It was the splendidly elegant property of General John Carnac, a senior official of the East India Company. Carnac had engaged the architect Jacob LeRoux to design for him a spacious mansion with a classically pedimented facade and grand south-facing rooms with views over Fareham creek. To the north the house looked out towards the great sweep of Portsdown Hill and Wallington.
But the Delme family were having difficulty in raising the £18,000 asking price for it and when Peter Delme III died in 1780 at the age of just 41, he left the problems at Lady Betty's feet.
Over a period of ten years, the Delmê family had systematically despoiled both the inner and outer fabric of Place House. They plundered its interior richness in order to embellish their new Fareham home, a type of Philistinism we are not unfamiliar with today. A line of noble columns and arches still grace the stable block, a position far below their original position.
John Delmé was seventeen when his father died; two years later, while still under age, he married Frances Gamier of Rookesbury Park. His mother sets him up in fine stead and he has 7 sons and 4 daughters before dying at 36! His eldest son dies at 23 so second son Henry Peter Delme inherits Titchfield, Segensworth, Crofton, Cams, & Lee in 1813. Population is about 3,000 over the next 100 years.
Lady Betty too marries a Garnier but retires to St. Margaret's Farm when his life ends.
From 1750 Dame Hart runs a school for spinning, knitting and reading. Maypole dancing is banned, but charity grants are given to cordwainers, shoemakers and wigmakers. John Martin leads a gang of highwaymen then swings from the gallows.
The local fire brigade is inaugurated in 1772.
In 1789 the Independant Church is built. Admiralty lord Paulet is resident at West hill with a clear view of the Solent in 1803. England is at war with France 1792-1815 and the American colonies 1812-1814, during which time the New Forest is decimated to build warships, overseas trade tumbles, the dreaded excise duty is enforced and income tax invented.
Shepherds play a new game on the common called cricket, although cock-fighting and bear-baiting are more popular.
The Prince Regent, later George IV, reviews the local Volunteer Infantry in 1805 recruited by Captain Missing. Royalty puts Tichfield back on the map for high society functions in the Bugle
In 1830 the National school in West street is opened with two teachers, Mill street Workhouse closes down, the great water mill is rebuilt, prison cells are installed in the market hall, and the first southern passenger railway is opened to replace the rigours of the stagecoach. The Crimean war (1853-1856) ends with the sanitary attentions of Florence Nightingale who is related to the Delmes.
Henry Delme is good for the village but in 1845 the market-hall is removed from the Square to Barry's Meadow, market stalls and the ancient bi-annual fairs are shut down giving rise to discontent. Could this have been the reason for the infamous tar barrel burning (see Titchfield Carnival)?
There is a big turn-out in 1883 for the funeral of Henry Delme, probably the most popular of all the Lords of the manor. Not so his brother Seymour who inherits the estate and resists the railway coming over his land. So the town is bi-passed with a viaduct and Swanwick station is swamped with strawberries for London.
In 1890 the Parish Room is built in memory of Elizabeth Hornby.
Strawberry crops completely cover the old Common now divided into smallholdings.
In 1894, just as the Boer war opens (to last 8 years), Seymour dies and all the manor properties and lands are sold off, now looking ever sadder as it was stripped it bare to enhance and extend the new residence.
In the same year Fareham becomes an urban district and Titchfield Parish council becomes the local authority until 1932 when along with Crofton, Porchester, sarisbury and Warsash, it is absorbed into Fareham.
The Delme family rapidly established themselves and Cams Hall became the focus of Fareham nobility. They threw open their fine manor to entertain parliamentary colleagues and influential London friends.
British iron was too brittle and full of impurities; until the end of the 18th century wood was more reliable. England bought its high grade iron from Sweden and Russia until Henry Cort discovered his techniques for making wrought iron which was stronger and more maleable. In 1775 he began a period of experimentation at Titchfield that would establish Britain's self-sufficiency in iron that won a war and laid the way for the industrial revolution.
Titchfield's biggest success story.
The old Common was divided into small holdings and with its
neighboring villages blossomed beautiful with small businesses.
Each morning a string of horses and carts trundled off to Swanwick
Station to load up the 'strawberry specials' bound for Covent
Garden and the fashionable London tea shops.
In 1880 a group called the Bonfire Boys is said to have burned a tar barrel in the village in protest about their lot, but we don't know why. It grew into an event grew into one of the biggest and best known carnivals in the south.