Brixbury

Brixbury, or Bricksbury Hill, is located to the north of Farnham Park, within Surrey. It therefore lies outside the formal boundary of Aldershot as defined by the River Blackwater. And yet, this was property let by the Aldershot Parish Officers adding revenue to the parish funds.

• • At its summit sits the so-called “Caesar’s Camp”, a term reputedly first used by antiquarians of the 18th century, according to Judie English who noted that archaeologists had long considered that the fort on the site was an Iron Age construction.
  • This area should not be confused with Hungry Hill on which Bricksbury Estate was later built.

Aldershot Parish Officers

These are the office-holders elected annually at meetings of the Vestry. Reference was made to ‘Brixberry’ on page 15 of the Vestry Minute Book during a meeting held in March 1837.  Agreement was given to allow Richard Cawson to have tenancy of a cottage and  two acres of land at £3 per annum, “to commence from Michaelmas last and expire at Michaelmas 1841.” He was “to use his best endeavour to protect the land from the occupation of others situate at Brixberry and to acquaint the Parish of anything to his knowledge is going on in the Common improper.” 

• • The 1841 Census records Richard Cawson as an agricultural labourer then living close to the farm of William Tice in North Lane.

The 1841 Tithe Apportionment Survey, published in 1843, noted that the ‘Aldershot Parish Officers’ then owned a total of over 69 acres. That included two cottages with 42 acres of  arable and rough land at Brixbury.

The Bishop and Brixbury

Regardless,

John Trussler listed by the 1851 Census as 62, married and a farmer of 16 acres employing one man, presumably the agricultural labourer who was his lodger.

Charlotte as wife

• The occupants of that land were included in the 1841 Census of the Aldershot parish. James Paine and Richard Barnett and their families occupied the two cottages at ‘Brix Berey’; In 1851 they were listed, respectively, as an agricultural labourer and ‘on parish relief’.[iii]

[i]

Clearing up misconceptions about Hale  by Barbara Knight

published in the Farnham Hearld & republished in

http://www.halehistoryproject.co.uk/myths-and-misconceptions.php

 Displaced Families

Misconception number two — that the Army drove cottagers off the Common and into Hoghatch. Once the construction of the permanent camp at Aldershot was under way, the War Office realised that it needed more heathland than was first envisaged.  It bought extra land at Ewshot, Crookham, and Hale.  It was necessary to displace the families who were living on Bricksbury Hill, in Longbottom, and around the summit of Hungry Hill.  In all some 40 or 50 families were displaced.  Many of these families were descended from the original squatters who had taken up residence in the latter half of the 18th century.  Around the turn of the century, the Bishop of Winchester had granted rights of allotment to many of the cottagers and these cottagers and their descendants had to be recompensed by the War Department for the loss of their properties.

The 1861 Census returns show that some of the displaced families moved in to Hoghatch and Hungry Hill.  A study of the Hale Parish registers would provide more detailed information about the fate of the displaced families: unfortunately these are not yet available to researchers.

[ii] Survey of a post-medieval ‘squatter’ occupation site and 19th century military earthworks at Hungry Hill, Upper Hale, near Farnham. Judie English. Surrey Archaeological Collections, 92, 245–253, 2005. http://docplayer.net/31964392-Survey-of-a-post-medieval-squatter-occupation-site-and-19th-century-military-earthworks-at-hungry-hill-upper-hale-near-farnham.html

[iii] 1841 Census for Aldershot