Odiham Place, the deer park and Elizabeth I

The deer park came first

Odiham's royal deer park is older than the castle. A "Hugh the Parker", the park keeper, is recorded in 1130 to 1131, and when King John took land for his castle in 1207 he took it from Robert the Parker. Hart District Council's conservation area appraisal says there's evidence the park may even pre-date the Norman Conquest.

At its biggest the park ran about a mile and a quarter north from the edge of the village to roughly where the M3 is now, and about three quarters of a mile from North Warnborough across to Poland Mill. Look at it on a map or from the air and you can still see its oval outline, with kinks at north, south, east and west where the old gates were. Hampshire Gardens Trust calls it a rare and unusually well-documented former royal park.

Medieval kings kept a royal stud here as well as deer. In 1312 the sheriff was told to feed twenty colts and seven grooms sent to Odiham, and new stables and a house for the king's colts were built in 1324. Timber from the royal estate at Odiham was used to build Eton College.

Odiham Place

Once the castle was out of use, the royal manor needed a house. In about 1530 Richard Hill, who leased the manor from the Crown, built a mansion called Odiham Place north of the High Street, possibly on the site of the older Saxon royal residence. A map of 1739 shows it as an E-shaped brick house with a gatehouse, walled court, garden, laundry, dairy, bakehouse, brewery, and a barn with a dovecote.

That barn survives. It's the Cross Barn at Palace Gate Farm, tree-ring dated to 1532, and Hart's appraisal describes it as Hampshire's earliest known barn built of load-bearing brick.

The Privy Council met at Odiham in 1576 and 1591. The manor was granted to the Earl of Mar in 1603 and later sold to Lord Zouche. After that the big northern part of the park, the Great Park, was turned into farmland, while the southern Little Park stayed as the mansion's park. Parliamentarian soldiers damaged the house in 1643 and the gatehouse and part of the mansion came down in 1653. The rest was demolished between 1759 and 1777, and what was left became a farm, first called Place Gate Farm and later Palace Gate Farm. The Victoria County History noted a few old carved stones with heads still in the farmhouse in 1911.

Elizabeth I in Odiham

Hart's appraisal says Elizabeth I stayed at Odiham Place on six occasions between 1560 and 1591. We've found firm detail for the last one. Caroline Adams's study of the 1591 royal progress through Hampshire shows the queen at Odiham on 19 September 1591, with Edward More as her host, before moving on to the Earl of Hertford's famous entertainments at Elvetham. Sir Edward More is the same man who founded the almshouses by the church.

So: Elizabeth definitely came, she probably came several times, and the "six visits" figure comes from a reliable council report but we haven't traced its original source.

Was it a bishop's palace?

You'll sometimes see Odiham's palace called "the Bishop's Palace". As far as we can tell that comes from Victorian gazetteers. The 1868 National Gazetteer says Odiham "was anciently a free borough belonging to the bishops of Winchester, who had a palace here", and that "the remains of the bishop's palace, still called Palace Gate, have been converted into a farmhouse".

The Victoria County History, which worked from the actual manor records, tells a different story: Odiham was a royal manor from before 1066 until 1603 and then passed to the Zouches and later the St John family. The bishops of Winchester didn't own it. Odiham church did belong to Salisbury for a while in the 12th century, and the vicar later held his living from the Bishop of Winchester, which might explain the confusion. There's also an odd twist: the chronicler Roger of Wendover called the castle keep "the Bishop of Winchester's tower" in his account of the 1216 siege. But the mansion behind the High Street was the king's (or queen's) house, not a bishop's, and we'd suggest the site calls it Odiham Place or the royal palace.

See it for yourself

You can see the Cross Barn and the line of the old deer park wall from the High Street and the footpaths behind it. The Odiham Common and canal walk and the castle loop both cross the old park. Back to the Odiham history hub, or check dates at Laurel Cottage.

Walk there (Google Maps)The Cross Barn, Palace Gate (private, see it from the lane)