Old North Stoneham House
From The Muniment Room, a resource for social history, family history, and local history.
| ‘The mansion is solid and substantial, situated rather low, but in an extensive park, well wooded, and flocked with finely dappled deer. The grounds were laid out by the celebrated Brown, and exhibit a good specimen of his taste. The parish church adjoins the mansion, though the village of North Stoneham is nearly half a mile distant.’ -John Bullar, A companion in a tour round Southampton (1801) |
Old North Stoneham House was the original ancestral home of the Willis Fleming family at North Stoneham Park on the Stoneham Estates. It stood near the church, and was 'a good specimen of an ancient English manor house' with 'twisted chimneys and numerous gables' 'half-hid by the timber of the park'. Two avenues spread off the building's west and north fronts (giving Avenue Park its name). An inventory of 1638 listed some 29 rooms in the house, including one 'Cupid's Bower'. By 1800, the house had been 'much improved and enlarged'. Bullar said in 1799 that it had 'excellent gardens'. The house was demolished in 1818, and a new mansion built in the centre of North Stoneham Park.
When Queen Victoria visited Wood Mills in 1846, she disembarked from her barge by means of 'a relic of the old residence of the Flemings at Stoneham', an 'ancient yew staircase' fixed in the River Itchen to enable landing at any stage of the tide.
