Lockerley Post Office

Five miles North West of Romsey and immediately West of Mottisfont, the Parish of Lockerley touches the Wiltshire border in the West.

The village of Lockerley is a very attractive, scattered village lying in the valley of the River Dun which joins the Test at Dunbridge. Lockerley not only has four village greens but, until 1890, had two parish churches. You can see where the old one stood next to the comparatively new St John the Evangelist.

The Parish of Lockerley is 1569 acres in area. The village's four village greens are: Top Green on the higher ground, Lockerley Green, Butts Green (which had archery connections, however is now used for the village fete and various sports and social gatherings) and Crichell's Green (which is rather wilder than the others).

The Lockerley area would have been known to travellers on the ancient Ridgeway along Dean Hill and Tope Hill five thousand years ago. By 1000 BC there was a settlement at Canefield where Bronze Age pottery was discovered in 1940. Lockerley manor was recorded in the Domesday Book as a possession of the Archbishop of York. The village name was spelt Locherslei and is associated with a shepherd or keeper.

Lockerley school opened in 1871 by the generosity of two Lockerley gentlemen, Sir Francis Goldsmid and Mr F. G. Dalgety. The school was supported financially by the Sarah Rolle Charity and each November school children showed the Governors the garments their parents had been helped to purchase. The charity still exists today.

The Pritchard family started Lockerley Silver Band in 1880, all the family being good musicians. The Pritchard, Moody and Webber families provided most of the musicians. Another prominent family after the First World War were the Collins. They were a farming family, who took sheep to market in Salisbury and Wilton in horse-drawn waggons.