XV.—The Alien Priority of St. Andrew, Hamble and its transfer to Winchester College in 1391

Abstract

The Priory of St. Andrew, at Hamble, near Southampton, was a cell to the Benedictine abbey of Tyrone (Tirun or Turun), in La Beauce, a district southwest of Chartres, included in the old province of Orléannois. In the Monasticon and Tanner's Notitia it is called a Cistercian abbey, but this is a mistake, and so is the statement in the Notitia that the priory was annexed to New College, Oxford. The priory stood on a “rise” or point of land.—“Hamele-en-le-rys” or “Hamblerice” is its old name—at the confluence of the Hamble river with southampton Water, opposite Calshot castle. Hamble gets its name from Hamele, a thane of the Saxon Meonwaris. Leland calls the place “Hamel Hooke.” The priory church of St. Andrew is now the parish church. It was rebuilt by winchester college in the early part of the fifteenth century, and consists of channel and nave, to which a south aisle was added five or six years ago, and a tower with three bells. There are scarcely any traces above ground of the priory buildings. Like those of the Benedictine convent of St. Swithun, at Winchester, they stood on the south and south-west of the church, so that the graveyard, as at Winchester, is on the north side of the church.