Steep History Group started in 2012 with a group of around six volunteers who met monthly to transcribe the registers of our local parish church of All Saints’, Steep. The church registers date from 1610 to the present. The process of transcribing them gave us valuable insights into the people and places of Steep during that period. This transcription continues to inform our research.
By 2015 the transcription of the registers was complete, but the group decided to continue to meet to share research and presentations on the history of the village of Steep. it was decided to call ourselves The Steep History Group.
The original group of six has considerably expanded in numbers to between 30 and 40 members. We progressed from meeting in each other’s houses to a regular monthly meeting at Steep Village Hall.
The Steep History Group was principally interested in the social history of our village: people, places, buildings, events which happened in our village in the past. Those with past memories were actively pursued. It was the social history of our village in which our members were most interested, and which formed the topics of most of the presentations.
Over the years that it was in operation a great deal of research was done with much being revealed about the buildings and people of the village of Steep in the past, along with its organisations and way of life. A great deal of knowledge was amassed mostly in the form of presentations that had been given at the monthly meetings of the Group.
In August 2024, the decision was made to bring the History Group to a close. This was to enable Fran Box, the Group organiser to have greater time to consolidate the existing knowledge base of Steep history. It was felt that it could be made more widely available by producing books about the various aspects of the history of Steep which have been researched so far.
In the years that the Steep History Group was in existence, it was a popular group and much valued as a social meeting as well as a means of finding out more about our local history. Links were made with Petersfield Museum, with the Hampshire Archives and Local Studies in Winchester and with Hampshire Archives Trust. It is anticipated that these will be maintained.
