North Stoneham Church
From The Muniment Room, a resource for social history, family history, and local history.
St Nicolas was rebuilt around 1600 in the Gothic Survival manner. It was restored in 1826 and the late 1900s. The new vestry was completed in 2008. The One Hand Clock was installed in the early 17thC.; the movement is by William Monk (ob.1753). A series of heraldic windows (1826) illustrated the ancestry of the Fleming family, but were shattered by a WWII bomb blast. The fragments are reset in the windows.
On the chancel floor is an important gravestone inscribed to Slavonian soldiers who died in 1491. The large tomb of Sir Thomas Fleming (ob.1613) and his wife, is known locally as the ‘floating Flemings’. Sir Thomas acquired North Stoneham manor in 1599; his descendants held the advowson until 1997. There is an elaborate wall memorial to Admiral Lord Hawke (ob.1781), with detailed depiction of the Battle of Quiberon Bay (20 Nov 1759). Lord Hawke lived at Swaythling House.
There are many other memorials and ledger stones to the Willis Fleming family, including a tablet to John Fleming (ob.1802), and a portrait tablet to John Willis Fleming (ob.1844) by the sculptor Richard Cockle Lucas of Chilworth Tower. The Roll of Honour tablets in the church porch were removed from the Stoneham War Shrine.
