Colden Common

Coordinates: 50°59′52″N 1°18′51″W / 50.9979°N 1.3141°W / 50.9979; -1.3141

Colden Common is a village and civil parish in Hampshire, England, lying just east of the M3 motorway between Winchester and Southampton. The nearest town is Eastleigh to the south west. Colden Common is in the Winchester District. To the east are the South Downs and to the west is the River Itchen. The village lies north of the hamlet of Fisher's Pond and the village of Fair Oak, and south of the village and parish of Twyford.

History

Colden Common became an independent civil parish (the lowest tier of local government) as recently as 1932 having initially been part of the parishes of Twyford and Owslebury. The Ecclesiastical Parish of Colden Common was formed in 1843 with Holy Trinity Church built the following year and situated on the southern boundary of the parish.

In the sixteenth century the hamlet of Brambridge, then in Owslebury Parish, was granted by Bishop Fox to the newly founded Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1609-10 Brambridge was granted to John Pierson, together with lands belonging to three recusants, Ursula Uvedale, Richard Bruning and Thomas Welles. Gilbert Welles was granted Brambridge by Charles I in 1636 and the property remained in the Welles family until the late eighteenth century, when it passed to a cousin, Walter Smythe. Walter Smythe's eldest daughter, Maria, became Mrs. Fitzherbert, and spent her childhood at Brambridge House. Maria is said to have lived for a while in a cottage at Colden Common when her first husband, Edward Weld, died. One of the rooms in the old Brambridge House was consecrated as a Roman Catholic chapel, but after the Catholic Relief Act a small chapel was built in the village and endowed by Mrs. Fitzherbert in about 1782.