page_title: Steep, Hampshire
section_title: Medieval to Tudor
hierarchical_section_title: Steep, Hampshire / History / Medieval to Tudor
caption_attribution_description: English: A three-acre exclave of Steep, Hampshire in Chithurst, Sussex.
context_page_description: Steep is a village and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. Its nearest town is Petersfield, which lies 1.4 miles south of the village, just off the A3 road. The nearest railway station is Petersfield, at 1.6 miles south of the village. It has two public houses, The Harrow and the Cricketers Inn, with the former being an 18th-century Grade II listed building. According to the 2011 census, it had a population of 1,391.
  Iron Age and Roman remains have been found in the area. Steep formerly included two detached exclaves, the larger called Ambersham, which lay deep inside Sussex. These were two of the three detached portions of Hampshire in Sussex, and were annexed to that county when a new law came into effect in 1844. The church of All Saints was built around 1125. From medieval times, Steep was included in the parish of East Meon until it became an independent parish in 1867. Since 1899 the village has been the location of Bedales, a progressive public school.
context_section_description: The village was not mentioned in the Domesday Survey of 1086, however it was likely included under the entry of 'Menes'. (Meon). 
  
  Beginning at an unknown point in the medieval period, the territory of the village of Steep formerly included two detached parish exclaves the larger of which was called Ambersham. This was a narrow strip of land situated 10.3 miles (16.6 km) east in the county of West Sussex, situated between Midhurst and Petworth and running south from the Surrey border near Haslemere to near Graffham. Under the Counties Act of 1844, Ambersham was detached from Steep and made part of Sussex. For ecclesiastical reasons it had been split into two tithings or parish sub-divisions, North Ambersham and South Ambersham, and these became civil parishes. Ecclesiastically the former was annexed to Fernhurst, and the latter to Easebourne. The smaller of the two exclaves was a three-acre portion of Borden Wood in the Sussex parish of Chithurst, which was only united with the latter parish in 1883 because it had no inhabitants. Both of these detached portions were also exclaves of Hampshire.
  There is no written evidence that Steep was settled until late in the Anglo-Saxon period, however in the early Anglo Saxon period the Meon Valley formed the Jutish Kingdom of Meonwara. In the medieval period Steep was a sub-parish of East Meon. so it too was probably a settlement of the Jutes and the Ambershams may well have been too.
  Steep was first documented under the name of 'Stepe Place' in the 12th century. The church of All Saints was built around 1125. The oldest surviving dwelling in the village is the house known as "Restalls" which is on the eastern side of the church. It dates from the late 15th century, and was remodelled in 1600 (and in 1905 by the Arts and Crafts architect Unsworth who lived here).
  By 1600, Steep had a prospering local cloth-making industry and two fulling mills in operation, which were driven by the nearby Ashford Stream. The early 17th century was also described by historian William Page as a "great rebuilding" of the village, in which redevelopment of many wooden buildings were replaced by stone structures. However, a decline in the cloth-making industry caused a depression in the latter half of the 17th century, which resulted in the closure of both mills.
caption: Steep's tiny exclave in a Sussex wood.
exif: {"Image Make": "motorola", "Image Model": "Moto G (5)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "cedric-user 8.1.0 OPPS28.85-13-6 04442 release-keys", "Image DateTime": "2020:07:27 10:23:13", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "244", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[51, 12, 136301/5000]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "W", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[0, 31, 311203/10000]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "0", "GPS GPSAltitude": "759/5", "GPS GPSTimeStamp": "[9, 23, 13]", "GPS GPSMapDatum": "WGS-84", "GPS GPSProcessingMethod": "ASCII", "GPS GPSDate": "2020:07:27", "Image GPSInfo": "2494", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "2842", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "34936", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/50", "EXIF FNumber": "2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "250", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2020:07:27 10:23:13", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2020:07:27 10:23:13", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "141/25", "EXIF ApertureValue": "2", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "-1", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "2", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "359/100", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4160", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3120", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "2464", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Soft", "EXIF Sharpness": "Soft"}