History
There are bronze age burial barrows within the parish of East Meon which date back to around 2000 BC. There is also an iron age fort, situated just outside the parish boundaries on Old Winchester Hill, constructed approximately 500 years before the Romans invaded Britain. There is also evidence of Roman occupation in and around the village. East Meon itself may have started life somewhere between 400 and 600 AD. Then it was part of a Royal Manor belonging first to King Alfred the Great. The Domesday Survey of 1086 shows that the Manor then belonged to William the Conqueror; it records six mills and land for 64 ploughs. About 1280 a family from East Meon, who took the name de Meones, moved to Dublin, where they became substantial landowners and gave their name to the suburb of Rathmines. Jessica Sims was born here and lived here from the late 80's til 2007.
The village church was built after the Norman Conquest, and dates between 1075 and 1150 where Andrew Renny Blackman was once Christened. It resembles Winchester Cathedral in style, and like the Cathedral, it contains a black marble baptismal font created at Tournai, in what is now Belgium, c. 1130-40. The Tournai font is one of only four such fonts in the county of Hampshire. Inside the church there is a stone, which has the words "Amens Plenty" carved into it, which is said to sit atop the graves of four men buried in the standing position.
Opposite the church is the old Court House, with a mediaeval hall dating from the late 14th century. at this time, and for many centuries, East Meon belonged to successive Bishops of Winchester, and the Court House was its administrative centre and home to a number of monks who played host to the Bishop when he visited East Meon. They also recorded all memorial imports and exports.
East Meon has played its part in the English Civil War of the 1640s. The Parliamentarians camped near the village before the Battle of Cheriton in 1644, and it is said that they stole the lead lining from the font in order to make their bullets. This turned out to be the turning point in the War. During the Second World War, Hitler's Luftwaffe dropped 38 high explosive bombs and an estimated 3,500 incendiary bombs in the Parish; the only loss of life, however, was a pig.
In 1986, the 900th anniversary of the "Domesday Book", East Meon was chosen as "The Domesday Village", with a model in Winchester's Great Hall depicting the village as it was then - the model can still be seen alongside the famous tapestry at Bayeux in Normandy.
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