Aldershot One-Place Study

The first phase had its focus on the village of Aldershot as it was in 1853, the year before the Government bought Aldershot Common and then built the military camp, later to become The Home of The British Army. This was meant to be the first part of a Before/After study using the enumeration books for the 1851 and 1861 Population Censuses. Interest shifted to establish a firm baseline, then to recreate the social fabric of the village by investigating family histories of the 160 households and to chronicle the events of 1853. The next phase has been to research the earlier history of this rural village, reaching back to Anglo-Saxon times, in order to appreciate the significance of that history, even into the 1850s. The third phase will be to return to that Before/After study in order to establish how the villagers fared when thousands of townsfolk arrived.