Gilbert White and Alton

Gilbert White and Alton

Author: Jane Hurst
Publication date: 2020
Cost: £2.50 (+p&p if ordering by post)
ISBN: 978 1 9996872 2 9
Where to buy: Curtis Museum or by post - see How to Order page.

The 18th July 2020 is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Gilbert White. 

Although he lived much of his adult life at The Wakes in the Hampshire village of Selborne, natural historian Gilbert White often visited Alton. Many of his accounts survive and can be seen at the Hampshire Record Office. These give the names of some of the traders with whom he did business, list the items that he bought and the prices that he paid. Hence it is possible to recognise local traders, their businesses and trace where they lived. 

This book is laid out as a walk around the town that he would have known and gives information about life in Gilbert’s period - the mid to late 1700s. As no pictures of Alton survive from that time, old postcards from about 100 years later have been used as illustrations.