The name Fritham may be derived from Old English meaning a cultivated plot (hamm) in scrub on the edge of a forest (fyrhth).[2]
The oldest feature in Fritham is a Bronze AgeBowl barrow, known as The Butt, which lies just east of the village, although it has been partially damaged on top by a brick structure.[3]
Fritham is not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.[4] It was once thought that the Domesday settlement of Truham (or Trucham) may have been Fritham,[5] but this is now thought unlikely as Truham was within Boldre Hundred.[4] The first mention of Fritham appears early in the 13th century,[2] when Geoffrey de Baddesley held land in Baddesley and Fritham. Fritham remained attached to the manor of South Baddesley in the parish of Boldre at least until 1429.[5]
The Royal Oak - a thatched cottage with red-brick additions - is one of the oldest pubs in the New Forest, dating back to the 17th century.[6] Fritham Lodge, dating from 1671, may have been one of Charles II hunting lodges.[7] A school and chapel opened in Fritham in 1861.[5]
From the 1860s until the 1920s Fritham was home to the Schultze gunpowder factory.[8] The factory specialised in smokeless powder for sporting guns.[8] Established in 1865, it was at one time the largest nitro-compound gunpowder factory in the world, with sixty separate buildings and a staff of one hundred.[9] It supplied three-quarters of the world's annual consumption of gunpowder for sporting purposes and often sent 100-ton consignments to the Americas loading road vans and special railway trucks for the docks at Southampton.[9] Little now remains of the factory except for the superintendent's and gatekeeper's houses.[10]Eyeworth Pond, near Fritham, was specially created by the factory as a reservoir to hold water needed during the manufacturing process.[10]
In 1904 the village gained a church in the form of Fritham Free Church.[11]
Four young men from Fritham went down with the Titanic in 1912: Lewis Hickman (aged 32), Leonard Mark Hickman (aged 24), Stanley George Hickman (aged 21), and Ambrose Hood (aged 21).[12]
^ abNorman Henderson, (2007), A Walk Around the New Forest: In Thirty-Five Circular Walks, pages 87-8. Frances Lincoln
^ abKenneth Hudson, (1968), The industrial archaeology of southern England: Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, and Gloucestershire east of the Severn, page 35
^O’Brien, Charles; Bailey, Bruce; Pevsner, Nikolaus; Lloyd, David W. (2018). The Buildings of England Hampshire: South. Yale University Press. p. 284. ISBN9780300225037.
