By Martin Brisland.
On Saturday 2 August, Waterstones at 7 The Hundred in Romsey is holding a fun day to celebrate its first year of opening.
I will be there in the morning, along with other local authors.
An A to Z of Romsey, published earlier this year, was my sixth local history book for Amberley Publishing. It follows on from Secret Southampton, A to Z of Southampton, Celebrating Southampton, Secret New Forest and Southampton, A Potted History.
Having recovered from a brain haemorrhage in 2017 and further surgery in 2025, it is a milestone I am incredibly grateful to have achieved.
Is it Romsey or Rumsey? My grandmother was born in the town in 1884. All her long life she pronounced the town’s name as ‘Rumsey,’ with a strong Hampshire country accent.
Either way a Romsonian is the term used for people who come from or live in Romsey. I was a member of the Romsonian Youth Club in the 1960s and still have my membership card.
The name may be explained by Romsey possibly being a corruption of Rum’s Egg, which means Rum’s area of dry land surrounded by marshes.
Another suggestion is that hrum in Old English means soot and rumig or romig means blackened. This may have come from the iron smelting that took place in central Romsey, on the slope behind the current Town Hall, from the sixth century.
This is not the only Romsey. The university city of Cambridge has an area in its southeast called Romsey Town. Also, Romsey in the State of Victoria, Australia is a town of about 5,000 people forty miles north of Melbourne. The Romsey in Hampshire had a population of 19,912 in 2021.
Wonder if the namesakes pronounce it Romsey or Rumsey?
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