Eleanor Mary Barney: A Family Remembered at Lysses House

Eleanor Mary Barney belonged to one of the families associated with nineteenth-century Fareham and with Lysses House, close to the centre of the town.

Born in 1793, she was the daughter of James Frampton. She later married John Barney, who was connected with Lysses House in Fareham. The Barney name appears in nineteenth-century local records, including parliamentary notices concerning land and infrastructure in Hampshire.

Lysses House itself became one of Fareham’s notable historic residences. For families such as the Barneys, houses of this kind represented more than private homes: they placed their occupants among the network of local landowners, professionals and benefactors who played an important part in the social life of the town.

Eleanor survived her husband and is remembered in the church as his widow. She died in 1864, having lived through enormous changes in Fareham, from the final years of the Napoleonic Wars to the expansion of the Victorian town.

Her memorial at St Peter & St Paul is quieter than those commemorating admirals, soldiers and explorers. It preserves something equally important: the family history of the people who lived around the parish and formed part of Fareham’s nineteenth-century community.

Through Eleanor Mary Barney and her husband John, the church walls preserve another connection with the houses and families that once shaped the life of the town.