Special features

This Centenary Lantern was designed to provide a permanent Memorial to those from our community who have given their lives as members of our Armed Forces in the service of our country in past conflicts.

Since August 2014 a lantern at Ringwood Gateway has been lit on the day each person died and on days of national significance. 

The current lantern was commissioned and paid for by the people of Ringwood and the Town Council and dedicated on 3rd November 2018 to mark the Centenary of the Armistice 1918 – 2018, the end of WW1.

The Ringwood Meeting House holds a complete record of all those Remembered here and on the Ringwood War Memorial. 

The names of all those being remembered may be found here.

The lamp was erected in the Market Place by public subscription in 1887 to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. A Grade II listed monument, it is built on a stone plinth, and made from cast-iron, with copper lanterns.The five lanterns were originally lit by gas while the central column held a drinking fountain with four spouts. The state of the lamp deteriorated terribly until it was restored in 1977 for Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee. 

2013 saw the completion of a complex restoration project involving carefully removing the old layers of paint, repairing the lanterns off-site and then re-painting the stand in black. Black was chosen due to the fact that the original lamp, being cast iron, would have been black.

The final result is spectacular, with the copper finish of the lanterns contrasting with the cleaned and repainted cast iron lamp stand. Ringwood can once again be proud of the lamp as a beautiful historic landmark.

Otherwise known as Second or Stoning Bridge, this bridge was for centuries the main crossing point over the River Avon into Ringwood up until the first bypass was built in the 1930s. It is portrayed on Ringwood’s Town Crest as the second of Ringwood’s three bridges.

Built in 1727 by English Presbyterians, the Meeting House is the best example of its kind in Hampshire and one of the best nationally, which merits its Grade II* rating.  Complete with galleries and box pews, it is now an exhibition and local history centre open every morning except Sundays.

A church has stood on this site since Saxon times and was mentioned in the Doomsday book. It was rebuilt in the early middle ages and again in Victorian times (1853-1855). Many of the original features of the Early English church have been retained, including the medieval Purbeck marble shafts. The window in the south transept was beautifully restored in 2022.

A reconstruction of the old Market House which used to stand in the Market Place until it was removed in 1867. Some of its materials, particularly the stone dressings from its imposing frontage, were re-erected on the corner of High Street and Lynes Lane.

Monmouth House is an old timber-framed house which probably looked much like the neighbouring Old Cottage when the Duke of Monmouth was kept here in 1685. The frontage was modernised with Georgian windows and front door in the early 18th century. This is typical of many of Ringwood’s listed buildings, having much older roots than is apparent from its frontage.

Built in the 1780s, Greyfriars was described by Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘the show-piece of Ringwood’s houses’. It was occupied privately until 1959, when the last owner Miss Hilary Christie sold the property to the Ringwood & District Community Association to be used as a Community Centre.