The first definite record of a hamlet in this area is in the Domesday Book (1086) when it was designated as Tuderleg. It was a chapelry annexed to the church at Mottisfont and formed part of the property of the Archbishop of York. The land is represented as having belonged to Edward the Confessor, consisting of three manors held by three freemen, two of whom were killed at the Battle of Hasting. The estate, at this time belonged to Alwi, son of Tuber, although this was disputed by the men of the Thorngate Hundred.
Over the next 800 years the small collection of houses was variously named: Tederleg, Westhuderleg, Westiderleg, Tuderleigh, West Uderley, West Tytherley &c. Of course, many of these variants would be due to illiteracy and phonetic spelling, often from dialect. (It is interesting that 'West Tytherley was in use in the sixteenth century and then was discarded until well on in the nineteenth). The name “Tytherley” probably derives from the Anglo-Saxon meaning 'young wood'.
Around 1190, a small church was built and this was subsequently granted by the Archbishop of York to the church of St.Denys and the canons there.
At the beginning of the 13th century, 'West Huderleg' was held for the king in sergeantry. The ownership can be reasonably continuously traced from this time throughout the 14th & 15th centuries, one notable name being Roger Norman who, in 1334 bought the West Bailey of Buckholt, which included the manor of West Uderley and after whom, of course, Norman Court is named. Another important family were the Whitheds, who were established at Norman Court in 1433. Much of the land remained in this family until 1684 when sold to the Thistlewayte family one of whom pulled down Norman Court around 1753, & rebuilt it as a more substantial house, up on the hill where it is today. The estate was sold to Charles Wall at the beginning of the nineteenth century, thence via his son, Charles Baring Wall to the Baring family who retained the Lordship of the manor until selling to Washington Singer.
Major changes in methods of transport in the early 19th century – the canal & then the railway at Dean – affected West Tytherley and the regular carting services, particularly to Salisbury, became less frequent. Then in 1831, the old church in West Tytherley, which had stood since just after 1100, was knocked down and the new one, dedicated to St.Peter, was built on the rise above, where it stands today. The free School endowed by Sarah Rolle at East Tytherley in 1718, closed following the establishment of a National School in West Tytherley in 1852 and in Lockerley in 1870.
The population hardly altered: in 1851 it was 460; in 1901, 457; and in 1911, 458. Today (2005) it is around 470. Over the centuries there was an increasing dependence of the villagers on Norman Court so that, when in 1906, Washington Singer, one of the sons of Isaac Singer who developed the domestic sewing machine, bought the estate which, at this time, covered 20,000 acres stretching from Dean Hill to the present A30 and from the West of Bentley Wood to the Lockerley Hall estate, nearly 400 of the villagers were working thereon. It included the villages of West Dean and West Tytherley, the parishes of Buckholt and Frenchmoor and parts of Farley and Pitton. The sudden death of Washington Singer in 1934 caused much of the land in the south and north to be sold off to pay death duties, enabling many of the tenant farmers to buy their land. Norman Court passed to Grant Singer but his seigneurship lasted only a brief while as he was killed at El Alamein in 1942. Around D-Day, various elements of the Allied Forces were stationed in Bentley Wood and a U.S.Army officers' group was billeted in Norman Court. At the end of the war, the sale of the surrounding estate took place, even though Mrs.Washington Singer and Grant's wife lived in Norman Court for a further year.
Most of the property was sold to Reif, and international timber merchant based in Manchester, who bought Norman Court, much of the land, nearly all the forests and many of the cottages. He subsequently sold the house in 1952 to the Co-Op for a holiday home for their employees but running into planning problems it was sold later that year to Northaw School (now called 'Norman Court School).
Since the sale, the nature of West Tytherley has changed. Starting as a farming and woodland community, timber became less profitable and farming practices altered from mainly dairy (there were 8 herds in 1945, now there are none) to arable & sheep grazing; also machinery improvements meant less agricultural labourers. As the new landlords sold off the tied and leased cottages to individuals from elsewhere, the village became more of a middle-class community with a population more used to town-life than 'the rural idyll'. Property prices continued to rise as buyers realised the charm of the area with easy access to Southampton, Winchester, Romsey, Salisbury and even London. Locals, forced out of tied cottages, could not afford to buy and many, particularly the young, moved out, to council properties to Romsey and North Baddersley.
Whilst most houses, as soon as they were bought, were altered to a greater or lesser degree – some so dramatically as to be unrecognisable from the original – new building has been on a modest scale since the 1945 sale but has included 'Pragnell's Cottages' for the elderly and 'Beale's Court' as subsidized housing, allowing some of the original families to stay in the village.
D.P. July 2005
Whilst the Romans cut a swathe through the north of this parish with a road from Old Sarum to Winchester (part of Clarendon Way), there is little evidence that they dwelt here. Although, having said that, they obviously died here & two stone cairns were discovered when the foundations of King Edward's Hall were being dug around 1911 and Roman coins and pottery have been dug out at Holbury Farm. To the side of the track on Broughton Downs, just below the reservoir, there are the remains of a Roman-British glassworks and traces of another on the Hassock.