David George Watts

David Watts was born on 14 May 1931, In a local history talk he recalled that as a boy he could walk from Titchfield to Warsash alongside strawberry fields the whole distance. His family aimed to harvest their first crop by mid-May and the berries were sold as far away as Glasgow. Watts was educated locally and then at Price's School in Fareham and at University College, University of Oxford, where he took a first class degree in history. He subsequently completed a B.Litt in 1957 with a thesis on "The Estates of Titchfield Abbey c.1245 to c.1380". ==Career==

Watts joined the VCH in 1956, working under Robert (R.B.) Pugh who was then the general editor of the work. Watts's first published contribution to the history was the entry for the parish of Wilsford in the Wiltshire volume (1962). He worked with Christopher Elrington on Warwickshire including Birmingham, Coventry, and the Borough of Warwick. In 1959 he left the VCH to take up a lectureship in general studies at High Wycombe College. He was responsible for the establishment of the Open University in Hampshire and contributed to the creation of the University of the Third Age in Solent. It was reprinted in 2016 in the Routledge Library Editions: Historiography series. Watts wrote for the proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and in the journal The Economic History Review. ==Death and legacy==

Watts died on 14 October 2016. He was buried at the Woodland Cemetery, Eling, alongside his wife. A memorial service was held afterwards at St Peter's church. He was survived by two children. ==Selected publications==

• "A Model for the Early Fourteenth Century", The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 20, No. 3 (December 1967), pp. 543–547. • Environmental Studies. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1969. • The Learning of History. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1972. (Reprinted 2016) • Titchfield: A History. Titchfield History Society, Titchfield, 1982. • "The Black Death in Dorset and Hampshire" in T.B. James (Ed.) The Black Death in Wessex, The Hatcher Review, v. No. 46 (1998). == References ==