Martin is a village in W Hampshire, on the NW edge of the New Forest, 8 miles SW of Salisbury and 6 miles NW of Fordingbridge. It has been a part of Hampshire only since 1895, when 8 parishes on the SE edge of Wiltshire (South Damerham, Martin, Melchet Park, Plaitford, West Wellow, Toyd Farm with Allenford, Whitsbury and East Bramshaw) were transferred. It straggles along a minor road that descends from the Wiltshire Downs, crossing the Ox Drove and a Roman road as it makes its way to Fordingbridge. All Saints church is in the village centre. It has a nave and chancel, W tower with spire and a S porch. The chancel has a S transept and a N chapel that is joined to what was originally a transept. The interpretation is confused by the fact that the chancel arch was moved a bay eastwards – the original position is marked by the rood loft entrance on the S nave wall. The nave was originally 12thc – the only Romanesque feature is the blocked N doorway and a window head in the same wall, reset inverted. The tower was added in the 13thc but its upper parts are 15thc. The two transepts are 14thc additions and the chancel was remodelled at that time too. The N chapel is 16thc and the porch Victorian.

Martin is not mentioned by name in the Domesday Survey because by that time it was included in the manor of South Damerham and descended with that manor. It was royal demesne of the Saxon kings, and in 940-46 King Edmund granted land at Damerham, Martin and Pentridge to his queen Aethelflaeda on condition that she should bequeath it to the church of Glastonbury when she died. This she did, and the entire manor was thus held by the abbey in 1066 and 1086. Martin is mentioned as a separate manor in 1266 and in 1322 in connection with grants of markets and fairs to be held there by the Abbot of Glastonbury.

The is nothing diagnostic to date the N doorway. Pevsner says ‘Norman or Transitional’, VCH and EH both 12thc. The reset tympanum looks like a restorer’s joke, along with the inverted window head nearby.