Sway, United Kingdom

In 1543, at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the lands possessed by Quarr and Christchurch were granted to Sir John Williams and others, by whom it was subsequently conveyed to John Mill, the purchaser and grantee of much monastic property in the neighbourhood. The combined lands became known as the manor of Sway Quarr. The manor of Sway Romsey (South Sway) remained separate but were also granted at the Dissolution to Sir John Williams and henceforth had the same owners as Sway Quarr. The estate then followed the descent of Battramsley manor until 1627, when it was sold by George Wroughton to John Button of Buckland Lymington, and in 1670 he or his son appeared before the justice seat held at Lyndhurst as the lord of the manor of Sway. Before the end of the 17th century, however, it had passed to Edmund Dummer of Swaythling. It then passed by inheritance into the Bond family who held the estate down to the 19th century.

One other Domesday Book manor within the parish of Sway is known as Arnewood, which before 1066 had been held by Siward from Earl Tostig. The estate seems to have belong to Christchurch Manor in the 13th and 14th centuries, although one small part of it was held differently and later became joined to the nearby manor of Ashley to become "Ashley Arnewood". In 1384 the Earl of Salisbury and lord of Christchurch sold the manor of Arnewood to Thomas Street. The manor passed through various hands in the following centuries, but by the 19th century it belonged, like the other manors of Sway, to the Bond family.

St Luke's Church was built in 1839. The ecclesiastical parish of Sway was created in 1841. The civil parish of Sway was formed in 1879, when 2,200 acres (8.9 km2) were taken from the extensive parish of Boldre. The railway came to Sway in 1888, when Sway railway station was built.

In the village was Arnewood House (now destroyed by fire) which was the home of the Children of the New Forest in Captain Marryat's book. Marryat also used the surrounding countryside as the setting for the book.

In World War II, an Emergency Landing Ground for aircraft opened in August 1940, when farmland was levelled and cleared just south of the village. It was used by aircraft based at RAF Christchurch for overnight stays to protect them from German attack at Christchurch. The airstrip was also intended to be a decoy airfield intended to trick the Luftwaffe into bombing it; this happened on several occasions. In October 1941, the site was closed and returned to farmland.