Hannah Gregory was born about 1797 to Thomas and Frances (nee Cutler), the eldest of their three children. The 1851 and 1861 censuses indicate that Hannah was born in Colchester, Essex which tallies with the baptismal certificate found for her.

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Aged 16, Hannah married William Phillips (18) in 1813 at Beaulieu church. Together they had twelve children in 25 years. ​Written circa 1817, Rev Comyn's notebooks record them as living where the house called 'The Saeter' is now.

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Hannah’s mother died in 1817 and the Rev Comyn's notebooks list her widowed father Thomas and her two siblings living on the site of the property now called Little Leveret. Thomas married Sarah Hussey in 1820.

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The 1841 census records Hannah and William, a farmer, as living in East End with 8 of their children aged between 19 and 3 months.

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​In 1851, five of their daughters and two grandchildren were living with Hannah and William in Beaulieu Rails, including daughter Ellen and her infant George and widowed daughter Martha Cooper and her daughter Mary Ann.  

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By 1861 their household on Scrubs Hill, East End is much smaller, just William, Hannah and 20 year old daughter Jane.

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William died in 1868 and, a year before Hannah's death, the 1871 census shows her living alone in Sheep Wash aged 74. The 1871 census gives her place of birth as London.​

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Hannah was buried at the chapel on 3rd November 1872 by the Rev John Bartlett Burt. ​The epitaph is from hymn 110 by Isaac Watts.