Bishop’s Sutton, the next village, resembles Holybourne in the shrubberies with which it hushes the road. Passing the “Plough” and the “Ship” (kept by a man with the great Hampshire name of Port), I went into the church, which was decorated by the memorial tablets of people named Wright and an eighteenth century physician named William Cowper, and by daffodils and primroses arranged in moss and jam jars. Many dead flowers were littered about the floor. The churchyard was better, for it had a tree taller than the tower, and another lying prone alongside the road for children to play on, and very few tombstones. Of these few, one recorded the deaths of three children in 1827–1831, and furthermore thus boldly baffled the infidel,—
“Bold infidelity, turn pale and die.
Beneath this sod three infants’ ashes lie.
Say, are they lost or sav’d?
If Death’s by sin, they sinn’d, for they lie here:
If Heaven’s by works, in Heaven they can’t appear.
Ah, reason, how depraved!
Revere the Bible’s sacred page, for there the knot’s untied.”
The children were Oakshotts, a Hampshire name borne by a brook and a hanger near Hawkley.
The telegraph wires were whining as if for rain as I neared Alresford, having on my right hand the willowy course of the young Alre, and before me its sedgy, wide waters, Old Alresford pond. The road became Alresford by being lined for a third of a mile downhill by cottages, inns, and shops. This is the whole town, except for one short, very broad turning half way along at the highest point, and opposite where the church stands bathed in cottages.