The third of the Worthys, Abbotsworthy, is now united to Kingsworthy. Passing through its little street of houses, a mile farther on we reach Martyrsworthy, a still smaller village with another old Norman church and low thatched cottages, picturesquely placed near the banks of the river, which is here crossed by a wooden foot-bridge. But all this part of the Itchen valley has the same charm. Everywhere we find the same old farmhouses with mullioned windows and sundials{35} and yew trees, the same straggling roofs brilliant with yellow lichen, and the same cottages and gardens gay with lilies and phloxes, the same green lanes shaded with tall elms and poplars, the same low chalk hills and wooded distances closing in the valley, and below the bright river winding its way through the cool meadows. “The Itchen—the beautiful Itchen valley,” exclaims Cobbett, as he rides along this vale of meadows. “There are few spots in England more fertile, or more pleasant, none, I believe, more healthy. The fertility of this vale and of the surrounding country is best proved by the fact that, besides the town of Alresford and that of Southampton, there are seventeen villages, each having its parish church, upon its borders. When we consider these things, we are not surprised that a spot situated about half-way down this vale should have been chosen for the building of a city, or that that city should have been for a great number of years the place of residence for the kings of England.”
Towards Itchen Abbas—of the Abbot—the valley opens, and we see the noble avenues and{36} spreading beeches of Avington Park, long the property of the Dukes of Chandos, and often visited by Charles II. while Wren was building his red-brick palace at Winchester. Here the Merry Monarch feasted his friends in a banqueting-hall that is now a greenhouse, and a room in the old house bore the name of Nell Gwynne’s closet. In those days it was the residence of the notorious Lady Shrewsbury, afterwards the wife of George Brydges, a member of the Chandos{37} family, the lady whose first husband, Francis, Earl of Shrewsbury, was slain fighting in a duel with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, while the Countess herself, disguised as a page, held her lover’s horse.
The river winds through the park, and between the over-arching boughs of the forest trees we catch lovely glimpses of wood and water. In the opposite direction, but also close to Itchen Abbas, is another well-known seat, Lord Ashburton’s famous Grange, often visited by Carlyle. Here the dark tints of yew and fir mingle with the bright hues of lime and beech and silver birch on the banks of a clear lake, and long grassy glades lead up to wild gorse-grown slopes of open down. Still following the river banks we reach Itchen Stoke, another picturesque village with timbered cottages and mossy roofs. A little modern church, with high-pitched roof and lancet windows having a curiously foreign air, stands among the tall pines on a steep bank above the stream. But here our pleasant journey along the fair Itchen valley comes to an end, and, leaving the river-side,{38} we climb the hilly road which leads us into Alresford.
New Alresford, a clean, bright little town, with broad street, planted with rows of trees, boasts an antiquity which belies its name, and has been a market-town and borough from time immemorial. Like its yet more venerable neighbour, Old Alresford, it was given by a king of the West Saxons to the prior and monks of St. Swithun at Winchester, and formed part of the vast possessions of the monastery at the Conquest. Both places took their name from their situation on a ford of the Arle or Alre river, a considerable stream which joins the Itchen below Avington, and is called by Leland the Alresford river. In the eleventh century New Alresford had fallen into decay, and probably owes its present existence to Bishop Godfrey Lucy, who rebuilt the town, and obtained a charter from King John restoring the market, which had fallen into disuse. At the same time he gave the town the name of New Market, but the older one survived, and the Bishop’s new title was never generally adopted. The same{39} energetic prelate bestowed a great deal of care and considerable attention on the water supply of Winchester, and made the Itchen navigable all the way from Southampton to Alresford.