[Illustration:  WOLVERTON.]

In another two miles Kingsclere is reached.  This is a very ancient town and was under the Saxon Kings, as its name proclaims, a royal manor.  Its “papers” go back to the eighth century.  After the Conqueror’s day it passed into the hands of the church, and Rouen Canons were its overlords.  When they became aliens in political fact, the manor passed to William de Melton.  King John had one of his hunting lodges at Freeman tie on the south of the town.  No history has been made at Kingsclere since Charles passed the night of October 21, 1644, here, on his way to Newbury, but there is an air of “far-off things and battles long ago” about the quiet little town and its grey and solemn Norman church.  The stern square church tower is a fine example of early twelfth-century work, majestic in its simplicity, but apart from this the exterior appears to have been scraped clean of ancient details by a drastic restoration.  Within, the spacious and fine proportions of the building atone for a great deal that has been lost by the mistaken zeal of Victorian renovators.  The font, pulpit and Norman north door are of especial interest; of less ancient details, the Jacobean pulpit and the great chandelier, dated 1713, call for notice.

The Downs to the south of Kingsclere are of much beauty and comparatively unknown to the tourist.  Although of no great height and unremarkable in outline, the splendour of the colouring, especially after August is past, of the woods that cover the sides of the undulating billows of chalk is unforgettable.  The Port Way, ignoring all hills and dales in its uncompromising straightness, occasionally shows itself as a rough track along the open side of a spinney, or as a well-marked score in the escarpment of a Down, but never as a modern highway east of Andover.  The road winding and up and down westwards from Kingsclere is a pleasant enough adaptation of a possible British trackway, and brings us in a short four miles to Burghclere, where there is a station on the Great Western Railway between Newbury and Winchester.  At Sydmonton, half a mile short of the railway, a grassy lane leads up to Ladle Hill (768 feet), the bold bastion of chalk to to the south.  Here we may obtain a fine view of the characteristic scenery of northern Hampshire.  The curving undulations of the chalk have many a hut circle and tumulus to tell of the fierce life that once peopled these solitary wastes.  Then the valleys were shunned as inimical to human kind.  Now the depths of almost every wrinkle and fold has some habitation, and many a small hamlet lies out of sight among the trees, unguessed at from the hill-road above.  Away to the south is Great Litchfield Down—­literally the “Dead-field”; perhaps the scene of a great battle, but more probably the cemetery of a forgotten race.  The still higher Beacon Hill (853 feet) appears close at hand, as does Sidown, on the other side of Burghclere, where is perhaps an even