A pleasant journey by road or rail can be taken up the valley of the Test between the low chalk hills of Western Hampshire to Stockbridge (or even farther north to Whitchurch or Andover, but these districts must be left until later).  At Mottisfont, four miles from Romsey, was once a priory of Augustinians.  Remnants of the buildings are incorporated with the present mansion.  In the church perhaps the most interesting item, by reason of the alien touch in this remote corner of Hampshire, is an heraldic stone of the Meinertzhazen family brought here from St. Michael’s, Bremen, at the end of the nineteenth century.  The square font of Purbeck marble is of the same date as the Norman arch in the chancel.  Just to the south of the village a branch line of railway follows a remote western valley to its head and then drops to the Avon valley and Salisbury.  To the east is another lonely stretch of country through which the ridge of Pitt Down runs to the actual suburbs of Winchester.  At the western end of this ridge, and about three miles up the Test from Mottisfont, are the villages of Horsebridge and King’s Somborne on the southern confines of what was once John of Gaunt’s deer park.  The present bridge is higher up the stream, but the railway-station is on the actual site of the ancient road between Winchester and Old Sarum and the “horse bridge” was then lower down stream and almost immediately due west of the station.  Somborne gets its prefix from the fact that an old mansion usually called “King John’s Palace” formerly stood here, it may be that it belonged to John of Gaunt.  Certain mounds and small sections of wall are pointed out as the remains of this house; they will be found to the south-west of the church; a much restored, but still interesting, thirteenth-century building.  The font, of Purbeck marble, is very fine; of interest also are the late Jacobean chancel rails and certain crosses and monograms on the north doorway.

A road runs for six miles north-westwards up into the chalk hills by the side of the Wallop brook to the euphoniously named villages of Nether, Middle, and Over Wallop.  The first and last have interesting churches, but the excursion, if taken, should be as an introduction to perhaps the most remote and unspoilt region of the chalk country.  Although the Wallop valley is fairly well populated, the older people are as unsophisticated as any in southern England.  The scenery is quietly pleasant, the hills away to the southwest exceeding, here and there, the 500 feet contour line.  One of them, near the head of the valley, is named “Isle of Wight Hill.”  It is only upon the clearest of days that the distant Island is seen over the shoulder of the neighbouring Horseshoe Hill and across the long glittering expanse of Southampton Water.