utline remains. Nevertheless it is still one of
the most imposing and notable things left to us in southern England.

Headbourne Worthy, granted to Mortimer after the Conquest, was the most
important of the three little places grouped here in a bunch which bear
that name. King's Worthy, where the road first turns eastward and where
the church, curiously enough, stands to the south of the way,
[Footnote: According to Mr Belloc (_The Old Road_) this modern road
does not exactly represent the route of the Pilgrim's Way which ran to
the south of King's Worthy church] was but a hamlet and of Martyr
Worthy, Domesday knows nothing. Little that is notable remains to us
in either place, only the charming fifteenth century tower of King's
Worthy church and a fourteenth century font therein.

Much the same must be said of Itchen Abbas, Itchen A Bas, where the
road falls to the river, the small Norman church there having been both
rebuilt and enlarged in or about 1863, while an even worse fate has
befallen the church of Itchen Stoke, two miles further on, for it has
disappeared altogether. Nor I fear can much be said for the church of
New Alresford or the town either, for apparently, owing to a series of
fires, it has nothing to show us but a seventeenth century tower, a
poor example of the building of that time, the base of which may be
Saxon, while the windows seem to be of the thirteenth century.

New Alresford would seem only to have come into existence as a town in
the end of the twelfth century, when it was re-established by Bishop
Godfrey de Lucy (1189-1204). The old road did not pass through it as
the modern road does; for as Mr Belloc seems to have proved the
Pilgrim's Way, which descended to the river at Itchen A Bas as we have
seen, crossed the ford at Itchen Stoke, Itchen Stakes that is, and
proceeded east by south where the workhouse now stands, coming into the
modern road again at Bishop Sutton. But though the Pilgrim's Way knew
it not, New Alresford is of high antiquity. Local tradition has it that
it owes its existence, as distinct from Old Alresford, "to a defeat
inflicted by the Saxons on a party of Danes near the village of West
Tisted about five miles (south) east of Alresford. The Saxons granted
quarter to the defeated enemy on condition that they went to the ford
over the River Alre [Footnote: It is curious that Guthrum was baptised
at Aller and then his Danes in the Alre] to be baptised. In
commemoration of