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 finer view. The old church down by the railway station
was "polished up" in a very painstaking way about fifty years ago, but
still retains a Norman nave which seems to have resisted the
sandpapering process. Highclere Park and Castle form a show-place of
the first rank; the park being beyond all praise. The slopes of the
Downs and some of their summits are within this beautiful domain of
the Earls of Carnarvon. Ear away from the Castle the park is entirely
natural and unconfined, but around the house--for an actual "castle"
is non-existent--magnificent avenues of rhododendrons make a perfect
blaze of colour in the early summer. The "Jacobean" pile high on the
hillside is so only in name, for it was built by the architect of Big
Ben. Once a favourite residence of the Bishops of Winchester, the
Castle passed to the Crown in the sixteenth century and then, after
purchase by Sir Robert Sawyer, to the Herberts by intermarriage with
the last-named knight's family. Highclere Church is a new building
designed by Sir Gilbert Scott and stands just outside the park. It
replaces an erection of the late seventeenth century which used to
stand within a stone's throw of the castle upon the site of another
building of