Old Hampshire Mapped
Cobbett's Hampshire
Transcription (37)Morning Hill
Magdalen Hill
hills
turnpike road
New Alresford
Buckingham, Duke of
Avington Park
corn
barley
Avington
woods
pheasant
rick
wheat
turnip
From the top of this high land called Morning hill, and the real name of which is Magdalen hill, from a chapel which once stood there dedicated to Mary Magdalen; from the top of this land you have a view of a circle which is upon an average about seventy miles in diameter; and I believe in no one place so little as fifty miles in diameter. You see the Isle of Wight in one direction, and in the opposite direction you see the high lands in Berkshire. It is not a pleasant view, however. The fertile spots are all too far from you. Descending from this hill, you cross the turnpike-road (about two miles from Winchester), leading from Winchester to London through Alresford and Farnham. As soon as you cross the road, you enter the estate of the descendant of Rollo, Duke of Buckingham, which estate is in the parish of Avington. In this place the Duke has a farm, not very good land. It is in his own hands. The corn is indifferent, except the barely [sic], which is every where good. You come a full mile from the roadside down through this farm to the Duke's mansion-house at Avington and to the little village of that name, both of them beautifully situated, amidst fine and lofty trees, fine meadows, and streams of clear water. On this farm of the Duke I saw (in a little close by the farm-house), several hens in coops with broods of pheasants instead of chickens. It seems that a gamekeeper lives in the farm-house, and I dare say the Duke thinks much more of the pheasant than of the corn. ... I here saw, at this gamekeeping farm-house, what I had not seen since my departure from the Wen; namely, A WHEAT RICK! Hard, indeed would it have been if a Plantagenet, turned farmer, had not a wheat-rick in his hands. This rick contains, I should think, what they call in Hampshire ten loads of wheat, that is to say fifty quarters, or four hundred bushels. And this is the only rick, not only of wheat, but of any corn whatever that I have seen since I left London. The turnips, upon this farm, are by no means good; but, I was in some measure compensated for the bad turnips by the sight of the Duke's turnip-hoers, about a dozen females, amongst whom there were several very pretty girls, and they were as merry as larks. ...
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