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.
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