Wilberforce. It is exceedingly quaint and, although restored, unspoilt
in appearance. Over the porch was once a hermit's cell. The clipped
and much maltreated stone Rood at the west door is Saxon work and the
most interesting item in the church.

A little further away is King's Worthy, with an uninteresting and
rebuilt Perpendicular church in a pretty spot on the banks of the
Itchen. At the far end of the village the Roman road to Basingstoke
leaves the way taken by the pilgrims from Winchester to Canterbury at
Worthy Park, and the straggling houses on its sides soon become the
hamlet of Abbot's Worthy, a name reminiscent of the time when the
countryside was parcelled out among the great religious houses. This
village was once in the possession of Hyde Abbey and afterwards became
the property of that Lord Capel who defended Colchester for the King
during the Civil War. Martyr's Worthy, a mile farther, has a Norman
arch to the doorway of its church, but is otherwise unremarkable.
"Martyr," by the way, is a misspelt abbreviation for "Mortimer."
Itchen Abbas, the goal of this short journey, is not five miles from
the centre of Winchester and is a great resort of fishermen. Here
Charles Kingsley came to stay at the "Plough" and, I am told, wrote a
good part of _Water Babies_ between spells upon the trout stream
near-by. Possibly these charming chapters were planned while the
author watched the placid waters before him.

The main road winds on to pleasant Alresford, where Mary Russell
Mitford was born. The principal attraction of the town is a large
lake, made by Bishop de Lucy in the twelfth century as an aid to the
navigation of the Itchen. Not so far as this, and in the same
direction, is Titchborne, quiet and remote among its trees with an old
church that boasts a Saxon chancel and with memories of the