Hurstbourne Tarrant is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...

, England. It lies to the north of the county in the

Test Valley Test Valley is a local government district and borough in Hampshire, England, named after the valley of the River Test. Its council is based in Andover. The borough was formed on 1 April 1974 by a merger of the boroughs of Andover and Romsey, a ...

. The Tarrant part of the name originates from 1226, when the village was given to the

Cistercian The Cistercians, () officially the Order of Cistercians ( la, (Sacer) Ordo Cisterciensis, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Saint ...

Tarrant nunnery. The civil parish includes the village of Ibthorpe. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Hurstbourne Tarrant was the decoy site for

RAF Andover RAF Andover is a former Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force station in England, west of Andover, Hampshire. As well as RFC and RAF units, units of the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps, Royal Canadian Air Force, United States Army Air ...

, the headquarters of

RAF Maintenance Command RAF Maintenance Command was the Royal Air Force command which was responsible for controlling maintenance for all the United Kingdom-based units from formation on 1 April 1938 until being renamed RAF Support Command on 31 August 1973. History ...

. This was one of four airfields in

to be given a decoy site in 1940, to deceive enemy aircraft into attacking a spurious target. The decoy site at Hurstbourne Tarrant was a type 'K' decoy site with fake aircraft and buildings. From September 1940, fake machine gun posts were added to Hurstbourne Tarrant. The famous American Victorian/Edwardian artist Anna Lea Merritt lived in the village for many years.

William Cobbett William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, journalist, politician, and farmer born in Farnham, Surrey. He was one of an agrarian faction seeking to reform Parliament, abolish "rotten boroughs", restrain foreign ...

declared Hurstbourne Tarrent and its location as worth going miles to see with beauty at every turn. He referred to it in his book ''

Rural Rides ''Rural Rides'' is the book for which the English journalist, agriculturist and political reformer William Cobbett is best known. At the time of writing in the early 1820s, Cobbett was a radical anti-Corn Law campaigner, newly returned to Englan ...

'' (1830) as Uphusband.

Hurstbourne House

Hurstbourne House is a grade II listed late 17th-century country house at the edge of the village. It was renovated in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is home to the Sharpe family. The original central range was built in two storeys, and has 19th century three-storey cross wings at each end. The walls are stucco rendered and the roof tiled. The frontage has three bays, the central one recessed.

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Villages in Hampshire {{Hampshire-geo-stub

Hurstbourne House

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