Houghton ( ) is a small 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 authorit ...

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 ...

district of

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

, England. The village is situated alongside the

River Test The River Test is a chalk stream in Hampshire in the south of England. It rises at Ashe near Basingstoke and flows southwards for to Southampton Water. Settlements on the Test include the towns of Stockbridge and Romsey. Below the village of ...

. Its nearest town is Stockbridge, which lies approximately 1.8 miles (3 km) to the north-east. The village is a dispersed linear settlement, mostly strung out along the single road through the village, which broadly follows the course of the

north-south. Houghton is dominated by substantial agricultural/sporting estates at each end, the Houghton Lodge estate to the north and the Bossington estate to the south. Each owns a number of properties in the village.

Manors and houses

Houghton Lodge itself is an example of the rare '

Cottage ornée A cottage, during Feudalism in England, England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a cotter or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager had to provide ...

' style, of the late eighteenth century. The village also has an ancient church, All Saints, where services run on a weekly basis (with more at the tiny St James's church Bossington, set in open fields just to the south of the village.) In the Summer of 1415, during the Hundred Years' War, the army of Henry V of England camped on Agincourt Field on the Bossington estate on its way to embark for northern France and the campaign which ended with the Battle of Agincourt.

John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (6 March 1340 – 3 February 1399) was an English royal prince, military leader, and statesman. He was the fourth son (third to survive infancy as William of Hatfield died shortly after birth) of King Edward ...

, a son of Edward III from whom the

Plantagenet The House of Plantagenet () was a royal house which originated from the lands of Anjou in France. The family held the English throne from 1154 (with the accession of Henry II at the end of the Anarchy) to 1485, when Richard III died in ...

House of Lancaster was descended, had a palace or hunting lodge in the neighbouring village of

King's Somborne King's Somborne is a village in Hampshire, England. The village lies on the edge of the valley of the River Test. Location King's Somborne is a large parish covers , of which are covered by water. Most of the ground is low-lying, with a high poi ...

and a medieval deer park in the valley here in the fourteenth century. Some of the remains of the deer park's boundary embankments (or pale) can still be seen near Black Lake Farm as you cross the valley on foot on the

Clarendon Way The Clarendon Way is a recreational footpath in Hampshire and Wiltshire, England. It starts beside the waters of the River Itchen in the centre of Winchester and ends near the River Avon at Salisbury Cathedral. The path passes through the Cl ...

Architecture

The architecture of the village is mainly Hampshire rural vernacular, with some timber-frame and thatch, as well as much brick and slate. There are nearly 50 listed buildings in the village, which include North Houghton Manor, Houghton Lodge, Houghton Manor House, All Saints Church, The Old Rectory, Bossington Mill, and Bossington House, as well as many smaller houses, the oldest of which dates back to the fifteenth century. Nearly a fifth of the houses in the village are listed, and most of the village falls within a Conservation Area, designated in 1990.

Amenities

A number of public footpaths intersect in Houghton, including the

Test Way The Test Way is a http://documents.hants.gov.uk/countryside/walks/TestWayleaflet.pdf long-distance footpath in England from Walbury Hill in West Berkshire to Eling in Hampshire, which follows much of the course of the River Test. The northern ...

and the

, which crosses the

at the lovely spreading footbridge known locally as 'Sheep Bridge', a beautiful spot much frequented by swans and ducks and visited by the occasional egret. However, there is no public right of access to the river bank or the river itself. The spring-fed

is clear and teems with

trout Trout are species of freshwater fish belonging to the genera '' Oncorhynchus'', '' Salmo'' and '' Salvelinus'', all of the subfamily Salmoninae of the family Salmonidae. The word ''trout'' is also used as part of the name of some non-salm ...

and grayling. Most of the fishing in and around the village is owned by the Houghton Lodge estate, the Bossington estate, or the exclusive Houghton Club, founded in 1822 and the oldest fishing club in England. The village has a pub, The Boot Inn, with a garden running down to the banks of the River Test. There is no village shop or school. Houghton has a village hall, used for functions such as the annual village Harvest Supper.Village website
/ref> There is a small recreation ground next to the hall.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Hampshire Test Valley