Where I live

Ariel image of where I live

We moved here in 1986, having bought the cottage at New Year. We had chosen the area, because we both freelanced and needed a base that was in hitting distance of London, the South Coast, the Midlands and the Thames Valley, which is the UK's equivalent of 'Silicon Valley' full of IT and technology companies who would readily use our skills.

We knew the area reasonably well before moving as we had both worked in Basingstoke and had friends living in the villages around. I recall visiting estate agents and describing what we wanted, one day pointing out a pretty white rendered cottage in a window, marked sold in big bold red letters. I sighed, and pointed, 'like that'. The estate agent made a note and we continued our hunt. Some weeks later the estate agent called , and said, 'recall the cottage you pointed out to me?'. 'Yes' I replied, puzzled. 'The sale has fallen through, do you want to view it?'. He didnt need to ask twice, I was on the first train down, with the iGit. We viewed it, and called the estate agents straight away, it was everything that we wanted. We asked how much the vendor had accepted previously, and offered the same. The cottage was ours.

Not easy to get a photo of chez moi, too many high hedges etc. The back half is us.

My village is strung half way along the A30 between Basingstoke and Camberley, part of the old coaching and drovers route between London and Exeter. My home is about a mile from the centre in an area called Phoenix Green, along a winding wooded lane, that leads to places like Mattingley, Dipley, West Green, Rotherwick, Hartley Wespall and other quaint sounding hamlets.

The Village straddles the A30 on an old coaching road

The cottage itself started life as the stables and coach house for a listed late Georgian manse whose buildings and grounds were developed in the early 1980. The main house was renovated, the cottage was converted, and 5, large 5 bedroom Neo-Georgian houses were built on the grounds. The girl we bought it from had been given it as a wedding present by her father, who was the developer of the original property. She and I became firm friends over the years.

Another of the ponds on common land adjacent the A30

We had bought a cute 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom , 2 reception home, with a garden and very soon after got married at the norman church in Winchfield . My son was born in 1988 and between his birth and the birth of my daughter in 1989, we built a 2 storey, 5 room extension, living in just one room covered in dust. We made a huge effort to match everything as perfectly as we could so that you couldn't see the join, between 1820 and the 1988. We have spent the past 22 years re-modelling our home to be the place we love to come home to. We have even slept for months on end with no windows, whilst we painstakingly restored and reglazed the oak and iron frames.

The Cricket Pavilion on one of the Commons

We are fortunate that we are in a very active community, there are 5 churches of varying denominations, a public Golf Course, that Justin Rose cut his teeth on before becoming internationally famous. The Cricket pitch is reputedly the longest in use in the UK and regularly hosts Hampshire CC testimonials. There are also Football and Rugby Clubs at the back of the Commons. There is an Infants and Junior School and also a very well regarded Pre-prep in the village centre, that has a good record for helping kids to get scholarships to Public School. There are thriving Arts and Amateur Dramatics groups, U3A, WI, and pretty much any other sort of club or activity, you might want to get involved in. The Preservation Society is very active and very well supported.

Blossom in the Community Orchard at the Hunts Common

The Parish Council is very active too, and has responsibility for many community based projects and events, from the planting of a Community Orchard in 2000 with over 250 varities of Apples, Pears, Cherries and Quince, to reinstating a weekly market on Wednesdays with local producers: a Christmas Market with carolers, Morris Men , Mulled Wine and Hog roasts etc; Santa turns up on a Volvo drawn Sledge! Wassailing in the New Year, and other country customs are careful preserved.

On the High Street there are all the usual shops including a butcher, a baker a watchmaker and a bed shop late of the Kings Road , Chelsea! There are too many Antiques shops though.

In the Summer, the Village Fair takes place and all sorts of madness takes place on the village Greens, with the village retained firemen taking on all the local pubs in tugs of war. We won't mention them cheating and trying to use the winch when the children of the village looked like winning against them!

A Memorial to the Millennium carved from one of the felled Mildmay Oaks.

Hartley Wintney has a long history, and was first recorded as 'Hertleye Wynteneye'. The name goes back to Saxon times, and means 'the clearing in the forest where the deer graze by Winta's island'. It is thought Winta was a Saxon landowner who owned an island in the middle of the marshes to be found in the Hart Valley, where later in 1190 , Cistercian nuns founded a Priory.

Some of the Mildmay Oaks on the Common planted for ship building after the Battle of Trafalgar

One of the dominant features of the village are the large commons, areas of woodland and ponds, originally used by drovers that have been in existent for hundreds of years. In the centre of the village is a plantation of 200 year old oaks, planted by the patriotic Lady St. John-Mildmay, following the Battle of Trafalgar and Admiral Collingwood request for landowners to plant Oak for ship building for future generations. Other notables include Hangman Hawley, infamous slayer at the Battle of Culloden, and and Lord Alanbrooke, who lived further along the same lane as my home is in, and is buried in the church yard at St Mary's. The Duke of Wellington's Estate is on the northern boundary, and we ride at the stables there.

Causeway Farm, built in Tudor times at one end of the Cricket Common. It was recently under threat from developers wishing to turn it into offices and small commercial properties

In common with many villages and rural areas in the South East, huge demands are being placed by Central Government on District Councils, and housing and commercial development, some of it of a scale unseen in the UK before, is rampaging across the areas between and around the M3/M4 corridor out of London, and warehouses the size of ten Wembley Stadiums, and tens of thousands of houses concrete the green and pleasant fields at an alarming rate.

A quiet footpath that begins near my home through the woods that run parallel with the A30; a short cut to the village

Because of this, once we are able, and our children are through University, and independent, we are seriously considering relocating to somewhere that isn't in danger of becoming a London suburb. So watch out, I may be moving to a village near you!