I haven’t driven the A272 further west than Billingshurst, at which point I am inevitably seduced onto Stane Street. (I have a bit of a passion for Roman Roads, and the regions around and between Winchester and Salisbury get a lot of attention.)
A bit of local interest – on the Petersfield to Winchester stretch, a few miles west of the Meon Hut traffic lights, there is a horses’ grave (with headstone) on the left and a group of small sarsen stones on the right. They on a small crossroads with Woodlands on the right and Brockwood on the left.
The sarsen stones were erected by Colonel George Greenwood, owner of Brockwood House (now a Public School). He was a keen antiquarian and amateur archaeologist, and when his physician said he needed to do more exercise he used a wheelbarrow to transport the stones to their current position and have them erected. Colonel Greenwood died in 1875.
The horse, Melksham, belonged to a Colonel Meinertzhagen, who decided to bury his horse on the spot where it died in 1910. It lies under a large mound of flints, surrounded by beech trees.
Here Lies Col. R Meinertzhagen’s
Horse Melksham
Buried under these stones
Who died at this place in 1910
Other notable Horse Graves/Memorials in Hampshire are to:
‘Beware Chalk Pit’, at Farley Hill, near Winchester. The plaque on his monument (a rather fine pyramid) reads
“Underneath lies buried a horse, the property of Paulet St. John Esq, that in the month of September 1733 leaped into a chalk pit twenty-five feet deep a foxhunting with his master on his back and in October 1734 he won the Hunters Plate on Worthy Downs and was rode by his owner and was entered in the name of Beware Chalk Pit”.
And, of course, ‘Copenhagen’, ridden by the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo and who buried at Wellington’s Estate, near Stratfield Saye, in 1836.
Here Lies
COPENHAGEN
The Charger ridden by
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON
The entire day at the
BATTLE OF WATERLOO.
Born 1808. Died 1836.
God’s humbler instrument though meaner clay
Should share the glory of that glorious day.