Houses and Gardens of Hampshire

Mottisfont Abbey is a historical priory and country estate in Hampshire. The 18th-century house with medieval priory at its heart was transformed into a Neo-classical home in the 1930s. Sheltered in the valley of the River Test, the property is now operated by the National Trust. The site includes a walled rose garden which is home to the National Plant Collection of ancestral rose species and 19th-century rose cultivars and a riverside walk.

The Vyne is a Grade I listed 16th-century country house in the parish of Sherborne St John, near Basingstoke in Hampshire. The house was first built between 1500 and 1520 in the Tudor style. In the 17th century it was transformed to resemble a classical mansion. Today, although much reduced in size, the house retains its Tudor chapel, with contemporary stained glass. The house is set in 13 acres of beautiful, relaxing gardens. The Vyne Estate also features acres of woodland with trails that pass by ancient trees, a medieval fishpond and the park pale. The wetlands attract an abundance of bird life.

The eye catching architecture of the mansion at Hinton Ampner is Neo-Georgian. The history of the Grade II listed house dates back nearly 500 years with alterations being made over the centuries. The house is surrounded by beautiful gardens separated into ‘rooms’. Some of the highlights include the Dell and year round floral displays in the Sunken Garden. The estate is nestled in the South Downs National Parks with beautiful views and delightful walks through the countryside and surrounding woodlands.

Sandham Memorial Chapel is in the village of Burghclere, Hampshire and is home to arguably the most important series of paintings by the modern British artist, Stanley Spencer, who wanted to express his military experience during 'The Great War' in paint. It is a Grade I listed, 1920s decorated chapel, designed by Lionel Godfrey Pearson. The 19 oil paintings that cover three walls of the chapel took six years to complete and are considered by many to be artist Stanley Spencer's finest achievement. With the chapel built to honour the 'forgotten dead' of the First World War, who weren’t remembered on official memorials, the series of artwork was inspired by Spencer’s own wartime experiences as a medical orderly at the Beaufort Hospital in Bristol and both orderly and soldier on the Salonika front. The orchard and meadow were planted in the 1920s when the chapel was built. The Garden of Reflection was created in 2014 to mark the centenary of the First World War.

Stockbridge Down gently rises to a peak in the landscape of the Test Valley, the top of which offers sweeping views of the surrounding countryside.  It is owned by the National Trust and part of it is a Scheduled Monument, with an Iron Age hillfort and fourteen Bronze Age burial mounds. This site has a variety of scrub and grassland habitats on a north-west facing slope of chalk and a clay-with-flints plateau. There is a diverse range of butterflies, such as chalk-hill blue, marbled white and dark green fritillary.