10 Hampshire villages that you should visit this year

From historic hamlets to those with chocolate-box exteriors, choosing the most interesting villages in Hampshire to visit in 2023 has been a tough decision. Of course, there are many more to explore, but here are some of our favourites.

WHERWELL
Tucked in the valley of the Test, Wherwell lost its railway station in 1956, its goods yard occupied by houses with views over water meadows.
There’s thatched timber-framed cottages while Priory Park, an early-19th-century house, was built in the grounds of an Anglo-Saxon nunnery where an abbess, Euphemia de Walliers (died 1257), adopted advanced ideas on sanitation, although her river-use would probably be frowned upon today.
I mentioned thatch: It’s Thatch-ville here, with extravagant examples throughout the village to admire.

HURSTBOURNE TARRANT
Hurstbourne Tarrant was the end point of one of William Cobbett’s Rural Rides, the radical countryside lover (1763-1835).
He was complimentary: ‘The village is a sight worth going many miles to see’.
Uphusband, as he termed it (its ancient name), had ‘the houses of the village … in great part scattered about, and are among very fine and lofty trees’.
Hurstbourne Hill, overlooking the village, challenged 19th-century stage coaches. The George and Dragon survives from those days when five hostelries catered for coaching wayfarers.
St Peter’s Church is Norman with faded medieval murals, while artist Augustus John (1878-1961) opened a gallery here.

MICHELDEVER
A village that incorporates the visual treats we’d hope for with plenty of thatched cottages. The place is familiar because of its railway station of 1840 vintage which ironically has a red plaque commemorating some road transport history, the first recorded car journey commencing from here in 1895.
Luckily for Micheldever neither the railway nor the A33 got too close so the village survives with homogeneity intact. St Mary’s Church, described as ‘startling’, is a medieval structure with a red-brick octagon thrust into its middle.
There are memorials inside to the Baring family of Barings Bank, whose descendants now produce wine on the nearby Grange estate at Northington.

BUCKLER’S HARD
This was a flourishing shipyard in Nelson’s time, churning out Agamemnon and two other vessels that fought at Trafalgar, plus other wooden ships of the line.
It’s different today, a single airy street leading down to the Beaulieu River where yachts bob. The street was wide enough for New Forest oaks to be rolled into the harbour.
Its shipbuilding days are over but that street still resembles a slipway and is flanked by Georgian redbrick houses, their lawns once having ships’ materials piled up. The Master Builder’s House hotel recalls Henry Adams (1713-1805) who worked at Buckler’s Hard from 1744 and is present in mannequin form in the maritime museum.

Great British Life: Selborne Selborne (Image: Andrew Green)

SELBORNE
Perhaps Hampshire’s most famous village, to which pilgrims flock to see the home of Gilbert White (1720-93), the parson-naturalist whose Natural History of Selborne (1789) put this place on the map.
His house, The Wakes, is a characteristic dwelling of chalky sandstone with brick facing for the pleasingly meandering street it occupies. White had a refreshingly honest way of writing: ‘In the centre of the village, and near the church, is a square piece of ground surrounded by houses, and vulgarly called the Plestor’ (he’s referring to the village green).
Don’t be put off. White is buried in the churchyard while the beauteous sounding Gracious Street leads ironically to the former workhouse.

OLD BASING
It’s a Hampshire saying that ‘clubs were trumps when Basing fell’, referring to the possibly apocryphal tale that the guards of the Royalist garrison were playing whist when the Parliamentarians attacked in 1645.
Old Basing is an eccentric yet surprisingly workable mix of cream whitewashing and red brick and tiles. Across the River Loddon from its non-village neighbour, Basingstoke, treespotted Old Basing had its bricks locally made, although the kilns are now gone.
St Mary’s Church is Norman and there’s a tithe barn of 15th/16th century calling. Basing House, the 16th century mansion of William Paulet, was slighted with Cromwell leading the final assault.

READ MORE: Explore Old Basing in Hampshire

ROCKBOURNE
Pevsner, who appreciated pretty villages, described Rockbourne, where its bourne, Sweatfords Water, meets the Avon, thus: ‘The village street in Rockbourne is one of the prettiest in Hampshire’. That’s good enough for me.
Migrating to Hampshire from Wiltshire in 1895, the village has a Norman church (in origin) and an adjacent manor with 14th-century barn. The stream that divides houses from street, with connecting bridges, is a winterbourne as it usually only flows during that season.
There’s one long street running beside this, which majors on 16th- to 18th-century houses, very much of individual character. Rockbourne’s Roman villa was discovered by an amateur archaeologist/local estate agent in 1942.

Great British Life: The village store, where one has survived, can be an essential part of village life The village store, where one has survived, can be an essential part of village life (Image: Michael Garlick, www.geograph.org.uk)

HAMBLEDON
It’s been debated whether Hambledon was ‘the birthplace of cricket’, but notwithstanding that, it’s still worth visiting the ground on Broadhalfpenny Down where a club formed back in the 1760s.
In 1777 the Hambledon club was strong enough to defeat an All-England side. The Bat and Ball Inn, aptly, sits opposite the venerable ground.
In the village, 18th-century brick cottages predominate, many with Stuart antecedents, while The George, an old coaching inn, has the stable yards to prove it. There’s a 13th century flint/rubble church, St Peter and St Paul, contemporaneous with a market granted to the Bishop of Winchester, Hambledon’s owner, in 1256.

SHORWELL
I include one Isle of Wight village, but not Godshill, which may surprise. Perhaps there were just too many tea and gift shops. Shorwell, contrastingly, has stayed truer to its roots, sheltered by the downs, watched over by three manors, and with a 14th-century church at its heart.
Inside the church is a replica altar piece of The Last Supper, the original returned to its home in Iceland partly thanks to Magnus Magnusson (of Mastermind fame) who helped track it down to one of those manors.
The church also contains a 500-year-old pulpit and rare books of the 16th century including a Breeches Bible (1579) so called because it refers to Adam and Eve sewing breeches from fig leaves.

OLD ALRESFORD
Yes, Old Alresford is a village. It’s New Alresford that’s the town. Back in the 12th century one of the Bishops of Winchester, Godfrey de Lucy (died 1204) was busily damming various little streams at Old Alresford in order to achieve a head of water to make the Itchen navigable.
The Bishop’s reservoir is a picturesque pond today, frequented by wildfowl. The early-Georgian rectory was home to George and Mary Sumner, the latter founding the Mothers’ Union in the village in 1876.