The glorious countryside and buildings of today’s East Meon are the result of over two millennia of farming, until recently the sole industry in the valley. For a thousand years, this was the largest Hampshire estate of the diocese of Winchester reaching to the Sussex border and beyond: its magnificent church and bishops’ palace were the centres of religious and feudal control. Strip farming in communal fields made way­­ to enclosed farms, oxen to horses, then machinery, natural tillage to artificial fertilisers.

We have researched the social, architectural and economic aspects of life in the Hundred of East Meon: the great houses and successful farms in contrast with the insecurity and poverty of agricultural workers; colourful figures including the legendary millionaire recluse, the Dowager Countess Peel, and the penny-pinching Victorian vicar, the Rev Thomas Cook Kemp;  involvement in national events including the Black Death, the Civil War, Swing Riots and two World Wars; a portrait of life in a typical English rural community.