(click on the pictures to enlarge them) |
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At
the beginning of the 18th century there were few proper roads.
There were two tracks
from Holybourne to Bentley, the upper track used in winter, through
Froyle past the Church, and the lower track nearer the river used
in summer.
As stage coaches and road waggons were coming more into use, it was
necessary to construct a proper road, and so Froyle was by-passed.
An old directory,
about 1730, gives the route Alton, Holybourne, Bentley, leaving out
Froyle, so the road must have been completed before that date.
Even the present
main road is not, in several places, on the exact original. From near
the Hen & Chicken to Quarry Bottom, traces of the original
can be seen inside the park wall, and the place where the stream
was forded,
before there was a bridge, can easily be traced. Probably the wall
was not there in 1730, as it is supposed that French prisoners
built it in
the time of Napoleon. “It is an attractive, little altered, brick Georgian house, with posting stables at the back........” The layout of Turnpike Cottages suggests that they were built as cottages, not converted from stables. The Hen & Chicken(s) was an important Post Inn on the stagecoach routes to London, where not only horses would be changed, but mail would be collected and delivered. |