National Character Area 130 - Hampshire Downs : Key Characteristics

The rolling, elevated, chalk arable downland has an open, exposed character that provides open skies and long-distance views.

Elevated plateaux and upper valley slopes are characterised by extensive open tracts of large, low-hedged fields with thin chalky soils, shelterbelts, and ancient semi-natural woodland blocks on clay-withflint caps on some of the steeper slopes.

In contrast, within the sheltered valleys and to the east of the area, the network of hedgerows, interspersed by numerous areas of oak/ash or hazel woodland coppice and smaller meadow fields, gives a strong sense of enclosure.

The rivers and streams of the Test and Itchen catchments are internationally significant, and distinctive chalk rivers, running in deep valleys, cut into the Chalk.

A network of distinctive and ancient droving roads and trackways is a particular feature across the Downs.

There is widespread evidence of prehistoric settlement on the open downlands, including burial mounds with visually prominent ironage hill forts. In the valleys, there is evidence of Roman estates and nucleated medieval village settlement patterns, and fieldscapes and farmsteads across the downlands evidence the gradual and planned enclosure from the medieval period.

The area’s distinctive appearance derives from the use of chalk cob (in the west), weatherboarded timber frame and small, handmade local brick with flint in traditional rural buildings and walls surrounding farm courtyards, with thatch surviving in many places.

The settlement pattern varies between the relatively dense strings of villages along the lower river valleys and the very low-density, nucleated settlements in the upper reaches of the rivers and on the Downs.

The ancient city of Winchester is located at the heart of this landscape and at the centre of the Itchen Valley, and the more modern, rapidly expanding towns of Basingstoke and Andover are on downland sites at the head of the Loddon and Test valleys.