Bounded by Wessex’s historic capital, Winchester, to the south, and the newer commuter towns of Basingstoke and Andover to the north and west respectively, the Hampshire Downs is an area made up almost exclusively of chalkland, though there is a small area of mottled clay soil–an outcrop of the Reading formation–around East Stratton, 8 miles northeast of Winchester.
The chalky character of the area makes it suitable for sheep farming, and Hampshire Down is a regionally distinctive breed of sheep, noted for providing excellent mutton. The breed was created in 1829 by a local farmer, John Twynam, who cross-bred his flock of Southdown sheep with the Old Hampshire variety. Other farmers continued to refine the breed by further cross-breeding with the Wiltshire Horn and Berkshire Nott varieties.
The chalk streams flowing into the rivers Test and Itchen are the home of dry-fly fishing, first developed by Frederic M Halford, a Birmingham-born, London-based fisherman; and George Selwyn Marryat of Chewton Glen in the New Forest. The weeds in the chalk streams tended to float close to the surface, necessitating a method of keeping the fly afloat. Halford and Marryat first met in Hammond’s Fly Shop in Winchester on 28th April 1879, “the meeting that changed the course of fly fishing history” according to Marryat’s biographer Andrew H Herd.
Most famous of the Hampshire Downs is Watership Down, which provided the name and setting for Richard Adams’s 1972 novel and the 1978 animated film adaptation which traumatised a generation of children. Jane Austen’s house at Chawton also sits on the edge of the Downs, while Selborne Common was studied in depth by the pioneering naturalist Gilbert White.
Road and rail routes linking London to Wessex criss-cross the Hampshire Downs, and Winchester itself was founded at the convergence of prehistoric trackways known as dongas. With its chalk bedrock, connections to the rest of Wessex, and focus on the historic capital, one could argue that the Hampshire Downs represent the quintessential Wessex character area.