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AMPFIELD.

Nos. 25 to 29.

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"Within these walls let holy peace

And love and concord dwell;

Here give the troubled conscience ease,
The wounded spirit heal.

"May we in faith receive Thy Word,

In faith present our prayers,
And in the presence of our Lord

Unbosom all our cares."

(Newton, from the Book of Praise.)

BOUT two miles and a half from Hursley, and four from Otterbourne, by the side of the turnpike-road between Winchester and Romsey, at a distance of a little less than seven miles from Winchester, and a little more than four from Romsey, stands the church of St. Mark at Ampfield, anciently called Anvile, Anville, Anvill, or Anfield, and now sometimes spelt Amphiel. This church, which has 306 sittings, was built at a cost of £3,248, at the sole expense of Sir William Heathcote, who also gave the land for the church and

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churchyard. The late Joseph White, Esq., of Ampfield House, contributed £500 towards the endowment. The foundation-stone was laid by the third son of the Baronet, (now the Rev. Gilbert Vyvyan Heathcote, Rector of West Deeping,) on St. Matthew's Day, 1838, and it was consecrated on the 21st of April, 1841, and a district parish formed out of the parish of Hursley assigned to it under an Act of 58 George III. cap. 45, sect. 21. The incumbency is endowed partly by the interest of an endowment fund paid through Queen Anne's bounty, partly by portions of the rectorial and vicarial tithes of Hursley.

On the consecration of Braishfield Church in 1855, the part of the outlying hamlet of Pucknall which had been assigned to the district parish of Ampfield, was made over to the new district of Braishfield, and thus the population belonging to Ampfield was somewhat reduced.

Ampfield Church is a remarkably good building for the time at which it was erected, when a taste for ecclesiastical architecture was just beginning to be aroused in this country a. It is chiefly in the Early English style of architecture; the stonework of the west window, copied from Beverley Minster, forming an excellent specimen of that beautiful style, and the east window being copied from one in Lincoln Cathedral. The doorway is almost a reproduction of the south doorway of the old church at Otterbourne, which has been before mentioned as forming the present doorway of the boys' school-room there. (See the woodcut of it in the notes about Otterbourne.)

See the notes about Otterbourne, which shew that Ampfield (as well as Otterbourne) is much indebted to the late W. C. Yonge, Esq., who gave his mind to the work of church building in both places.

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