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Introduction

Weyhill provided the back-drop for much human activity long before the Hawk Conservancy ever came into existence. With Winchester, capital of the ancient kingdom of Wessex, just twenty miles south east, Weyhill benefitted from being so convenient to the centre of Anglo-Saxon culture. Eight roads or 'driftways' converge at Weyhill, bringing traffic from Winchester, Southampton, Farnham and the east, Marlborough, Hungerford, Newbury, Salisbury, Amesbury and the west. For such a cosmopolitan junction between so many long-important towns, it seems hardly surprising that Weyhill developed into a commercial centre and the ideal setting for what began as the Weyhill Sheep Fair.

By the early 13th century, Weyhill Fair had already grown to a considerable size. Sales of sheep, which were the lynchpin of the local farming economy, increased to the extent that Andover was rapidly becoming an important weaving town even by the Middle Ages. The Fair, immortalised under the name of 'Weydon Priors' in Thomas Hardy's 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' (where Henchard auctions his wife for five guineas). attracted farmers from as far afield as Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire. Bedfordshire. Kent and Sussex. and as many as 140,000 sheep are recorded as being sold there in one day.

The land used for the Weyhill Fair belonged to Rambridge Manor, which lies next to Clanville a couple of miles north-west of Weyhill and which was once owned by the early English author, Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer may well have based some of the characters in his 'Canterbury Tales' on people visiting the Fair. Rambridge Manor was later to be under the patronage of Elizabeth I.

The Hawk Conservancy was not the first to fly birds of prey in this area either. As well as the entertainments of jousting, mummers and mystery plays, strolling players and minstrels, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, dog-baiting and boxing, it is reputed that annual hawking matches took place at the start of the Weyhill Fair and that King John, who often enjoyed heron hawking here in the Test Valley, may well have visited the Fair on such an occasion.

Hilary Smith, pictured here with her late husband Reg, founders of The Hawk Conservancy

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