Hartley-Wintney

In early December, Babette and I drove to visit the large village of Hartley-Wintney, Hampshire. It is a gorgeous town with lots of antique shops. We walked around, visited the duck pond, with a thatched duck house...

saw the Mildmay Oaks, about which the Hartley-Wintney parish website describes:

In 1805 Admiral Collingwood, who was in command of the Navy after the battle of Trafalgar, was appealing to landowners to plant oaks: “What I am most anxious about” he wrote “is the plantation of oak in this country. We shall never cease to be a great people while we have ships and we cannot have ships without timber.”
Lady Mildmay, who had become Lady of the Manor in 1786, seems to have responded to his appeal by instructing her steward in Hartley Row to plant out acorns. From these grew the now famous Mildmay or Trafalgar Oaks.
They provide Hartley Wintney with its most impressive and historic feature and are believed to be unique – despite extensive research it has not been possible to find another surviving regimented plantation of Oaks planted in this country at that time.

Babette amidst the Mildmay Oaks.

Hartley-Wintney has the oldest continuously played cricket pitch in the world!

Lunch at the Cricketers.

"Cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth, certainly greater than sex, although sex ísn't bad either." Harold Pinter

And then we happened upon St. Mary's, a 13th century church built on a hill above the village.

I loved it. I love graveyards. I like reminders of our mortality, it brings me back to what I care about most.

nello!

As I walk among the ancient signs of lives lived, I think about the here and now.

I want so badly for this life I have to count.

I think about my children, and their precious gift of now.

What a blessing it is, all this.

Matilda Anne dead and gone at 44.