Itchen Abbas

4 of 8 in the Jemverse ‘Circular Sussex’ series

So we’ve walked in field of violets
and through hawthorn twitters long
to the Plough at Itchen Abbas
where Charles Kingsley wrote a song
“The Water Babies” was his opus
and he stayed here as he wrote
This village here in Hampshire
very quaint and quite remote

©Jemverse

Photo – violet fields above Itchen Abbas, Hampshire, UK – Jempics.

[Every year in May, my brother Dave and I go out for a week’s walking. This year we took in a series of circular walks based around our favourite long-distance trail – the South Downs Way through Hampshire and Sussex]

Charles Kingsley wrote the final manuscipt for “The Water Babies’ during a stay at ‘The Plough Inn’ at Itchen Abbas in 1862-63

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