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| Kitwood | |
|---|---|
 Road junction in the centre of Kitwood | |
  Kitwood Location withinHampshire | |
| OS grid reference | SU6661633840 |
| Civil parish |
|
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Alton |
| Postcode district | GU34 |
| Dialling code | 01420 |
| Police | Hampshire and Isle of Wight |
| Fire | Hampshire and Isle of Wight |
| Ambulance | South Central |
| 51°06′00″N1°03′00″W / 51.100000°N 1.05°W /51.100000; -1.05 | |
Kitwood is ahamlet in the parish ofFour Marks,Hampshire, England. It is in the south east of the Parish and has been part of Four Marks since its creation in 1932. Prior to this, it was part ofRopley Parish.
Although the settlement was located at the junction of Kitwood road and Swelling, as is visible in older maps, the settlement now spreads all the way from Swelling hill pond to Kitwood farm near Hawthorn Road.
First mentioned in AD 1403 askyteswode[1] meaning theKite('s) wood fromOld English 'cýta' and 'wudu'.[2] The actual woodland that is referred to stood somewhere near to where Kitwood Plantation is nowadays.
The earliest signs of human activity in Kitwood are a number ofMesolithic flint implements that have been found near to the hamlet since the 1950s. Later evidence ofRoman activity may also be present nearby as it has been suggested that Swelling Lane, which runs through the hamlet towardRopley, is the remains of aRoman Road.
Archaeological evidence of activity in around the hamlet can be seen by medieval potsherds found around the area. Since the early 1400s, the is also regularly mentioned in legal documents relating to Ropley. Kitwood Lane is recorded in acourt roll record from 1413[3] as "kitteswodeweye" and during a hedgerow dating survey, commissioned for the Four Marks Village Design Statement,[4] the hedgerow on either side of Kitwood Lane was dated to "approximately 800 years old". This wealth of records suggests significant activity in the area since the 1400s but little evidence of settlement. It is known that since the 13th Century there was settlement near Old Down Wood, northwest of the Hamlet.
Long, parallel field boundaries running on a NE-SW alignment are visible north of Kitwood Farm are said to have been laid as a result of theinclosure act of which Ropley was the first parish to beenclosed by act of Parliament, theRopley Inclosure Act 1709 (8 Ann. c.16Pr.).[5]
This farm, not to be confused with the more modern 19th century farmhouse that sits to the east of the main hamlet, was an 18th-century farmhouse that existed from around the early 1700s up to about 1908/9 when it disappeared from maps. The farmhouse stood roughly where Autumn Cottage on Kitwood Lane stands now.
