THE EXETER ROAD 



XVIII 



The wliereaboufs of Basingstoke may be noted from 

 afar by the huge and odd-looking clock-tower of the 

 Town Hall, added to that building in 1887. Its 

 windy height, visible from many miles around, is 

 also favourable to the hearino; at a distance of its 

 sweet-toned carillons, modelled on the pattern of 

 the famous peal of Bruges. When the shrieking of 

 the locomotives at the railway station is hushed, and 

 the wind is favourable, you may hear those tuneful 

 bells far away over the melancholy wolds that hem 

 in Basinostoke to the north and west, or listen to 

 them by the waters of the Loddon eastward, or the 

 undulatino- farm-lands of the south. 



We have seen how Old Basing l3ecame of prime 

 military importance from its situation at the point 

 where many roads from the south and west of Eng- 

 land converged and fell into one great highway to 

 London ; and from the same cause is due the com- 

 mercial prosperity of Basingstoke. Basingstoke, with 

 a record as a town o-oino- back to the time when the 

 Domesday Book was compiled, is yet a mere modern 

 settlement compared w^ith the mother-parish of Old 

 Basing ; but it was an important place in the 

 sixteenth century, when silks and woollens were 

 manufactured here. At later periods this junction 

 of the roads brought a great coaching trade, and 

 has finally made Basingstoke a railway junction. 

 Silks and woollens have given place to engineering 

 works and machine-shops, and the town, with its 

 modern reputation for tlie manufacture of aoricul- 



