The actual Ford itself is some little way from the road. Round it stretch meadows, with strong coarse grass and sedgy weeds, branches of the Avon winding here and there, fringed by willows, the main stream flowing out broad and strong, with islands of osiers and rushes, where still breed wild duck and teal, the whole backed by the gloom of St. Catherine’s Hills crested by their darker pines. The old road, used now only by the turf-cutters, crossing the former mill-brook, follows the bed of one of the many streams, till, reaching the river at its widest part, it bends across, gaining a lane on the opposite side, which leads away past Ramsdown into Dorsetshire, and along which tradition says the knight rode to Poole. The next village we reach is Sopley, that is the _soc leag_, land with the liberty of holding a court of _socmen_; just as the neighbouring village is called Boghamton (_bócland_), the village of the charter-land, or, as we should now say, freehold. Its interesting little cruciform church, Early-English and Perpendicular, is dedicated to St. Michael. The Avon flows below, and the old manor-house, now a mere cottage, stands in an adjoining meadow. On the deep north porch rests the archangel, on a corbel head. The fine old oak roof of the nave was covered up some sixty or seventy years ago by a plastered ceiling; but the corbel figures, playing the double pipe and viol, are still standing. In the north aisle are the heads of Edward III. and his queen. Two brackets for images project from the window in the north transept, whose jambs, now whitewashed over, were once painted with frescoes of the mystical vine, in green and red. Here, in the north wall, too, is an aumbrie, whilst the broken stone stairs to the rood-loft still remain. In the south transept a hagioscope, now walled up, looked into the chancel, where, on the floor, lie two Early Decorated figures, formerly placed in tombs under the rood-loft, and traditionally said to have been brought from a church at Ripley. In the east window burns the fiery beacon of the Comptons. Here, too, the whole of the church has been most impartially, and, I may add, successfully defaced. Everywhere has a snowstorm of whitewash fallen. I know not why we in these days should think that God delights in ugliness. Our forefathers at least thought not so. It would be well if for a moment we would consider how He adorns his own house, leads the green arabesque of ivy over its walls, and brightens the roof with the silver rays of mosses, and crowns each buttress with the aureole of the lichen. Leaving Sopley, we come to Winkton, the Weringetone of _Domesday_, where stood two mills, which were rented, as we have seen was often the case, by a payment of eels.