On the Real Watership Down
Hare Warren Farm
An old brick and flint farmstead mentioned in Tales From Watership Down.
He flew over Hare Warren Farm and down to the strip of woodland known as Caesar’s Belt. Here he foraged for a time and exchange chat with a few gulls like himself.
“There’s bad weather on the way,” said one of these.
“Very bad weather; the worst we’ve ever known. Snow and bitter cold out of the west. If you don’t want to die, Kehaar, you’d better find some shelter.”
Tales From Watership Down; Chapter Thirteen—The New Warren
The road crossing point is somewhere between my position and the telegraph pole.
Within Tales From Watership Down (Chapter Thirteen, The New Warren), Kehaar is given the task of finding locations where a new warren can be constructed. Mention is made of him passing over Hare Warren Farm, to the south of the Down.
Hare Warren is a small hamlet on the lane between Cole Henley and the Sydmonton Crossroads. The farm and its outbuildings are built of brick and flint—the latter presumably from the local downland—and, according to Historic England, ‘are typical of the 19th century (although they may be of late 18th century date)’. Like its Watership Down relation Nuthanger Farm, Hare Warren Farm is no longer used for agricultural purposes having become a private home. The neighbouring cottages were originally constructed as housing for the farm’s employees.
I am always taken by the isolation of the hamlet and it is easy to see that life out here would have been tough prior to the invention of motor vehicles. Kingsclere and Whitchurch are the nearest towns of any size, roughly an hour-and-a-half and two hours away respectively on foot.
I would also be interested to know of the history behind the name Hare Warren. Old Ordnance Survey mapping from 1895 names the settlement as Sydmonton Warren Farm, though this changed at some point between the 1930s and late 1960s.