A sizeable town in the north-west of Hampshire, Andover has a population of 52,000, and it stands on the banks of the River Anton roughly equidistant from the city of Winchester and the town of Basingstoke. Like most English towns it dates from Anglo-Saxon times and was recorded in Saxon annals as a royal hunting lodge belonging to King Edred (this was in the tenth century), and even saw the holiding of a Saxon ‘Parliament’. Later also recorded in the Domesday Book, Andover even at this early time had six watermills. Plodding along as a little market town it became quite significant for producing wool, which was the main source of income for the town. At this time Andover had a church, a priory, a hostel and a lepers hostel, the priory being eventually closed by Henry VIII. Much later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is developed into an important stagecoach stopping off point being on the route between London and Exeter (via Salisbury).