WARNFORD, a parish in the hundred of MEONSTOKE,
Portsdown division of the county of SOUTHAMPTON,
6 miles (N. E.) from Bishop's Waltham, containing
364 inhabitants. The living is a rectory, in the
peculiar jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, rated
in the king's books at £21. 9- 4. The church is in
the early style of English architecture, with a Norman
tower; it was founded by Wilfrid, and rebuilt by Adam
de Portu in the reign of the Conqueror. There is a
place of worship for Independents. Near the church
is a very ancient and curious ruin of a house, called
King John's, a corruption of St. John's, which family
formerly possessed it. The dimensions of the building
were eighty feet by fifty-four, and the walls, composed
of flints set in grout work, were four feet thick, with
semicircular arched windows and doors: it was divided
into two apartments, under a vaulted roof, which,
though fallen in, appears to have been once supported
by four slender, well-proportioned columns, the bases
and capitals of which are still entire, and by four
half-columns worked into the east and west walls.