Just 5 miles outside of Basingstoke can be found the village of Deane with the Deane Gate Inn at the crossroads on the B3400 road. It was here that Jane Austen would have waited to catch the coach with her family after walking from Steventon. For before she moved to Steventon, Jane and her family lived at Deane. The name Deane Gate Inn conjures up a vision of a turnpike and there might have been one here but then there is Hatch Gate a well which was not a turnpike

The remainder of the village though lies further to the north and here can be found thatched cottages and farms lining one side of the lane and on the other the Manor House and the church. In the mid twelfth century the manor had been passed to Robert de la Mare and on his deathbed at Benevento in 1193 it went to his daughter Agnes who was the widow of Robert Mauduit of Warminister who was the Lord Chamberlain to Henry II. Until the year 1392 it passed through several hands but was then settle on William of Wykeham the Bishop of Winchester who then passed it to the Fiennes family until in 1590 it was sold to James Deane by Richard Fiennes, and James left it in his will to his 'servant' James Deane.

Then it went to the Harwood family until it was bought by the Right Honourable William Wither Bramston Beach in 1864. He at his death in 1901 was father of the House of Commons.

The church is dedicated to All Saints and is constructed in late Georgian Gothic style and rendered in cement. The tower window traceries are made of artificial *Coade stone which was in fashion at the time the decorations and furnishings inside the church are all original.

A mile west of Deane is the tiny village of Ashe and here the River Test rises in a series of ponds, Ashe also has its own church dedicated to the Holy Trinity and this was rebuilt in the 1870s and is crowned with a bellcote and some decorative stone . Note the tiny robin sitting inside near the screen, it is said it nested here during the rebuilding.

*From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

Coade stone was a ceramic material that has been described as an artificial stone. It was first created by Mrs Eleanor Coade (Elinor Coade, 1733-1821), and sold commercially from 1769 to 1833. The building boom in London, at this time, led to a high demand for ornate features to decorate and adorn brick-built Georgian houses. The showrooms of Mrs Coade's Artificial Stone Company, in Westminster Bridge Road, provided a huge array of 'off the shelf' solutions for builders and architects, ranging from small keystones for over front doors to corner and window features and almost entire façades. The factory was in Lambeth, London, where the Royal Festival Hall now stands. The company initially did very well, boasting an illustrious list of customers such as George III and quite a few members of the English nobility (Wendy Moonan remarks in the New York Times that Mrs. Coade sold to "a Debrett's full of English lords and Dukes."). Despite the presence of Coade stone at such prominent sites as Nelson’s Memorial at Burnham Thorpe, Britannia Monument in Great Yarmouth, the pediment of the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, Buckingham Palace, Castle Howard, St. Paul's Cathedral, Brighton Palace, Captain Bligh’s tomb (in the churchyard of St Mary's Lambeth), the Lion outside County Hall next to Westminster Bridge and the sculptural reliefs above the entrance to the Imperial War Museum, after the first Mrs. Coade's death in 1821, her daughter and relatives (who inherited the firm) apparently did not do as well. The firm went bankrupt in 1833.