If the term 'new town' conjures up an image of Milton Keynes and concrete cows, visit us in Overton, which was designated a 'new town' back in the thirteenth century! Mentioned in 909 in a grant of land by King Edward to the Bishop of Winchester, the early village was on the north bank of the Test, but in the thirteenth century a new town was planned by Bishop de Lucy on the south bank. By the early seventeenth century the original mediaeval village around the church had decayed, leaving only the thirteenth century new town, still known as Overton.