Basing or Old Basing, a village and a parish in the county of Hants. The village stands adjacent to the Basingstoke Canal and the S.W.R., 2 miles NW of Basingstoke. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office. Acreage, 5635; population of the civil parish, 1352; of the ecclesiastical, 1399. Ethelred I. was defeated here in 871 by the Danes. A very early castle, adjacent to the village, was held by the family of De Port from the Conquest till the time of Richard II., passed then by marriage to the Poynings, and went in the time of Henry VI. to the Paulets. Sir William Paulet, created Marquis of Winchester by Edward VI., rebuilt the castle in a style of great magnificence, and gave sumptuous entertainment in it to Queen Elizabeth. John, the fifth marquis, garrisoned it in defence of Charles I., and maintained it against a siege by successive Parliamentarian leaders during two years; but it was eventually taken by storm under Cromwell's own leading, with results which made the place a ruin, and gave the victors about £200,000 worth of plunder. Only an ivy-clad gateway, and a few walls and mounds of the castle now remain, and even a subsequent but smaller mansion built near it has passed away. Many balls, skeletons, and other relics of the conflict have been found, and a neighbouring field bears the name of Slaughter-close. Many ancient entrenchments are in the vicinity, and one, called Winklesbury Circle, about 1100 feet in diameter, with a flint-formed vallum, was used by Cromwell as a surveying post preparatory to his attack. The living is a vicarage, united with the vicarage of Up-Nately, in the diocese of Winchester; net value, £393 with residence. Patron, Magdalen College, Oxford. The church is Late Perpendicular, was repaired in 1874 at a cost of £2800, and contains tombs of the Paulets, including the six Dukes of Bolton, descendants of the fifth Marquis of Winchester. There is a Methodist chapel.
