THINK of Lychpit and many people will envisage a large housing area on the edge of Old Basing and Chineham.

But scratch the surface a little and you’ll learn that the area, which is part of the parish of Old Basing and Lychpit, has an ancient if gruesome past.

The area is reputed to be the burial place of soldiers killed during the Battle of Basing, which took place in January 271 AD.

The battle was between the Saxons led by King Ethelred, who was accompanied by his brother, the future Alfred the Great, and the invading Danes.

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle reports that the Danes, known as The Army, were victorious in this instance.

The next major battle that took place in the area was the siege of Basing House, during the English Civil War.

When the Civil War started in 1642, the house – which was one of the largest in England – was owned by royalist William Paulet, fifth Marquess of Winchester.

Starting in the summer of 1643, several attempts were made by the Parliamentarians to capture the house. The final assault took place in August 1645, when 800 men took up position around its walls.

Leading the assault was Colonel John Dalbier, who apparently tried an early form of poison gas, burning wet straw mixed with sulphur and arsenic upwind of the house.

The Basing House garrison held out until Oliver Cromwell arrived with reinforcements, armed with heavy artillery, ending the siege in October 1645.

Fragments from that dark period of Old Basing’s history may well have recently been discovered in an old barn in Lychpit.

Two small musket balls have been discovered in the roof lining of the building, which is currently under major renovation.

The grade II listed building, which for many years was the Cromwell Inn, was taken over during last summer by local entrepreneur Gary Locke, who transformed the building into a delightful Thai restaurant, called Kwai 2.

With work being carried out on the roof, a carpenter found the two lead musket balls.

“We don’t know what else we are likely to find up there,” mused Gary, who has heard stories of muskets being found among the beams of some older buildings in the area.

He said: “There is a lot of history here. Lychpit would have been part of the siege as we’re only about 800 yards away from Basing House as the crow flies.”

Admiring the find, Gary said: “These are spent musket balls, which I believe go back to the Civil War.

“I think that where they are flatended, they were fired at quite close range and if they had hit someone, the chances are they could have been fatal.”

The precise age of the barn is uncertain, other than it is one of three buildings, forming a courtyard that was once part of Lychpit Farm, now called Lychpit House.

One of the buildings, North Barn, is used today as Lychpit Community Hall, while the other, East Barn, is a doctors’ surgery.

“The buildings look to be of the same era as the Great Barn, at Basing House. And there’s talk of tunnels going from here over to Basing House. We haven’t found them yet – we haven’t started digging,” joked Gary.

The Great Barn, which was built in 1535, just before Henry VIII paid a visit to Basing House, still bears the scars of the Civil War, with evidence of dozens of cannon and musket ball strikes.

Keen to ensure that the building housing Kwai 2 is kept in its former glory, Gary hopes that local residents will appreciate the renovation work, which is due to be completed in about three months.

“This is a very warm building,” said Gary, who added: “If only these walls could talk. We know that at some stage, the barn was used as an apple store for the farm, which had a large orchard.

“There are slits in the walls, which some people for a long time thought were for bows and guns, but actually they were used for ventilation to stop mould.”

Alan Turton, curator at Basing House, believes that Gary’s theory is feasible.

He said: “There was a siege camp at Lychpit, which was later called Oliver’s Delve. It was one of four main camps around Basing, sealing it off.

“It was a quarry site just off Bartons Lane, which was filled in and built over with housing. Troops would have probably been billeted in any buildings there.”

Alan also said that the area was the scene of a battle involving 1,000 troops, which started at Daneshill Roundabout, by Swing Swang Lane.

Leading the battle was royalist Colonel Sir Henry Gage, who was sent from Oxford to relieve the beleaguered Basing House garrison in 1644.

“That’s where he probably first made contact with the Parliamentary forces,” said Alan.

Incidentally, the name of the lane stems from Swang, meaning marsh or boggy land, and thus means Swing’s Marsh.

Having been straightened over the years, part of the original lane, which led to Basing, can still be seen today, a short distance up the slope from the roundabout.