RECENT dry weather has uncovered strange patterns, believed to be long lost garden, at an estate near Basingstoke. 

Tour guide Phil Howe noticed the strange geometrical patterns made of squares and circles whilst conducting a Jane Austen Tour near Hackwood Park earlier this month. 

Phil, a tour guide from Hidden Britain Tours, came across the shapes in in the dry grass to the south of the house.

He said: "These must be the outlines of a long lost formal garden. Formal gardens were about balance, symmetry and geometric shapes. They may well have been planted with low box or yew hedges, with beds of roses, lavender, with grassed or gravelled walkways, with maybe a central sundial or raised iron baskets containing trailing plants. 

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"As a visitor to Hackwood, Jane Austen may well have walked these now visible garden paths. With the recent rain, these may never be seen for some time."

On the tour that Phil operates visitors stop outside Hackwood Park, where he explains its historic importance.

He also uses a well known application to show visitors the drive, the lake, the pigsty and the house itself, as the tours are not allowed into the estate.