Four Marks is a village and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is southwest of Alton, on the A31 road. It is situated on the borders of the South Downs National Park on the Pilgrims' Way that leads from Winchester to Canterbury. It contains within it the medieval hamlets of Kitwood, Hawthorn and Lymington, although now the whole parish is relatively closely settled. Etymology First mentioned within the c. 1550 Perambulation of the Manor of Alresford (a Perambulation being a detailed description of the boundaries of land) as 'Fowremarkes' . The relevant excerpt details; "a certain empty piece of land called Fowremarkes near Bookemere and named thus because four tithings abut there mutually, that is to say, the tithings of Medsted Ropley Faryngdon & Chawton". The 'Marks' element comes from Old English 'mark(e)' meaning boundary, or border, so, Four Marks directly translates as Four Borders. History The modern village of Four Marks was founded at the end of the nineteenth century on little developed old commons and wastes mostly left from the 1709 Ropley enclosure. Four Marks became a parish in 1932 under Alton Rural District Council when parts of six parishes were annexed: Chawton (1%), East Tisted (2%), Farringdon (17%), Medstead (4%), Newton Valence (13%) and Ropley (64%). According to Bartholomew's Gazetteer, the village of Four Marks is the only so named place in the United Kingdom. A pre-Roman ridgeway from the Old Sarum area, the Lunway, crosses through Four Marks from the north following the drier southern side of the ridge and is itself crossed near the old Windmill Inn (now the Co-op store) by a summerway from Alresford and its river following the quickest, driest, ‘up-and-over’ route to the River Wey. The area was given by King Cenwalh of the West Saxons to the bishopric at Winchester starting a chain of ecclesiastical management through to the current day. The commitment was confirmed in writing by a successor, King Ine, in A.D. 701 in a disputed charter. The charter listed many local gates and watering places, mostly identifiable today, showing that the area contained important Saxon husbandry. As mentioned, Four Marks referred to the meeting point of four parishes, it was, therefore, not a place, but a four-way boundary point known as a quadripoint near the current Boundaries surgery (SU6715635272). It was marked by a ‘large white stone’ in 1759 which was reported