FREEMANTLE, a quondam royal park on the N border of Hants; in the southern vicinity of Kingsclere. It had a seat of the Saxon kings, and a hunting-lodge of the Plantagenet kings; and it continued to be crown land till the time of Elizabeth; but it has long been subjected to the plough, and it retains no vestige of its former character.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))