CLARENDON PARK, an extra-parochial tract in Alderbury district, Wilts; adjacent to the Salisbury and Gosport railway, 3 miles ESE of Salisbury. Acres, 4, 160. Real property, £3, 396. Pop., 181. Houses, 36. This tract was anciently a royal forest; and contained a hunting seat or palace of the Kings, from Henry I. to Edward III. The palace was the meeting-place of the great council, in 1164, which enacted the Constitutions of Clarendon against Papal aggression; it was a favourite residence of King John; it attained high magnificence in the time of Henry III.; and it was the place where Philip of Navarre did homage to Edward III. as king of France. Only a fragment of it, propped by buttresses, now remains. The forest was given in the 14th century, for a term of years, to the first Earl of Pembroke; was mortgaged by Charles I.; was granted, at the Restoration, to Monk, Duke of Albemarle; passed to the Earl of Bath; gave the title of Earl to Chancellor Hyde, the historian of the great Rebellion; and was purchased, in 1813, by Benjamin Bathurst, Esq. Clarendon Lodge, the seat of Sir F. H. H. Bathurst, Bart., is situated about a mile from the fragmeut of the ancient palace.

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