The Eel House sits beside the Wayfarers’ Way footpath in an idyllic woodland valley about just outside the town of New Alresford. It straddles the clean clear waters of the tranquil River Alre with a foot on each of its banks. The modest building with a clay-tiled roof dates back to the 1820s, when the Harris family of nearby Arlebury Park commissioned this minor masterpiece of 19th-century ingenuity. Its purpose was to trap mature eels near the start of their once-in-a-lifetime 3,000-mile journey to their breeding waters in the Sargasso Sea….
