A HAMPSHIRE monument's conservation works have been delayed due to wet weather. 

The Farley Mount Monument shut in March and was expected to reopen on Thursday, April 25.

However Hampshire County Council said it has been delayed to mid-May.

A spokesman said: “The specialist conservation work to repair the significant damage and decay to the historic monument has been delayed by the exceptionally wet weather in March, which had saturated the masonry structure and slowed progress on the sensitive restoration work. Completion is now anticipated in mid-May.” 

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The structure was built around 1795 and is named after a horse called Beware Chalk Pit. 
It belonged to Paulet St John, the 3rd Earl of Bolingbroke. The horse carried its owner to a racing victory in 1734, just a year after it fell into a chalk pit during a fox-hunt.

An inscription on a plaque on the north wall says: "Underneath lies buried a horse, the property of Paulet St. John Esq, that in the month of September 1733 leaped into a chalk pit twenty-five feet deep a foxhunting with his master on his back and in October 1734 he won the Hunters Plate on Worthy Downs and was rode by his owner and was entered in the name of Beware Chalk Pit."