IT was one of the most notorious relationships in our country's history.

The love affair between Charles II and his mistress Nell Gwynne has long captured the imagination of historians and students alike.

The king would grab every moment he could with the former orange seller and actress - one of an estimated 13 mistresses he kept during his reign.

Now a hidden and little known piece of Hampshire history connected with the couple is set to be brought back to life.

The owners of a mansion near Winchester are hoping to restore a bathhouse and pool reputed to have been used by King Charles and Nell during their relationship from about 1667 to 1685.

The king used to stay at Avington Park instead of at the Bishop's Palace in Winchester because the priest disliked Nell and the swimming pool was reputedly built for the lovers..

The king liked Winchester so much that he hired renowned architect Sir Christopher Wren to design a palace in the city centre.

However, he died before it was finished and the building was converted into barracks before burning down in the 1890s.

Sarah Bullen last year bought the crumbling bathhouse and pool in the grounds of Avington Park between Winchester and Alresford.

She has applied for planning permission to bring it back into habitable use.

Mrs Bullen said: "It will be nice to stop it falling down. It has deteriorated over the years.

"We are trying to return the landscape to the way it was originally designed.

"The project is very exciting. I don't think we will regret it. The cost of the restoration will be a six-figure sum. We hope to have it habitable within a year."

Mrs Bullen said efforts to research the bathhouse's history were being hampered by the paperwork going to the Huntingdon Museum in the United States when the Avington estate was sold and broken up in 1948. The museum has yet to get round to cataloguing the papers and will not make them available to the public, said Mrs Bullen.