Wiltshire Places

Missing Culture – Where did the poorest people in Wiltshire live in times past?

on Wednesday, 06 March 2024. Posted in Architecture, Wiltshire People, Wiltshire Places

Wiltshire Buildings Record looks at all sorts of buildings in Wiltshire – from privies to palaces, but mostly manor houses, cottages, farmhouses and farm buildings with the occasional chapel, malthouse, or industrial building thrown in. These buildings are usually substantially built in brick, stone or timber, and give or take the odd fire or neglect, will still be standing in another 200 years’ time. But what about the houses of the poorest people in society? Where are they? Have any survived? The answer to this question is both yes and no.

The poor had few rights, and in years past, landless peasants, tramps, vagabonds and paupers were hounded out of a parish to become another’s problem. Poor rates were a burden, and the fewer mouths to feed, the better. In order to get poor relief, the destitute first had to gain a settlement in a parish. No wonder then, if a house could be erected between sundown and sunrise, the occupants had a right to live there. This was the ‘one-night house’ of folk legend. Variations on this theme were that the building had to have a roof to qualify, or that the chimney was in place and a fire was lit within. It sounds like an impossible feat. What must have happened in reality was that materials were readied in advance and strong arms recruited for an after-dark covert mission.

A Q&A from the Bishop

on Tuesday, 20 February 2024. Posted in Archives, Wiltshire People, Wiltshire Places

A new volume of the Wiltshire Record Society - Returns to the Bishop of Salisbury’s Visitation Enquiry 1864 - has been published and its author, our own Helen Taylor, introduces us to the clergy and communities it covers…

Bishop's Visitations
Meet the clergy
Services and congregations
Non-conformity and ‘dissent’
Education
Tell us your troubles…

Bishop's Visitations

The practice of episcopal visitations of English dioceses became widespread in the 13th century, partly to curb monastic abuses, but also to monitor the conduct of the clergy and laity. By the 15th century churchwardens were required to report problems of discipline in their parishes, and in the Elizabethan period questionnaires, described as ‘articles of inquiry’ were issued, and answered by churchwardens’ presentments. Alongside these presentments developed the practice of questioning the clergy. The 1864 return is the first of five, late-19th century returns that contain a wealth of information on the church buildings, patronage, clergy, their income, services, non-conformity, daily schools and Sunday schools in each of the churches in the Salisbury diocese.

By the 1820s the Church was in crisis. Attacks were mounted on its corruption, nepotism, income from livings to which no spiritual duties were attached and other financial abuses. The most notorious defect of the 18th-century church was pluralism, and the non-residence which resulted from it. Many livings were extremely poor; in Wiltshire at the close of the 17th century the average income was £80, just above the poverty line figure of £50 a year. By the early 19th century, £150 was considered the lowest salary acceptable for a reasonable standard of living. Salaries in the Salisbury diocese in 1867 ranged from a mere £22 at Ansty to £1250 pounds at Pewsey. The majority of the clergy were earning between £100 and £350.

Another reason for non-residence was the parsonage. Some parishes did not have a parsonage house, in others, it was not fit for habitation. In 1858, Bishop Hamilton noted 62 parishes in the Salisbury diocese without a resident incumbent. 27 of these held other benefices in the diocese, 13 had benefices in other dioceses, nine parishes had no residence and six clergy were suffering from ill-health. The pluralism problem took decades to solve, as once an incumbent was appointed, he was immovable until death.

Page with printed questions in top left and hand-written responses covering remainder of page
Example of Bishop's Visitation return WSHC ref D1/56/7

Book review: Small Earthquake In Wiltshire

on Thursday, 01 February 2024. Posted in Wiltshire People, Wiltshire Places

Small Earthquake In Wiltshire: seventeenth-century conflict and its resolution
By Eric L Jones
Hobnob Press 2017
Pages 111 Softback 

Wiltshire Library classification: AAA.946

The earthquake in the title of this slim volume is the author’s way of describing the Penruddock Rising of 1655. This event was a short lived capture of the city of Salisbury by troops raised by John Penruddock and other local landowners. These conspirators were Royalists and against Cromwell during this time of the Interregnum. The conspirators and their men were captured, and they suffered various fates at the hands of parliament. Execution, exile, sold into slavery, and loss of lands and wealth were among the punishments meted out, unless you were Francis Jones who fared better due to the marital connection he had with Cromwell.

The author takes this event as the starting point for his exploration of the time that this took place in. It takes a closer look at the family history of Francis Jones and how he escaped execution for his part in the Rising and of other landed families through advantageous marriages. Although this book is about an event and the repercussions of it in the Interregnum, it also covers the Restoration and how these families and their lands were treated by Charles II. There is also a very good chapter on the relationship between politics and religion and how poorly the non-conformists were treated and also a chapter on how the economy fared during this very unsettled period in this country’s history.

This is a book that looks beyond this one event to the wider horizon of the times and the lives of landed people at this difficult time.

Eileen Sutherland, Community History Advisor

A cutting edge business in Great Cheverell

on Tuesday, 25 July 2023. Posted in Architecture, Wiltshire People, Wiltshire Places

Wiltshire Buildings Record is lucky enough to see all sorts of interesting buildings, not just houses but industrial buildings, chapels, and farm buildings to name a selection. We have also seen a few mills. The following snippets of history were part of the research for Great Cheverell Mill. This is a former water mill dating from the late 18th and early 19th century found in a very rural setting along Cheverell Green Road, north of the village of Great Cheverell. It is a grade II listed building and said to date from the later 18th or earlier 19th century. However, there has been a mill on the site since at least the 15th century. Mill buildings in this location have served a number of purposes over the centuries including the milling of flour, fulling and supporting an edge toolmaking business. The millers were often farmers as well and the mill buildings along with an adjacent farmhouse were part of the Cheverell Mill Farm estate in the 19th century.

A two-storey red brick building adjacent to the bend of a narrow country road, with the mill water wheel just visible in the corner

This one has had a rather interesting and at times, colourful history. Sometime between 1699 and 1784, part of the mill site became associated with Isaac Axford, a bankrupt. An Isaac Axford, a grocer and a Baptist originally from Erlestoke (1731-1816) married Hannah Lightfoot, a Quaker, in 1753, when an apprentice in Ludgate, London. They were together for a short while before she absconded after their marriage was challenged. More significantly it has been rumoured she had an affair with George III when Prince of Wales. The rumours go as far as suggesting that she even became his wife and had a child. How much of this is true is unknown. It is a possibility that this was the same Isaac Axford who owned a part of Winsmore Mill in Great Cheverell up to the 1780s.

A Truly ‘Excellent Hospital’: Bowood House as a Red Cross Military Hospital During the First World War, 1914-1918

on Tuesday, 04 July 2023. Posted in Archives, History Centre, Military, Wiltshire Places

If you are a fan (like me) of the hit series Downton Abbey, you will be aware that during the First World War, some big country houses transformed their homes into military hospitals or convalescent homes. When it was realised that the number of war casualties was vastly underestimated, the country scrambled for more hospital accommodation. Therefore, some owners of country houses, as well as some universities and asylums, volunteered their homes to be transformed into these medical facilities. Bowood House on the Bowood estate that is adjacent to village of Derry Hill in Wiltshire, was one of these homes, and turned itself into a Red Cross military hospital. It was opened in 1914 by Maud Evelyn Petty-Fitzmaurice, the Marchioness of Lansdowne, wife to the 5th Marquess of Lansdowne.

An early colour postcard showing formal parterre gardens with a stately home buildings surrounding back and left of the garden
WSHC, P16236: Postcard of Bowood House in Calne Without, Wiltshire, 1907. The big main house to the right of the photograph was demolished in 1956. To the left of the photograph is the conservatory that contains the Orangery where the hospital was located. This part of the house is still accessible today.

Lady Lansdowne was a charitable woman, who had already financially assisted war widows whose husbands had been killed fighting the Boer War. She was also a member of the Council of the British Red Cross Society and a member of the Joint War Committee! When war was announced in 1914, she rolled up her sleeves and appointed herself as Commandant of Bowood Hospital. It was decided that the ‘orangery’ room in Bowood house (the bright and airy orange walled room, that is today full of marble busts and is accessible from the upper terrace) would be the perfect space to use for the wounded to heal. Interestingly, the room was previously used by the 1st Marquess as a conservatory for orange and lemon trees, quite a contrast from its new purpose! To begin with, Bowood merely received injured soldiers from the yeomanry, but as the war progressed, the hospital received soldiers from every rank.

Centenary of Chippenham’s John Coles Park

on Monday, 22 May 2023. Posted in Archives, Wiltshire People, Wiltshire Places

Today (23 May) marks 100 years since Chippenham’s John Coles Park was opened to the public, so I thought it might be interesting to delve into the park’s history.

John Coles was a chemist who came to Chippenham in the early 1870s – the 1875 Kelly’s Directory lists Coles as a “chemist & druggist, grocer & tea dealer” at 25 Market Place. Coles seems to have flourished in Chippenham and by 1907 his business had expanded to include the sale of wines and spirits, as well as “Coles’s pig powders” which, according to an advert in the Wiltshire & Gloucestershire Standard, promised to “keep pigs healthy, cure complaints” for one shilling per packet.

 Kellys Directory 1875 John Coles advert

Kelly’s Directory advertisement for John Coles’s chemist, 1875

He was soon taking part in the civic functions of the town, serving on the town council and becoming mayor for the first time in 1891, and then again in 1898 and 1914. When he died in 1916, Coles left £4,000 in his will for “the cultural and educational advancement of the people of Chippenham”. The town council first decided to form a committee to discuss “the best means of dealing with the legacy left to the town by the late Alderman Coles” on 1 July 1919, but little seems to have come of this until 1921, by which time the town council seems to have been intent on creating a new recreation ground for the people of Chippenham.

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