Wren: Wiltshire’s son?
As we approach the end of the tercentenary of Christopher Wren’s death in 1723, the Wiltshire Buildings Record briefly considers England’s great architect and his architectural contributions in the county.
Christopher Wren was born here in Wiltshire but his formative years were spent in Windsor and Oxfordshire. He was born in October 1632 in East Knoyle in the south of the county. His father, Rector Wren (also Christopher), had been rector at Fonthill in the 1620s and then at East Knoyle. The Wren family only lived at East Knoyle for a few years before Rector Wren became the Dean of Windsor in 1634 (installed in 1635,) meaning Wren left Wiltshire when he would have been only a toddler. His life in Windsor ended in 1642 following an attack on the castle at the beginning of the Civil War. Wren senior moved his family to live with his daughter and her husband, Dr. William Holder (who was also a rector and doctor in arithmetic and geometry) at Bletchingdon in Oxfordshire.
Although there are no buildings in Wiltshire built by Wren’s own hand, he left his mark in the county in several ways including the following two; on a thorough survey of Salisbury Cathedral and a programme of works at Longleat.
A cutting edge business in Great Cheverell
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.
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.
Melksham Spa – an architectural hidden gem part 2
Read Melksham Spa - an architectural hidden gem part 1 here
To recap: at the end of 2022 Wiltshire Buildings Record was asked to prepare a talk on Melksham Spa for the reopening of Melksham Library. Having a good deal of information on the individual buildings, we thought this was a matter of collating what we already had and doing a bit more research before presenting our talk. We did not expect such an enthusiastic crowd on the day, many from the Spa itself, offering information about individual houses. With invites to come and see the architectural marvels at first hand, we couldn’t resist, and the overview below, was the result of several visits by kind permission of the owners who threw open their doors to us, and the researched written history. This is part 2 of our findings which does a deeper dive into the classical language and details of the individual buildings.
About Us
Research Tools
What We Do
Contact us
Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre
Cocklebury Road
Chippenham
SN15 3QN
E: cmas@wiltshire.gov.uk
T: 01249 705500
For all conservation enquiries including quotations and object deliveries, please book an appointment in advance.
