Life In An English Village
An Economic And Historical Survey
Of The Parish of Corsley In Wiltshire
By
M. F. Davies
1909
Chapter I – The Parish Under Cley Hill
Beyond the far western border of Salisbury Plain, dividing the chalk Downs, which descend to it with a sweeping curve, from the rich, wooded vales of Somersetshire, lies a shelf or plateau, some four hundred feet below the Downs, and midway between their summits and the sea, but with a wide view over the yet lower lying valley to the west.
On this shelf, which is composed of a rich and fertile sandy soil, the parish of Corsley is situated, extending over an area of 4¾ square miles. [The exact area is 3,056 statute acres. At the census of 1881 the area was 2,580 statute acres, or 4 square miles; but between 1881 and 1891 part of Norton Bavant was transferred to Corsley parish (Census Report, 1891, vol.ii. P.394).]
Towards the eastern margin of the parish an oval-shaped hill rises abruptly from the plain, and stands, facing the downs, two miles distant, resembling them in every feature of substance and form, an isolated fragment, which has somehow been separated from the main body and left stranded on a foreign soil.
The eastern boundary of Corsley parish passes over this hill, whose name, Cley Hill, is probably a Celtic and Saxon reduplication, and from its summit we may obtain a wide view of the environments, while the parish itself lies spread below us to the west.
Facing eastward we see the rolling Downs, extending line beyond line to the far horizon. Through their centre the River Wylye has cut a broad valley, down which it finds its way to meet the southern Avon, a valley now traversed by the high road and the line of the Great Western Railway from Warminster to Salisbury.
Near at hand, in the mouth of the valley, with a background of green hills and woods, lies Warminster, plainly distinguishable, with its churches, while to the left lime-quarriers have cut the Down into perpendicular white cliffs. This little town, about two miles distant as the crow flies, was formerly the principal corn-market of the West of England, and is one of the four places where the Wiltshire Quarter Sessions are held. The level land between Cley Hill and the Downs, to the north-east, is occupied by Norridge Wood.
Round Cley Hill the high ground forms a rough semicircle from north and east to south, where, divided from us, as we stand on the hilltop, by a narrow gap, through which the roadway from Frome to Warminster passes, the land rises fully to the height of the neighboring grassy Downs, its true relationship to the latter being veiled by a rich covering of pines and deciduous trees, of rhododendrons and azaleas; for the whole tract to the south of Corsley belongs to the famous park and woods of Longleat, once within the bounds of the ancient Forest of Selwood, the beauty of its splendid timber and rich pastures being wonderfully enhanced by the broken and hilly character of the ground, which lends itself to their full display, besides affording more distant views of surprising beauty.
Turning back to the north, we see at the foot of the Downs, four miles away, the market town of Westbury, with red smoke emerging from the chimneys of the iron-works. The main line of the Great Western Railway to Weymouth and Cornwall passes through Westbury, thence running on into Somersetshire, where it touches Frome.
This latter picturesque old town lies for the most part buried from our sight in a cuplike valley four miles distant to the west, those dwellings only which are situated on the hilltops around it meeting the eye from where we stand. Midway between Frome and Cley Hill runs the line of division between Wiltshire and Somersetshire, this line coinciding with the western boundary of Corsley parish.
Beyond Frome, across the broad valley of the Bristol Avon, is a line of low hills, bounding the view on the western horizon. Behind these lie the coal-mines of Radstock, important to the parish of Corsley on account of the considerable business which is carried on by the inhabitants in transporting timber thither and returning with coal, timber having, during the nineteenth century, taken the place in this transaction of the corn from Warminster market, which for many centuries was carried at first on pack-horses, later in wagons, to feed the populous cities of Bristol and Bath.
Having surveyed the environment, we may now turn our eyes downwards to the parish at our feet.
Cley Hill and the ridge in Longleat woods form part of the watershed between the rivers of the south on the one hand which flow into the English Channel, and on the other the rivers of the west flowing northwards into the Bristol Channel.
Two tiny streams rise and flow westward through Corsley. Small as they are, these little brooks serve to feed the rich and valuable water meadows which lie along their margin.
Between these streams, which run near the northern and southern borders of the parish, the land falls gently from the foot of the steep chalk hills, for Cley Hill has a diminutive companion to the north. Round the hills is a belt of arable land; [Part of this was laid down to grass in 1907.] next to this a fine pasture, with here and there an arable field, extending westward for a mile or so, intersected by well-timbered hedgerows and small copses; then, beyond, the ground falls out of sight in broken valleys, which verge on the Somersetshire country.
The visitor who climbs to the summit of the hill usually inquires, after a survey, “Where is the village?” – the remarkable fact being that, with a population of from seven hundred to eight hundred, there is no village, properly speaking. The dwellings lie scattered over the area, in hamlets, in groups of two or three, or in solitary houses.
One group is formed by the parish church, a farmhouse, once the manor house, and the parish school, no other dwellings being found here.
Sturford Mead, one of the larger houses of the parish, forms the nucleus to a group of houses and cottages, as well as being in close vicinity to Whitbourne Springs and other hamlets.
Corsley House, and the smaller residence of Sandhayes, on the other hand, form isolated groups in central Corsley, with a few cottages only in their neighbourhood.
The numerous farmhouses lie scattered over the parish, some isolated, as Cley Hill Farm, one of the historical houses of the parish; others in the midst of the hamlets; others again, near the hamlets, or with a few cottages grouped round them.
The bulk of the cottage population is distributed in, roughly speaking, nine principal hamlets, besides several smaller ones, and many quite isolated pairs of cottages, or even single dwellings. These hamlets are sometimes fairly compact groups, such as Corsley Heath or Leighs Green; sometimes they are a collection of scattered or straggling dwellings, such as Dartford or Whitbourne Moor. None deserves the name of a village. There is, however, one village, situated on high ground to the north of the parish, named Chapmanslade. Curiously enough this typical village, consisting mainly of a long row of houses on either side of the village street, is not a distinct parish at all, but is divided up among three or four neighbouring parishes. The street runs east and west, and the houses to the south of the street belong to Corsley. This village, though without separate parochial rights, forms a distinct centre of social life. It has its own church, its own chapels, its school, and its police-constable, all, however, situated or resident on the northern side, and, therefore, not in our parish. It has also three public-houses, two of these being on the Corsley side of the street.
In Corsley there is no such nucleus, the parish church and school being situated in one hamlet, the Church of St. Mary and the Baptist Chapel in a second at Temple, the post-office, police constable, and a public-house in a third at Corsley Heath, a Wesleyan chapel and a public-house in a fourth at Lane End, and another public house in a fifth hamlet at Leighs Green.
For the position of the various hamlets and houses in Corsley the reader must be referred to the map. Speaking broadly, the population is collected along the western and southern borders, extending from Chapmanslade in the north-west, southward in the hamlets of Huntley, Leighs Green, Lane End, and Dartford, then passing east from the two latter, in Corsley Heath, Whitbourne Moor, Temple, Longhedge, and Whitbourne Springs.
No large hamlets lie in the north-easterly and central portion of the parish, and this distribution of the population dates back to feudal times, when the three great common fields lay under Cley Hill and to the north, while the hill itself was doubtless a sheepwalk, as it is today, and the homesteads belonging to the several manors which shared the common fields were distributed in the more sheltered nooks of the westward and southern districts. For all the evidence we have points to the fact that the more exposed hamlets, such as Corsley Heath and Longhedge, are of much more recent origin than those in the cups of the valleys like Whitbourne, Temple, and Leighs Green.
It is tempting, though perhaps somewhat rash, to speculate how it was that the dwellings of Corsley came to be scattered over its area in a fashion dissimilar to that of neighbouring parishes.
Professor Maitland, in “Domesday Book and Beyond,” describes two main types of parishes, the nucleated village and the parish of scattered hamlets and homesteads, and he suggests that the village of nucleated type may have been founded by Germanic settlers, while the scattered village owes its characteristics to a Celtic origin. [F.W. Maitland, “Domesday Book and Beyond,” p.15.]
Again, he throws out a hint that where within historical times large tracts of forest land have existed hamlets rather than villages may be found. [Ibid.]
The peculiar distribution of the dwellings in Corsley may be due to either or both of these causes.
There was, in olden times, a Celtic settlement upon the summit of Cley Hill, [Sir Richard Colt Hoare, “History of Ancient Wilts,” Hundred of Warminster, p.51.] which is still surrounded by the lines of its entrenchements, and crowned by two barrows, one of which was anciently used for sepulchral purposes. [Ibid.]
It is for antiquaries to discuss the probability of this Celtic settlement having extended into the valleys at the foot of the hill, and the ancient Britons having thus been, as Professor Maitland suggests, the originators of a type of parish which appears to be unique in the district.
This view is given colour by the fact that when the common fields were enclosed in the eighteenth century the award map shows that these were divided up into irregular strips and patches, quite unlike the regular rectangular strips of other common fields of the district. This would appear to be an indication of Celtic origin.
But whether or no the Celts in this district forsook the hilltops for the plain, the second cause suggested by Professor Maitland must undoubtedly have played a part in shaping the form of Corsley, which was within the bounds of the ancient royal forest of Selwood until the seventeenth century. [Wilts Archaeol. Mag. xxiii. p.289. Depositions as to the extent of Selwood Forest, taken about A.D. 1620-30.] In the reign of King Edward I. the office of bailiff or forester of the forest was granted at a rent of £10 per annum to Sir Reginald de Kingston, whose family are affirmed by Canon Jackson to have resided in Corsley itself. [Wilts Archaeol. Mag. xxiii. p.286.] Sir Reginald, in the following reign, petitioned for a reduction of his rent, as the extent of the forest had been so reduced as to result in a loss instead of a profit to the bailiff. An inquisition held at Longbridge Deverel found that the £10 had been raised only by violent acts of extortion and by seizing the grain of poor people; [Ibid. p.287. Inquisition at Longbridge Deverel, Michaelmas, 1322.] the rent was accordingly reduced to one mark per annum, and all arrears remitted, without, however, any subsequent benefit to the oppressed inhabitants. [Ibid.]
The vill of Corsley was, in mediaeval times, divided into several distinct manors, and at the present day the parish contains no less than seven, four completely, three more only in part. [Great Corsley, Little Corsley, Whitbourne Temple, Huntenhull, wholly in Corsley parish; Godwell and Chapmanslade, partly in Westbury parish; and Upton and Norridge, partly in Upton Scudamore.] In each manor a small nucleus of homesteads was naturally formed round the demesne farm. Then, later, upon the waste lands which abounded in Corsley new hamlets of squatters grew up. The names of the hamlets of Corsley Heath, Whitbourne Moor, and Leighs Green, seem to imply this origin, and tradition ascribes it to others, such as Longhedge.
We do not know when squatting on the wastes commenced in Corsley, but some of these new hamlets arose not long since, when the development of the cloth trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought new immigrants. To take an example, the cluster of houses at Corsley Heath appears to have sprung up mainly after the enclosure and allotment of the main part of this common in 1742, [See map attached to the Enclosure Agreement of 1742, in the Longleat Estate Office.] though a few cottages existed here previously. [Corsley Survey, 1745, in the Longleat Estate Office.] Most of the houses were probably built on a piece of waste ground left unallotted at the time the inclosure was made, this being at a nodal position where lanes cross the high-road from Frome to Warminster. One small triangle of grass, with a few elms growing on it, still remains inappropriate in the centre of the hamlet, and serves as a playground for the children and a resting place for the large trees destined to undergo transformation at the hands of the neighbouring wheelwright, or to be hauled to the Radstock coal-pits by the timber merchants. Another strip of turf here has been appropriated and enclosed into some cottage gardens within the last ten years.
Finally, after the enclosure of the common fields, when the land was for a time allotted in large farms, a new colony of labourers clustered round the principal farmhouse, where this was not already the centre of a hamlet. It was in this way that the hamlet of Chips or Landhayes grew suddenly up in a region to the north-west of Cley Hill, now again lonely as in feudal times but for the old house, once the residence of the Kington family, known as Cley Hill Farm. This hamlet sprung up rapidly with the development of corn-growing, and within the memory of living inhabitants formed the busiest centre of agricultural life, disappearing as rapidly as it rose with the agricultural depression of the latter nineteenth century and the changes from arable to pasture farming.
Thus, while some of the hamlets of recent growth have become well established, and are more populous and important than the older groups, others, owing to the constant ebb of population which has continued since the middle of the nineteenth century, are now deserted, and remain nothing but a name and tradition, with perhaps, a thick bed of nettles to mark where human habitations once stood.
The first description of Corsley which we have at present is found in the Domesday Survey. The vil then had its mill and its wood. There was 1 hide of land, 1 carucate being in demesne, [The expressions (“hide” and “carucate”) are not identical, but should both correspond to the plough team. See P. Vinogradoff, “Villainage in England,” and other writings.] with 4 bordars. The translation of the passage runs as follows:
“Azor holds 1 hide in Corselie. The land is 1 carucate, which is there in demesne with 4 bordars. There is a mill, paying 40 pence, and the wood is 1 furlong long and half a furlong broad. It is worth 20 shillings.” [William H. Jones, “Domesday for Wilts,” p.135.]
We cannot here attempt to unravel the confused threads of manorial, ecclesiastical, and parochial history. Most, if not all, the lands and manors of Corsley passed in pre-Reformation days into the hands of various religious houses, and the lords and tenants of its different component manors shared in the cultivation of the three great common fields of Chedinhangar, Cley Hill, and Bickenham, while holding separate enclosed crofts, probably in the neighbourhood of their homesteads. Sheep-farming and the dairy were important branches of agriculture in mediaeval Corsley, and both horses and oxen were used to draw the plough.
In A.D. 1364 the Prior of Maiden Bradley, who was Lord of the Manor of Whitbourne, held 60½ acres of arable and meadow land in the common fields and 34 acres enclosed in crofts; he had also an acre of wood, which was used for pasture. He might keep 4 farm horses and 12 oxen, 12 cows and 250 sheep. [See extent of Whitbourne in Appendix, p.293.]
The common fields were situated in the north-east and centre of the parish, in districts still almost uninhabited, and common-field cultivation continued until the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
Corsley is in the Hundred of Warminster, [In a MS. Register at Longleat it is recorded that “Out of Corsley Manor was paid viiis yearly to the Sheriff’s Turne at Hundred Oke.” Tradition locates this ancient oak-tree in Southleigh Woods on the far side of Warminster. See Wilts Archaeol. Mag. xxiii. P.284.] and likewise in the Petty Sessional Division to which this town gives its name. It is in the parliamentary constituency of the Westbury division of Wiltshire. The parish is situated midway on the base of a triangle formed by the market towns of Warminster, Frome, and Westbury, the two former being each about 2½ miles distant from its eastern and western boundaries, while Westbury is 3½ miles from its northern extremity at Chapmanslade.
It has a main line of the Great Western Railway three miles away, with the two important stations of Frome and Westbury, the former just over, the latter just under, 100 miles from Paddington Station. From Warminster it has communication with Salisbury by a branch of the Great Western Railway, which there meets the London and South Western line.
Corsley is traversed by the main road from Frome to Warminster, which passes through or within a mile of nearly all the important hamlets. A main road from Westbury to Frome touches the northern margin of the parish, passing through the village of Chapmanslade. Good roads afford easy means of transit to Bath, Bristol, and Radstock in the west, to Trowbridge and Bradford on the north, to the towns of Somersetshire on the south, and to Salisbury on the east.
The parish itself is intersected by an intricate network of lanes and footpaths, which wind about in a manner which is often unintelligible at the present day, but which probably owe some of their unexplained turns to the position of now vanished dwellings. Some are ancient roadways sunk deep below the level of the fields they traverse, and in certain cases another roadway on the higher ground has been formed alongside them. These lanes and pathways connect up all the hamlets and scattered dwellings.
While each hamlet forms a little social group of its own, there are two main nuclei of the parish, the one at Chapmanslade, towards which Huntenhull, Huntley Green, and Gore Lane turn, the other in Corsley itself, which, though it has no definitely located centre, unless we consider the parish church and school as such, yet forms a closely connected whole for social and administrative purposes.