From Volume Six, pages 473 and 474, of Regional Survey Of Warminster And District, compiled by Victor Strode Manley during the 1920s and 1930s (unpublished by Manley):
SHERRINGTON
Distance from Warminster, 7½ miles.
Population 97 (1911).
Civil Parish: Sherrington.
Ecclesiastical Parish: Sherrington with Boyton St. Mary & Saints Cosmas and Damian (Sherrington), part of Church of St. Michael and All Angels, formerly Saints Cosmas and Damian.
Patron of Living: H.N. Fane.
The village is tucked away in a valley off the main road but alongside brooks from springs arising from seepage in the chalk, and which supplied a moat for the Castle, and a mill stream, besides providing water-cress beds. The main stream flows into the Wylye. A foot-bridge and path leads to Codford. See O.S. Map Wilts 58 N.E. 6 ins=1 mile.
Place-Name – most likely from Anglo-Saxon. “shere’ = to divide, i.e. the boundary as it still is, the Civil Boundary running through the river.
Sherrington and Cherusci – v.pp.354, 362 (vol.6 and vol.4) – Cherusci an old name for the Saxons. In A.D. 9 an ancient German nation, defeated Romans, in Gaul. Urchfont formerly spelt with Jer-., perhaps from Herche, a water maiden, occurring as the Lady of the Lake. Note at Sherrington, several springs, water-cress beds, and river. Cher was also a deity of the Cherusci, and may be contained in Shearwater at Warminster where there is a Jersey Lane. The “-ing” often denotes “sons of”. Sherrington may thus mean the place settled by the sons of Cher, i.e. people of the Cherusci tribe, whose god was Cher, a water-spirit.
Prehistoric – In the valley eastwards is a long barrow. Northwards over the river is Codford Castle Ring. Southwards on the hill called The Cleeve are two low barrows at the foot, a sunken road or holloway leading from the valley to Mount Pleasant where it joins a terraced road at the hill-foot. About the 500 contour the hillside has a fine series of lynchets, and above these a large barrow seen on the skyline from below, and two more barrows above it. Further over is the “Roman Road’. These remains seem to have been connected with the terraces on the Stockton side of the road, and to the north-west Golden Barrow in the valley at Upton Lovell.
The Church – was originally dedicated in 1553 to Saints Cosmas and Damian, two brothers born in Arabia and educated in the Christian faith. They were physicians and surgeons, and whose patron paints they are, and after working in Cilicia, were beheaded during the persecutions of Diocletian in 303. Their bones were taken to Rome where a church was dedicated to them. Their festival falls on 27th September.
The foundation date I do not know, but it is partly Early English and early Decorated. It “was rebuilt in 1624, when the windows, chancel, arch, priest’s door, etc., of late 14th century work were preserved, and built into the new walls. The two-light windows of the nave, roof, altar rails and fine oak benches are of 1624 date. The pulpit, prayer desk and lectern are made up of Jacobean woodwork” (W.A.S. programme, Warminster, 1921, and H.i.124; also Heath’s “Wiltshire”). The inside walls are covered with painted scroll-work around monuments but now whitened over. On the porch is a coat of arms.
The Rectory is a fine building with dormer windows and thatched, but vacant, the Rector living at Boyton.
The Manor Farm House was also vacant in 1931, and adjoins the Castle Mound, and has a fine thatched barn with semicircular threshing floor in which a boy sat to drive the horses round.
Castle Mound – “A little to the west of the Church is a mound with moat, on the top of which stood a Castle belonging to the Giffords.” (Heath).