Written by Bruce Watkin in 1983:
The Horningsham Trail
Five and a half square miles of wooded hills, lakes, thatched cottages and scattered stone farms in a fan-shaped valley converging on the Elizabethan “palace” of Longleat House and its splendid park.
Horningsham is the most wooded of all parishes around Warminster and like them was wholly within the mediaeval forest of Selwood. Here it shows, for the fields and even the great Park carved out by John Thynne to improve the setting of his great house, have still the quality of woodland clearings.
As at Corsley, there is no village street or obvious centre but here the groups of houses are more concentrated. The main ones are at the south end of the park, round the little green and at Scotland, near the Church, half a mile east, at Meeting House Batch on the lane south, along Pottle Street its southern continuation, and at Newbury north of the church. Most is planted along the winding ribbon of upper greensand, near its spring-line with the gault clay beneath; but Woodhouse Castle, the original Manor House, was on a little promontory of the clay. Longleat House is on the Corallian grits which are exposed in the valley bottom further north, but its main lake is cut into the Oxford clay below.
The name Horningsham derives from “Ham near a hill called Horning” or from a Mr “Horning” (Old English for bastard but quite common as a personal name!). Most other local names are comparatively modern or self-evident like the “Long Leat” in the valley bottom.
Its ancient history is more obscure. Two estates are mentioned in the Domesday survey of 1086 but most land was owned by the absentee landlord Canons of Lisieux in Normandy. Two later events have made the place internationally famous, the first being the purchase of the monastic ruins here by John Thynne in 1540 and his vigorous development of the estate; the second the destruction of the first water-powered cloth factory here in 1767, immortalised by Karl Marx.
Apart from Longleat the parish has been relatively poor, sparsely populated and unimportant. The estates in 1086 were small, surrounded by wood and waste, and in 1377 there were only 65 poll-tax payers, the same as little Imber. Population rose in the 18th and early 19th centuries, thanks to agricultural improvements by Longleat stewards and to enterprising cloth-makers on the Longleat stream, and reached an all-time peak of 1323 in 1831, much as at Crockerton and Heytesbury. From this it fell steadily to 401 by 1981.
Manufacturing industry disappeared in the 19th century. What is left is farming (mainly in small dairying), forestry in the extensive Longleat plantations, and the new entertainment industry provided by Longleat House, its amusement grounds and the Safari Park in woods to the north.
Horningsham Lodge. Tall classical arch in ashlar-stone with an attic storey above and single-storey wings, designed by Wyatville. It frames a view of Longleat House half a mile north. Approached by the drive or walk through the adjoining arboretum.
The Bath Arms. A plain three-storey rubble stone 17th and 18th century building facing the small green which was formerly (and confusingly) called the Oaks, but best known for the 12 pleached limes (The Apostles) planted in 1783. To its west the group of cottages is known as Scotland, from its settlement of Scots employed by John Thynne in building Longleat House.
Woodhouse Farm, half a mile north-west, has an 18th century stone farmhouse incorporating fragments of the former Woodhouse Castle. An undulating grassy terrace with fragmentary masonry to the north marks the site of the ancient castellated manor house of the Vernons, Stanters and Horseys, owned by Royalist Arundells in the 17th century. It was occupied for Parliament by Henry Wansey of Warminster, in 1664, who surrendered to Doddington after a short siege. The latter is said by Parliamentarians to have arbitrarily hung some Warminster clothiers found with Wansey but Royalists claim that only deserters from theKing’s Army were executed. The Arundells did not return here after the Civil War.
The Old Meeting House in Chapel Lane claims to be the oldest non-conformist chapel in the country. It was founded by Presbyterian workmen of John Thynne. Outside it looks like a squat thatched barn but the Georgian interior with three-sided gallery, pews and high pulpit is impressive. The west wall has a “1566” date stone, though in 1700 the chapel is called “newly erected.” It was enlarged at the east end in 1754 and the west in 1816. The adjoining manse was a school by 1860.
At the Island to the east are the remains of Upper Mill. The conical roof at No.82 marks the former drying shed. The destruction of the earlier mill is described in Marx’s Das Kapital (1867): “In 1758 Everet constructed the first wool-shearing machine to be driven by water. It was burned down by one-hundred-thousand workpeople who had been thrown out of work.” In fact, W. Everett acquired the mill in 1766 and it was smashed by, perhaps, 500 rioters, in 1767.
The Parish Church of St John The Baptist, founded by the Vernons in the 12th century, rebuilt in 1783 and more thoroughly, save for the 14th century tower, by Wyatt and Brandon in 1844. Inside is a stone pulpit designed by Wyatt, a Willis organ of 1860, and a tablet to Thomas Davis (died 1807), Steward of Longleat and author of The Agriculture Of Wiltshire. Outside is the altar-tomb of the 2nd Viscount Weymouth (died 1750). Most masters of Longleat, from John Thynne to the 5th Marquess, are buried at Longbridge Deverill, in which ecclesiastical parish Longleat House still stands.
Manor Farm, north-east of the church, was built in the 17th century as the new Manor House in place of Woodhouse (see above). Six swallows, the mark of the Arundells, are carved on one of two chimney pieces said to have come from the Castle. In the extensive barns is a roundhouse which sheltered a horse mill.
Mill Farm, reflected in a long mill-pond, was the Lower Mill. It was a grist mill till 1909, while to its west was a small cloth mill worked by William Everett (see above). The latter was converted to silk spinning by the Wards of Bruton, in 1812, but closed in 1820.
In the south of the parish, Little Horningsham, now a few cottages, was once a separate manor, as was Baycliffe, an old stone farm with part mediaeval walls, on the old turnpike road to Bruton.