From the Visitors’ Guide To Wiltshire, circa 1973:
Tisbury is an interesting small town, situated in beautiful countryside and surrounded by wooded hills and rolling downs.
There is a great deal of folk lore surviving in the district and the old church’s history goes back to at least A.D. 674. Rudyard Kipling’s parents are buried in the churchyard, in which also grows a yew tree estimated to be 1,000 years old.
Tisbury’s High Street from Gaston Manor to Tisbury Cross follows the exact line of an early Saxon track way known as Market Road, which formed part of the trade route from the Dorset coast to the Severn Estuary. The road is known to have been unaltered, as it is bedded on solid rock.
Many flint implements and gold bracelets have been found around Tisbury, and some of these relics are now in the British Museum. Castle Ditches nearby is a prehistoric settlement and above Mount Pleasant, near the stone quarry, is the site of an Iron Age village.
Place Farm was formerly a grange of Shaftesbury Abbey and comprises one of the most interesting groups of 15th century buildings in the country. It includes a massive gatehouse and a tithe barn which is the second largest in England.
South of the town stands the ruins of Old Wardour Castle, romantically situated in lawns surrounded by woodlands. It is an important piece of late medieval military architecture, with Elizabethan alterations, and was heavily damaged after bitter fighting in the Civil War.
New Wardour Castle, a fine Georgian mansion by the architect James Paine, was started in 1768 and stands about a mile away. Its chapel, by Paine and extended by Soane, was completed in 1788 and has lately been beautifully redecorated. It is a masterpiece of classical design and ranks as one of the most historic and beautiful Roman Catholic churches in England.
Tisbury’s connections with the United States of America are manifold.
Anne, daughter of the first Lord Arundell of Wardour Castle, married Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore and Lord of Maryland. She died in 1649 and is buried in the sanctuary of Tisbury Church.
On January 4th, 1593, Thomas Mayhew was baptised in Tisbury Church. At about the age of 38 he settled in Massachusetts. In 1641 he purchased the island called “Martha’s Vineyard, Nantercket.” His son, Thomas, became a Congregational Minister and was the first person to attempt to convert the Red Indians to Christianity. The first Indian was baptised in 1643 and all the Vineyard Indians became professed Christians.
Today in Martha’s Vineyard, U.S.A., the Parish of West Tisbury is a flourishing one, and in the churchyard of the American Tisbury is a yew tree grown from a seed taken from the old yew tree in the churchyard, Tisbury, England.