Notes by Bruce Watkin, June 1984:
Upton Scudamore
A ridge-top village with a ring of farms and cottages round the end of a rib of chalk projecting west from the Warminster Downs and separating the upper waters of the Bristol and Salisbury Avons.
It got its name “Up-ton” from its site on the ridge and the suffix from early holders of the Manor, the Norman family of Escudamour.
The parish stretches from flat damp ground north of Norridge to the high dry edge of Salisbury Plain but is short of streams, only sharing the infant Biss with Dilton, so that its manorial mill was established on the Wylye at Smallbrook beyond Warminster.
The parish originally included Thoulstone, once a small village, to the west, and Hisomley to the north, but Hisomley, and the Smallbrook Mill, were added to Westbury and Warminster respectively in 1884 while Thoulstone was joined to the new parish of Chapmanslade in 1934. Upton’s village site has been settled for centuries. Early Iron Age and Romano-British pottery has been found in quantity just south west of the church which seems itself to be on a site occupied in Roman times.
The population has never been large. Tax assessments of the 14th century suggest a population of about 300 and this figure has been the average for the centuries since, though it was formerly more dispersed than today. Thoulstone once had a quarter of the local population and it was inclosures, particularly the general Inclosure of 1807, which caused the biggest drop in the outlying hamlets. In fact the last caused a big drop in the total from 409 in 1801 to 314 in 1811, but there was a recovery to 407 by 1851 before the slow decline, common to most agricultural places, down to 213 in 1951. With the building of both council and private houses and bungalows, particularly to the east side, in the following years the population rose to 267 in 1981.
The parish has been predominantly agricultural throughout history, half pasture and half arable before the general inclosure and more arable since, with little orchard or meadow. There was some domestic cloth production down to the early 19th century, but little else.
The Scudamores, ancestors of many Skidmores today, held the manor of Upton from the Conquest down to the 15th century when it was sold to the Hungerfords who added it to their sheep-rearing empire centred on Heytesbury. And the Scudamores held other local manors: Warminster Scudamore, Norton Bavant, Stockton and Fifield, but their connection with Wiltshire was in fact of less importance than their military service to the Welsh border, based at Eywas. Sir Peter Scudamore, who died in 1382 and left his effigy in the church, was the last to have lived at Upton. Much of their land was acquired by the Temple family of Bishopstrow in the 17th century and held by them down to the 20th (see Temple House below).
Norridge, which was a separate manor, was held in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Worsley family of Appledurcombe (Isle of Wight). One of them married the first Lord Weymouth from whom it descended with the bulk of the Longleat Estate.
Though never important, Upton was once at the junction of Warminster to Bath and Warminster to Westbury roads, but both routes were made straight, bypassing the village in the late 18th century. The toll-house on the Westbury road remains as a reminder.
VILLAGE WALK
The following are notes on the more interesting buildings, set out in the form of a walk anti-clockwise round the village, starting at the parish church.
Sketch map of Upton Scudamore.
(a) THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY THE VIRGIN. Of stone and tiled, it has an 11th century nave, 13th century north chapel, chancel rebuilt in the 15th century and square west tower re-built (with much else) in 1750. The early work can be seen in the long and short quoins in the north-west corner and the somewhat later Norman surround to the north door but much has been altered for, by the mid 19th century, it was “an offensive charnel house” and subjected to fairly drastic restoration. This was done by G.E. Street, the architect of the London Law Courts and St. John’s, Boreham. He rebuilt the chancel and the south side of the nave in a more consistently “Early English” style (adding to the latter a blind arcade for any future extension), removed the west gallery, the plaster ceilings and the gay pinnacles from the tower.
Inside are still two stone effigies, assumed to be Scudamores, of the late 13th and late 14th centuries and a handsome Norman font decorated with bands of tooth and lozenge pattern. The modest organ is also of interest as the first of a family of “Scudamore” organs first made here by Nelson Hall of Upton and later multiplied by Henry Willis of London.
The churchyard was extended in the great restoration and now affords a fine view south over Warminster and Cley Hill.
St. Mary’s Church from the north west.
(b) FOLLIBANK. A stone cottage with slate roof. Former school from 1840 to 1925.
(c) THE OLD RECTORY. A spreading 3-storey stone house of early 19th century, the former parsonage. Coat of arms of Dr. Baron carved over the door.
(d) MANOR HOUSE. An attractive stone and tiled house dating from the 15th century at least. It was never the Manor House, which was west of the church, nor the Manor farm which was at Temple’s (see below). It was the headquarters of the Park family estate, a tenancy from the Scudamores in the 14th and 15th centuries. The house has a late medieval hall of two bays with blackened collar beam and curved wind braces, which was divided horizontally by floor and vertically by central chimney in the 17th century when the house was also extended with gabled wings and a stone porch.
Manor House.
(e) No.32. A stone and slate roofed cottage with a prominent gable end to the road, built as a Baptist chapel in 1850, used until 1907 and sold for conversion to a house in 1920.
(f) No.33. South of the Angel inn, is a neat 2-storeyed brick house with stone dressings and tiled roof, dated 1723.
(g) BISS FARM. Formerly Trees Farm, has, with the adjoining Old Malthouse, a low 2-storey range mainly of the 18th century, part stone and part colour-washed brick, tiled.
(h) KEYFORD. The picturesque timber-framed and thatched former farmhouse of Keyford Farm.
(i) TEMPLE HOUSE, formerly Temple’s Farmhouse, is a large 3 gabled brick house with stone mullions to the attic storey and a south front hung with tile. Inside are 17th century fireplace and panelling but the shell may be much older. It was the subject of considerable alteration and extension in the early 19th century. This was the demesne (manorial) farm of the Scudamores manor and was first leased and then bought by the Temples of Bishopstrow in the mid-17th century.
(j) MILLARD’S FARM HOUSE. The much altered timber-framed remains of the 17th century house.
East of the village is a WATER TOWER of steel tank on brick base, built 1906 as a memorial to Dr. John Baron, the Rector who restored the church. It was formerly supplied from an adjoining wind- pump built by Wallis Titt of Warminster but later from the pumping station in Biss Bottom, part of the Trowbridge Water Company’s works built here in 1873 in spite of village protests.
At Halfway House (half-way between Warminster and Westbury) on the A350 is the late 18th century octagonal stone cottage which was the original toll house on the turnpiked road.
At NORRIDGE, a former hamlet, beyond the modern main Bath road, is Norridge Farm, a 17th century, rubble and timber-framed house which has been much altered. The Norridge Manor House with its private chapel lay to its west. The post-war farmhouse was designed by architects Vallis and Associates of Frome.
THOULSTONE (now in Chapmanslade parish) has two interesting old farmhouses.
Extract from Henry Wansey’s notebook, concerning Upton Scudamore, used when collecting material for R.C. Hoare’s History of Modern Wiltshire Volume 3.