May 2014
When Knight Frank were the selling agents for the Mill House, Wylye, in 2014, their sale brochure included the following historical notes (dated May 2024):
The Mill House has an interesting history. There has certainly been a dwelling on this site from Saxon and Norman times at least, as the Mill is recorded in the Domesday Book as rendering 10 shillings. The London to Exeter road forded the river beside the Mill until the first bridge was built in the late 18th Century.
In the middle of the river stands a statue of a sea sprite blowing a shell-like trumpet. This statue, known as “The Wylye Boy” and mentioned in Pevsner, was collected by the Earl of Pembroke on the Grand Tour in the early 18th Century. It was later given by him to stand in the river in perpetuity as a memorial to a young postilion rider who drowned after saving a relation of the Earl from a coach which had overturned in a flood.
The place is also mentioned in William Cobbett’s “Rural Rides” published in 1830: “… I remembered Wylye very well, and thought it a gay place when I was a boy. I remembered a very beautiful garden belonging to a rich farmer and miller. I went to see it; but, alas! Though the statues in the water and on the grass platt were still remaining, everything seemed to be in a state of perfect carelessness and neglect…”
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