Horningsham Notes By Manley

From Volume Six, pages 440 and 476, of Regional Survey Of Warminster District, compiled by Victor Strode Manley during the 1920s and 1930s (unpublished by Manley):

HORNINGSHAM
Distance from Warminster, 4½ miles.
Population 615 (1911).
Church of St. John the Baptist.
Patron of living – Bishop of the Diocese.

The village is a straggling affair but very pretty all round, both in its scenery and cottages. From the Church one sees a long ‘bottom’ with White Street on the north side, and the Church on the other, hanging over a hillside like that of Longbridge Deverill and which suggests to me a pagan site connected with stream-worship. All other churches in the district are on level sites. I looked for ‘foreign stones’ in support of this idea and found in the pond below the Church two large unhewn stones which would have answered the purpose, all that were left, perhaps, of a stone circle. The village is out of the way, not on the main road and must at one time have been entirely lost in Selwood Forest. The roads are all secondary and worse, linking up with the mains at Maiden Bradley, Corsley, and cart roads to the Deverills.

BIDCOMBE HILL – 876 feet, a little to the south-east of Horning sham “the ancient and aerial residence of the Britons,” as Hoare calls it. Powell says (H.ii.271):- “The largest (centre of population in Romano-British times) in this district is on the hills which run from Bidcombe to Groveley . . . connected with the settlements which are found at the head of the Deverill valley and extend both eastwards along the hills to Stockton, and down the Deverill valley . . . a dyke or track, showing through the cornland . . . appeared to lead from these habitations on Bidcombe to the spring of water in the valley at Lower Shute, where the stream rises which feeds Shearwater.” Roddenbury Camp (See map) is a little to the north-west of Longleat.

A spring which runs out of the hill (name?) north beyond the Church where the Great War Memorial Cross stands, and it is caught in a pleasant fountain. The meadows below have streams to join it. The watershed here is Bidcombe.

The Church – says Heath:- “was rebuilt by the Marchioness of Bath in 1844, with the exception of the western pinnacled tower. It (query – village or church?) was a favourite resort of Bishop Ken.”

“The Arundles (see here under Hill Deverill) had a house here near the Church, and in the upper room is a large chimney piece, probably removed here after the storming of Woodhouse, and bearing their arms.”

The Commissioners of Edward VI, circa 1553, reserved its church plate “for the King’s use.” (H.ii.123).

The Seal of Longleat Priory is listed in Devizes Museum Catalogue II, 146, No.20.

My notes in the Guide for 1924 included:- “Horningsham is a prettily thatched village set in an emerald coombe, whose trickling streams are lined with gorgeous yellow musk blooms.”

“The oldest Nonconformist Chapel in England has marked on the wall ‘1556’. It is a thatched cottage with dormer windows under the eaves, converted into a chapel by the Scotch Presbyterians who built Longleat.” (See copy of ‘Nonconformity in Warminster’ 1853, and pamphlet of 1928.) Quote from “History of Nonconformity in Warminster,”:- “Standing amid rare scenery of rural beauty, this simple structure was the Heaven’s Gate, of which a neighbouring height enjoys the name. In it peace has reigned, while persecution raged elsewhere. Under the protection of the powerful House it has been preserved as a humble but honourable monument of one whose nature was as noble as his name, and who bequeathed his large and liberal spirit to his descendants.”

LONGLEAT – being in more than one parish is left for the section on Historical Warminster. But we must note here that it occupies the site of St. Radegunde’s Priory (Austin Canons 1270), she being a French princess, born in 520, and unwillingly married to Clotaire (Lothary), from whom she fled to take the veil. (See book in Town Hall Library – “The Lyfe of Saynt Radegunde” Cambridge University Press, 1926, 3/6.) On August 13 pilgrims still bring offerings of oats to her shrine at Poitiers in exchange for good health. Our priory had several altars and remained till the Dissolution in 1547. It seems to have been one of the series of religious places around Cley Hill including chapels at Cley Hill Farm (see under Corsley), and Norridge Farm, St. Denys (earlier Saints Simon and Jude) at Coldharbour, Corsley, and St. Nicholas at Warminster Manor, Upton Scudamore and others. If it were possible to draw a map of the pagan sites around the Hill with their sarsen stones etc., we might be able to set the chapels and churches on the same sites.

Inn – Bath Arms Hotel, with precious little civility.

Farms – Parsonage, Scotland (Skutt land?), Woodhouse, Royal Oak, Lower Barn, Manor, Stalls, Hitcombe Bottom (= white coombe).

Other names include Pottle Street, Baycliffe, The Common, Little Horningsham, Highwood, Newbury, Rowe’s Hill and Gunville; Cock Road.

The place needs a great deal of research spent on it in connection with the prehistoric associations and the march to Ethandune by Alfred. Was Hares Batch, in the woods, the army path? Hares do not frequent deep woods. Hare also means as hoar, grey. I believe the assembly was made at the sarsen stone near the Horningsham road above Park Gates, in Nutball part of Cannimore which will be dealt with later here. Hearh is also Saxon for ‘temple.’

Place-Name – Horningsham? – local pronounciation: Harn’shim, as in Harnham.

Horningsham (H.i.122) – 1220 “had a stone church roofed with wooden shingles. Its churchyard was not enclosed, but was “open to beasts, and routed up by the pigs,” large droves of which were fed in the neighbouring forest.”

Horningsham Church 1284 called “de beato Johanne Baptista non dedicata”. (H.i.121) “yet it had been founded before 1156.

Horningsham (H.i.120 fn.) a prebend of H’bury united before 1400.

Maiden Bradley Ghost (Suicide). Information Harold Marsh, Rowe’s Hill, Horningsham, 1932. A woman named Bet Carver downed herself at the Mill Pond, Horningsham, and was buried in the Maiden Bradley road. Her ghost used to appear at midnight and open Bradley gate in the woods.

Alfred’s Seat – Horningsham – Gentle Street – a grotto with a stone where Alfred said to have slept one night.

THE GREAT RIDGEWAY – of West Wilts runs from Kilmington to Maiden Bradley, Baycliffe Farm, Horningsham, Cley Hill Camp, Chapmanslade, Lambsgate Farm, St. George’s Cross, Beckington, Bradford on Avon, Maplecroft, Farleigh Wick, Hatt House, Rudloe, Hartham Park, Biddestone, Yatton Keynell, and Grittleton to the Fosse – (v. Dr. Grundy, W.A.M., December 1922).