Information and pictures of mostly rural topics and activities.
Friday 3rd November 2023
Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Wilts Wildlife Trust @WiltsWildlife have tweeted on X (Twitter):·
Thanks to a WEIF grant and contractor @CainBio, three new baffles have been installed to raise water levels at our Smallbrook Meadows nature reserve, allowing fish to passage through the newly notched weir from the River #Wylye to the River #Were .
@WiltsHuntSabs have tweeted:
Banned Avon Vale Huntsman Stuart Radbourne sentenced in Swindon Magistrates Court on Friday for animal cruelty charges that go back to 2020
Saturday 21st October 2023
From the website of Savills:
Baycliffe Farm, Maiden Bradley, Wiltshire, BA12 7JH.
108.57 Acres (43.94 Hectares).
Freehold.
Guide price £3,350,000.
A historically important Grade II listed house in 108 acres, with superb equestrian facilities.
About This Property
Noted in the Domesday Book and reputed to be on the site of one of the oldest houses in Wiltshire, Baycliffe Farm has a continuous history of occupation on the site since 1087.
Prior to the Norman Conquest, Baycliffe appears to have been the property of Tostig Godwinson, Earl of Northumberland and brother of King Harold.
At some point in the 13th Century, a charter of King Henry III records that the farm was granted to the Priory of Bradley. The Priory Chapel held tithes over Baycliffe Farm until 1662.
The property was severely damaged by Parliamentarian forces during the Civil War, when the house was attacked whilst the then resident, a staunch Royalist, was away attacking nearby Stourhead House, a Parliamentarian stronghold.
Nowadays, this remarkable stone and brick house under a thatched roof, sits in a tranquil position, surrounded by its own grounds, giving way to its grazing and woodland beyond. It is well configured, with nicely proportioned rooms.
The entrance hall offers access to the principal rooms. The dual-aspect dining room has shuttered stone mullion windows with window-seats and a fireplace with a wood burning stove. Wide steps lead down into the drawing room (formerly the Cheese Room, where cheese was produced). Again, this room benefits from shuttered stone mullion windows and a fireplace with a wood-burning stove. A dual-aspect sitting room has an open fire and shuttered stone mullion windows. The kitchen/breakfast room, with a flagstone floor, has bespoke hand-built cabinetry, Belfast sink and a solid oak work surface. This room boasts a large inglenook fireplace with a wood-burning stove. A stable door leads from the kitchen out to a sheltered rear courtyard garden, with access to the boiler room. A cloakroom, with separate WC, has flagstone floors, as does the spacious utility/laundry room, along with fitted cupboards, a sink and plumbing for a washing machine.
Upstairs, the galleried landing offers access to the principal bedroom. Adjacent to this is a work-in-progress’ (previously two bedrooms) to create a magnificent principal suite with a planned balcony overlooking the swimming pool garden. Due to these works, there are currently a further three double bedrooms, one with en suite shower room and dressing room and one with en suite shower room, in addition to a family bathroom, with free-standing roll-top bath. Several of these rooms have stone mullion windows.
A small studio annexe with separate access adjoins the drawing room which could be connected, extending the overall square footage of the main house. The house has a large parking courtyard to one side, with a small lawn and rear access into the kitchen.
The gardens wrap around the remainder of the house. A walled vegetable garden includes a greenhouse with a vine, a brick double-ended potting shed and fruit cages. The heated swimming pool sits within its own walled courtyard garden and has a garden store/pump room to one side.
The adjacent courtyard garden has the beginnings of a pool changing room/WC. The main garden is part-walled and is laid mainly to lawn, with a pond and various mature trees and shrubs, including a spectacular magnolia.
Ancillary Accommodation and Buildings
Baycliffe Farm offers plentiful ancillary accommodation which was originally converted from a range of traditional brick agricultural buildings and suited to multi-generational living, staff accommodation or could be let out to generate a useful additional income. The additional properties include a three bedroom cottage, two bedroom cottage,two one bedrooms flats and a separate one bedroom wooden cabin. Sat within these traditional buildings also lies a car port and a large double-height Party Barn with vaulted ceilings.
Land and Equestrian Facilities
Baycliffe Farm boasts impressive equestrian facilities and has operated as a Racing Stud in recent years. Set adjacent to the house lies the front yard with twelve stables set around a picturesque central courtyard. Privately placed away from the house, with secondary road access, lies the main yard, where a range of converted agricultural buildings house American Barn style stabling, a large storage barn and an indoor menage / loose ring (in need of refurbishment). The property also benefits from a Monarch horse walker.
Sat within the traditional brick buildings and adjoining the cottages and party barn is a tack room with first floor one bedroom flat suitable for staff. These buildings also house an office, staff room and WC facilities with disabled access.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE REFER TO THE BROCHURE OR CONTACT GEOFFREY JONES ON 07870 387 700 OR PAUL CADGE ON 01722 426 880.
Additional Information:
Method of Sale and Tenure: The freehold of Baycliffe Farm is offered for sale by private treaty with vacant possession on completion.
Services: Mains water and electricity. Private Drainage (with treatment plant). Oil fired and electric central heating.
EPC: Baycliffe Farmhouse Exempt, Cottages D & E, Flat 1 D, Flat 2 E, The Cabin E.
Local Authority Wiltshire Council 0300 456 0100.
Council Tax: Baycliffe Farmhouse F, Cottages – F.
Town and Country Planning: The land is registered for payments under the Basic Payment Scheme. It is intended that the entitlements are included in the sale and the Vendor will assist with their transfer to the Purchaser after completion. For the avoidance of doubt, the Vendor will retain the 2022 payment in full.
Designations: Baycliffe Farm falls within the Cranborne Chase Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone.
Easements, Wayleaves and Rights of Way: The property is sold subject to and with benefit of all existing rights of way whether public or private, including rights of way, supply, drainage, water, electricity supplies and other rights, covenants, restrictions and obligations and all wayleaves whether referred to or not. A footpath is known to cross the property as indicated in the sale plan.
Fixtures and Fittings: Those items mentioned in these sales particulars are included in the freehold sale. All other fixtures, fittings and other furnishings are expressly excluded.
Viewings: Viewings are strictly by appointment through Savills.
Health and Safety: Given the potential hazards of a working Stud we would ask you to be as vigilant as possible when making your inspection for your own personal safety, particularly around the farm buildings and railway.
VAT: Should any sale or any other part of the Estate or any right attached to it become a chargeable supply for the purposes of VAT, such tax will be payable by the purchase(s) in addition to the contract price.
Directions: From Salisbury, take the A36 towards Warminster. At the roundabout just before Warminster, take the A350 towards Crockerton. After Crockerton, turn right towards Parsons Lane and then into Clay Street. Clay Street will take you past Shearwater Lake and on towards Maiden Bradley. Baycliffe Farm will be found on the left-hand side before you reach the village itself. What3Words: backed.incurring.oval – What3words gives every 3mx3m square in the world a unique three-word address. This one describes the precise entrance to Baycliffe Farm.
EPC Exempt.
savills.com/property-detail/gbsarucli217238
Sunday 9th July 2023
Anonymously posted on the Facebook page Spotted In Warminster Town:
Has anyone else seen the naked swimmer down the Wylye? If it was 6am in the morning I could understand a fresh dip, but he was spotted at 10.30am in all his birthday suit glory, some people have no shame!
July 2023
From Wiltshire Council’s Planning for Warminster – a guide (published in July 2023) to how the Local Plan Review (“the Plan’), which will replace the Wiltshire Core Strategy, will affect the town over the coming years.
A strategic issue which impacts all sites at Warminster is that of phosphates pollution entering the River Wylye, which forms part of the internationally designated River Avon System SAC. Being located close to the headwaters of the River Wylye, there are limited sites which can provide for mitigation of phosphates entering the watercourse, which represents a barrier to further housing development at this time. It may be possible for development
proposals to demonstrate bespoke solutions to the issue of phosphates pollution entering the watercourse, but there is insufficient certainty that this will be the case for the allocation of further sites through the Local Plan. The Local Plan does propose the allocation of a parcel of land on Land at Brook Street for the delivery of wetland to enable phosphate mitigation, to
assist in offsetting the nutrient impacts of planned development at Warminster. This land is to be safeguarded from alternative uses, in order to enable implementation of a mitigation strategy for the town.
July 2023
From Wiltshire Council’s Planning for Warminster – a guide (published in July 2023) to how the Local Plan Review (“the Plan’), which will replace the Wiltshire Core Strategy, will affect the town over the coming years.
Land at Bore Hill Farm, to the south of the settlement, does not current benefit from a planning permission and it is expected to be delivered towards the middle of the Local Plan period.
Notes from a leaflet available at the Warminster Hub, June 2023:
Westbury White Horse is the oldest of the Wiltshire horses. It is well situated, being high on a very steep slope and overlooking a panoramic view. It is on Westbury Hill, on the edge of the Bratton Downs, immediately below the Iron Age hill fort called Bratton Camp, north-east of Westbury and near to the villages of Bratton and Edington. There is a car park with a viewing point on the B3098 just east of Westbury, and a car park above the horse on Westbury Hill. Note that the lanes up onto the hill are steep and narrow, and are used by horses.
There has been a white horse on the site for at least three hundred years or so. It was apparently told by local people that the horse had first been cut in memory of persons still living or who had recently died, which suggests a date in the late sixteen hundreds. It was very different in design to the present one, and is perhaps Saxon or earlier in appearance. However, it could well have been a deliberate “mock-Saxon” pseudo-antique folly.
In 1778, a Mr. George Gee, who was steward to Lord Abingdon, had the horse re-cut to a design nearer to its present day appearance. He apparently felt that the older version was not a sufficiently good representation of a horse.
A century later the horse had become somewhat misshapen, and in 1873 it was restored according to the directions of a committee appointed for the purpose, and edging stones were added to help hold the chalk in place. The shape of the present horse dates from this restoration. In the early twentieth century, concrete was added to hold the edging stones in place. In the late nineteen-fifties, it was decided that it would considerably reduce the maintenance costs if the horse was covered in concrete. This work was carried out, and the concreting was repeated in 1995. Whether originally or at a later date, the concrete was painted white.
Monday 15th May 2023
From the Facebook page of Home Farm B&B, Boreham, Warminster:
The house is looking lovely for this time of year! Hurry up summer we can’t wait for more sunshine & blue sky.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063619987775
Telephone 01985 213266
13th April 2023
From the Facebook page of Home Farm B&B, Boreham, Warminster:
How good is a long weekend & some sunshine.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063619987775
Telephone 01985 213266
Not dated, but pre-April 2023
Malaby Biogas Information Sheet No.5, Bore Hill Farm
The Site
Bore Hill Farm is a redundant smallholding on the southern edge of Warminster in Wiltshire. It comprises a farm house, disused outbuildings and 12 acres of hilly land. It is bounded to the south by the main A36 trunk road and Deverill Road to the east – the main southern access road to the town. The northern boundary is made up of a public foot path and the rear gardens of Warminster’s residential margins along Ludlow Close. The farm house lay vacant following the death of the last resident farmer and after a long time on the property market has
recently been renovated for residential occupation.
Green Energy Proposal
Malaby Biogas plans to install an anaerobic digestion (AD) and
Combined Heat and Power (CHP) facility which will provide clean heat and electricity to the farm house and outbuildings as well as contributing up to 1 MW of clean electricity to the local power network. The plant and equipment will be installed on the southern most part of the land with minimal visual impact to the road or residential neighbourhood to the north. The facility will be situated to provide minimal noise or odour pollution to the residential neighbourhood to the north and
will be designed to be as visually and ecologically sensitive as possible to its surroundings. The facility will be established as an exemplar project as defined by Wiltshire Council and will aim to provide sustainable development and local employment in conjunction with the redevelopment of the redundant farm buildings.
Farmstead Redevelopment
The traditional farmstead complex made up of the existing redundant buildings will be redeveloped by Malaby Martin Ltd to provide sustainable business units powered and heated by the neighbouring facility. Using their previous local experience in sympathetic redevelopment of farm buildings the original character of the complex will be retained with a central courtyard surrounded by low agricultural style buildings fitted
out to modern energy efficiency standards. This will provide additional employment opportunities to the town of Warminster with little or no infrastructural burden on the town’s resources. In a similar fashion to the AD facility the redevelopment of the farmstead will be undertaken
as an exemplar project and the two facilities will be designed together to provide the greatest opportunity for energy efficiency, cohesive planning and integration.
Consultation
Malaby Martin was recently awarded the Design and Built In Award from West Wiltshire planning department for its redevelopment of West Farm Barns at Knook. A cornerstone of this award was their collaborative approach in planning the project. By seeking the input of stakeholders such as officials, neighbours and project professionals at the early stages they were able to ensure that an acceptable and cohesive scheme was planned and delivered. This approach will be equally crucial in
delivering a truly exemplary scheme at Bore Hill Farm. Balancing diverse opinions, technical requirements and economic demands while maintaining an overarching vision requires consideration and commitment. The vision for Bore Hill Farm is there and the experience to deliver it is proven. With the constructive contribution of all stakeholdersa future for Bore Hill Farm is assured.
