Category: Villages, Towns and Places

The Parish Magazine, dated April 1902, includes a short account of the “town” of Heytesbury, which was written some 135 years previously, in 1767, just two years after the Great Fire of Heytesbury. The account reads:

The following paper has been found and kindly forwarded by a relative of the late Mrs. Knight, the widow of a former incumbent. No doubt it will interest many of our readers. The date is 1767.

HEYTESBURY

Heytesbury, Heightsbury, Hegesbury, Heghtredsbury, on the records, and in the Index Villiaries, Upper and Lower Haresbury, situated on the river Willey, in the south part of Wiltshire, and gives name to the Hundred in which it stands. It consists chiefly of a street of irregular buildings, in an open country, and in an healthy air, and was sometime the residence of the Empress Maud, when she contended with King Stephen for the crown of England.

The parish is of large extent, measuring upwards of fourteen miles in circumference. It is an ancient borough by prescription; and the members to Parliament are elected by a bailiff and burgesses, and returned by the former. The present members (1767) are Pierce A’Court Ashe and Lieutenant Gererne William A’Court, Esquires.

In the time of King Edward the III. it belonged to the Lord Bartholomew Burgwarish, and then consisted of two manors, viz., East Court and West Court.

It afterwards went to Thomas, Lord Hungerford, who built the church about the year 1400; his successor, Walter, Lord Hungerford, Lord High Treasurer of England, founded a chantry therein, and also founded an hospital for twelve poor aged men and one woman, which was made a body corporate, &c., with an allowance for a chaplain, who was likewise to be a warder and teach a free school; but this not being fully performed in his lifetime, Margaret, widow of his son, Robert, Lord Hungerford, effected it. From the said Walter, it went by marriage to Lord Hastings; from thence to William Ashe, Esquire, and lastly to Peirce A’Court Ashe, Esquire.

The Church is Collegiate, having four prebends in it, belonging to the Cathedral Church of Salisbury; the building is spacious and strong, in the form of a cross, in the centre of which is a high tower, containing six tuneable bells.

The town has two fairs yearly, viz., May the third, the invention of the cross; for on this day, in the year 326, the cross that Christ suffered on was found, being searched for by order of Queen Helen, mother to Constantine the Great, having been hid and buried by the heathens 180 years, and therefore was called by our ancestors, Crouchmas Day, the word crouch being an old English word for cross. The other fair is kept on September the 14th, the exaltation of the cross, a day in commemoration of the cross on which Christ suffered being regained a second time, anno 644, by Heraclitus the Emperor, in a victory over Cosraes, King of Persia, that had it 14 years; the Emperor on this day carried it on his shoulders to Mount Calvary, and there set it up, and exalted it with great solemnity. This day was called Holy Rood Day, from the Saxon word rood, signifying cross.

The inhabitants enjoy a tolerable good trade in the clothing way.

By a dreadful fire which happened June 12th, 1765, three parts of the town was laid in ashes, among which most of the farms, corn, and hay, with abundance of household furniture and other valuable effects.