(Dated 19 August 1999 and on sale in the Church, price 20 pence):
The History of Berwick
Berwick, or Barwick as it used to be spelt, means the outlying part of an estate where the pigs were kept. The reason for the association of St. Leonard in the name of the hamlet is obscure, as Leonard was a French monk who died in 559 and became the patron saint of prisoners. However, the epithet St. Leonard, echoing the invocation of the church, was used from 1276 or earlier, but from the 16th Century to the 19th Century the village was called alternatively Cold Berwick.
The population numbered 36 in 1801 and 40 in 1861. Migration of farm labourers from Chicklade to Berwick had caused an increase to 61 by 1871. The population reached a peak of 79 in 1921 since when it has steadily declined. The current population is 43.
The fortunes of the church are entwined with those of the principal houses in the village and the adjoining parishes of Fonthill Bishop, Fonthill Gifford and Sedgehill. The church was built in the 12th Century but there is no written record prior to the 17th Century when George Howe built the King’s House at Berwick. He died in 1647 and is buried in the church. The inscription on his fine monument is noted below. Another George Howe is also commemorated by a tomb in the church and has a sad list of the children he had who died in infancy. At the Restoration King Charles II honoured him with a baronetcy. In 1688 Lord Clarendon received William of Orange at Berwick House on his way from Torbay to London. But by the beginning of the 19th Century the house was in an advanced state of decay and stripped of its furnishings, and the Rural Dean reported that the church was in ruins.
However, in 1859 Alfred Morrison, who had acquired the splendid house at Fonthill Gifford, which had been built by the eccentric William Beckford for his daughters, obtained a faculty to restore the church at Berwick at his own expense. It has been suggested that Thomas Wyatt was responsible for the rebuilding although the plans are unsigned and not very clear. Wyatt is known to have designed the neighbouring churches at Fonthill Gifford and Hindon (both of which are much more elaborate). Although the population was only 33 at this time, congregations averaged 40. It is said this was due to the attendance of labourers “who are not parishionersâ€.
By the 1880s Berwick House was in use only as a hen house but in about 1900 Hugh Morrison married Lady Mary Leveson Gower who liked the remains of the house and had them moved stone by stone to Ashley Wood, three miles away, where they formed the nucleus of a new house designed by Detmar Blow. (This house has also been pulled down).
The History of the Church
There was presumably a church at Berwick c.1120 served by the clerk of St. Leonard who held land and tithes as a tenant of Shaftesbury Abbey’s manor of Tisbury. A priest held the church as the abbey’s tenant c.1130. There was then no right of burial at Berwick and bodies were taken to Tisbury. The church later had all rights, from 1299 or earlier, abbesses presented rectors, and the living remained a rectory. The inhabitants of Sedgehill, who had been buried at Shaftesbury, became parishioners of Berwick in 1395 when a graveyard at Sedgehill was consecrated and the church there was annexed to the church of Berwick as a chapel.
In the early 12th Century the priest holding Berwick Church held with it half a hide with feeding rights, wood for his fire, and other things from the manor, and he was entitled to all tithes from Berwick. From 1395 the rector presumably had the income from Sedgehill. The rector had all tithes and 5 acres of glebe in Berwick in 1677 and 1705 when he was also entitled to all tithes from Sedgehill. At inclosure c.1822 the tithes from Berwick were exchanged for 104 acres: the glebe in Berwick was sold in 1912. In 1783 a curate living at Chicklade served Berwick, Fonthill Bishop and Fonthill Gifford, holding a Sunday service at each. Communion was celebrated at Berwick four times a year with no more than five or six parishioners.
In the late 19th Century the church’s fortunes revived – possibly due to parochial dissention at Fonthill Bishop – but in 1914 Berwick, reluctantly breaking the old links with Sedgehill, was united with Fonthill Bishop. The living had been held with Sedgehill for two hundred years, although the Rector lived at Berwick until the later part of the 18th Century, when the vicarage burned down.
Plate was taken for the King in 1553 and a chalice left. New plate consisting of a chalice, a paten and two flagons was given in 1677. In 1969 a flagon was sold to raise money to repair Fonthill Bishop church; the remainder of the plate is in the care of the Redundant Churches Fund. Two bells hung in the church in 1553. They were replaced by a bell cast by William Cockey of Frome in 1725 and another dated 1766, cast by Robert Wells of Aldbourne, both apparently re-hung in the early 19th Century. The registers date from 1723.
In 1967 the church, which had become a chapel of ease, was finally closed and all services in the united parish are now held at Fonthill Bishop, half a mile to the east. The hamlet at Berwick could no longer support its own church and in 1973 it was declared formally redundant. Although its architectural merits are modest, its situation, forming the centre piece of a group of farm buildings hidden from the Hindon to Fonthill road by a grove of trees, and its history, combined to ensure its preservation, and the church was accordingly vested in the Redundant Churches Fund on 9th June 1976. The Fund has carried out a substantial programme of repairs involving the removal of a lean-to boiler house and completely re-tiling the roof.
The Exterior of the Church
St. Leonard’s Church, so called in the 13th Century, is of flint and limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, and consists of a chancel and a nave with a south porch surmounted by a low tower. The general texture of the walls shows medieval masonry surviving intact to a considerable height. Chilmark stone is used for the dressings and some infilling of the walls. The nave is 12th Century. The chancel was possibly rebuilt in the early 14th Century when the porch and tower were added and new windows set in the nave. In 1861 the chancel was rebuilt and the church was provided with new roofs, windows, and interior fittings.
The short, stocky tower, which also forms the south porch, has a pyramidal roof which is actually lower than the ridge line of the nave roof. Its upper stage is decorated with alternate bands of Chilmark stone and flints. There is a blocked Norman doorway on the north side, its lintel decorated with a band of rosettes.
There is a big sundial above the belfry window and there are remains of other sundials on both the buttresses of the porch.
The churchyard contains a table tomb of about 1700 on which the inscription is unreadable, and a Tisbury stone cross erected in 1921 as a memorial to those fallen in the Great War.
The Interior of the Church
Inside there is little to suggest the Norman origin of the building except the font. This is merely a massive stone cut to give a stem-like support to a heavy circular bowl and devoid of any ornamentation. The brass cover is unusual and of much later date.
The remaining fittings are unexceptional and date from the 1861 restoration.
Memorials
The most notable feature of the interior is a memorial to George Howe on the north wall. There are the figures of husband and wife in relief with their arms crossed over a skull and there are the figures of three children. Above the tablet is an open pediment with an achievement of arms flanked by swags of fruit. The central figures are ingeniously framed by curtains pulled aside and knotted so as to form a continuous border. The effect is enhanced by the soft colouring of the alabaster of which the monument is fashioned. The inscription, which is hard to read, runs as follows:
NEERE THIS PLACE LYETH INTERRED YE BODY OF GEORGE HOWE OF BARWICK ST LEANARD IN YE COUN OF WILTS ESQR WHO MARRIED DOROTHY YE DAUGHTER OF HUMPEREY CLARKE OF BRADGATE IN YE COUN OF KENT ESQR BY WHOM HE HAD ISSUE TWO SONS VIZ GEORGE GROBHAM HOWE WHO MARRIED ELIZABETH YE DAUGHTER OF SR HARBOTTLE GRIMSTONE OF BRADFEILD HALL IN YE COUN OF ESSEX BARRONETT AND IOHN HOWE & ONE DAUGHTER MARGRET GROBHAM HOWE WHO MARRIED IOHN STILL OF SHASBURY IN YE COUN OF DORSETT ESQ THE ABOVE SAID GEORGE HOWE HAVING LIVED RELIGIOUSLY TO THIS AGE OF 58 YEARES PUT ON IMMORTALATIE THE DEAVENTH DECEMBER ANNO DNI 1647.
On the south wall is another memorial, this time, sadly, to six children of Sir George Howe who died in 1676. This inscription is even harder to read but appears to be as follows:
UNDER THIS STONE LYETH INTERRED THE BODYES OF MARY ADG 17 WEEKS DYED PMS ANO DOM 1652 ANNE ADG 3 YEARES DYED YE 23D APRILL ANO 1657 GRIMSTON ADG 6 WEEKES DYED YE NINTH OF 9 BR ANO 1661 THOMAS ADG 8 WEEKES DYED YE 20 OF DECEMBER ANO 1663 ALL SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF SR GEORGE GROBHAM HOWE BARRTT AND DAME ELIZABETH HIS WIFE ELIZABETH ANOTHER DAUGHTER OF YE ABOVE SD AGED 19 MONTHS DYED YE 28 OF MARCH 1669 GEORGE ANOTHER SONE AGED 33 WEEKES DYED YE 11 APRILL 1669
Above the inner door there is a beautiful Norman sculptured relief of the lamb of God within a beaded circular border. This is clearly part of the original building, which, happily, the 19th Century restorers felt was worthy of preservation.
