Category: Chapmanslade: Gleanings

Ralph Whitlock in one of his many books (over 100),  Wiltshire Folklore And Legends, published in 1992 by Robert Hale, in a chapter titled ‘Black Dogs,’ noted:

” . . . a highwayman . . . who used to hold up coaches on Black Dog Hill [Chapmanslade]. He had trained his big black dog to jump on the coachman as he descended the steep hill, throwing everything into confusion during which the highwayman robbed the passengers. Eventually one coachman brought along a gunman who, when the dog attacked, shot it. Whereupon the dog became yet another ghost haunting the hill.”

1979

The Three Horseshoes at Chapmanslade is an Usher Brewery pub.

The Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA) describes it:

Pleasant, nicely decorated, village local.”

1978

Chapmanslade is a small, lively village on the Somerset/Wiltshire border. within three miles of Frome, Westbury and Warminster.

It has fine views including Westbury White Horse and the Longleat Estate.

There are a number of pleasant old houses, a village store and sub-Post Office, an interesting old public house, a school, a church and a chapel.

The centre of social activities is a village hall (completed in summer 1974) standing on a spacious recreational field.

Monday 30th August 1971

In the book Industrial Archaeology In Wiltshire, edited by Kenneth G. Ponting, published in August 1971 by the Wiltshire Archaeolgical & Natural History Society and Wiltshire County Council, reference is made to Masters’ And Workmen’s Houses And Workshops connected with the textiles trade. Chapmanslade is mentioned:

“Chapmanslade (ST.828479) . . . very much a weaver’s village. On the south side of the street are two three-storied weaving shops (one converted to a pair of cottages, the other derelict), where a ‘master’ weaver probably employed half-a-dozen or so weavers under him.”

Circa 1971

HOUSES AND ALE
From Ushers Guide To The West

RETURN TO WESTBURY
Our round tour started with the White Horse and took us around Salisbury Plain, and we are now nearly back where we started, but with a few houses still to look at between Warminster and Westbury. Drawing custom from a wide area is the Three Horse Shoes at Chapmanslade, off A36 – a house full of character with a large lounge bar, and, unusual in these parts, lattice windows.

Text by Bill Bawden, circa 1971.    

Extract from The Changing Face Of Warminster by Wilfred Middlebrook, published in 1971:

Towards the end of the coaching era, from 1850 to 1856, a stage coach left the Red Lion inn at Warminster for Bath every day, leaving at 7.30 a.m. and returning at 8.00 p.m. The “Rocket’ coach from Bath to Salisbury called daily at the Bath Arms Hotel at 11.30 a.m., returning at 2.00 p.m. from Salisbury. In those days, passengers wishing to travel to London by rail had to go by stage coach to Bath or, via Frome, to Chippenham.

The mails were carried between Warminster and Bath along this road, with the dreaded and still dangerous Black Dog Hill an ever-present hazard. The late Mr. Albert Dewey, blacksmith, recalled how on one occasion he was called out in the dead of night to walk to Black Dog Hill. Hard-frosted snow was on the ground, and the mail-horses could not get up the hill until the smith had driven frost nails into their shoes.

Another old Warminster personality, Mr. Mark Cole, was a postman for over thirty years, and he declared that many attempts were made by highwaymen to stop the mail cart on Black Dog Hill, but the speed of the horses usually defeated them. Another version of the highwaymen stories was given by Victor Manley, who declared that a large black dog with flaming eyes attacked benighted travellers at the foot of Black Dog Hill.

L. D’O. Walters, in A Complete Guide To Wiltshire, published in 1920, noted:

Chapmanslade (Stations: Frome, 4m.; Warminster, 4m., G.W.R.). – The road left of the village leads by the side of Black Dog Wood, 1m. across the county boundary into Dorset, and so to Frome, 4m., to the right the road leads to Westbury, 4m.

In the village is the Church of S.S. Philip and James, built in 1867.

The name is probably from the A.S. chepe = a market, and gelad or lad = a way, and so it is “the way of the marketers or pedlars.”