Chilmark is a pleasant village in a parish of the same name, situated a short distance to the left of the turn-pike road leading from Salisbury to Hindon. The hamlet of Ridge, situated in a deep hollow one mile south of the village, is in the same parish, and contains only a few scattered houses. Here are great quarries of free-stone, which have been worked for many centuries past, and with which the churches and other buildings in the southern parts of Wilts, as also in the parts of Dorsetshire bordering on this locality, are built. The walls, buttresses, and other substantial parts of Salisbury Cathedral, are constructed of Chilmark stone.
Most of this parish is the property of the Earl of Pembroke, who is also lord of the manor. The acreage is 3.032; the population 593. It is in the Tisbury Union, the Hindon division, and the Dunworth Hundred, 12 miles west of Salisbury, 4 east of Hindon; on the south side of, and at a short distance from the church, is an ancient building, now converted into a barn, probably the remnant of some monastic erection once attached to the Abbey of Wilton. The living is a rectory, in the diocese of Sarum, and valued at £426, in the gift of the Earl of Pembroke. The present incumbent is the Rev. Charles Tower, M.A.
The church, dedicated to Saint Margaret, is a cruciform structure; has a nave and chancel, and a well-built tower (containing 4 bells), crowned with a handsome spire. On the north side of the chancel is an ancient doorway, now closed up, formed by a Norman arch. The interior is exceedingly clean, of light appearance, and the nave has several sharply-pointed arches; the roof of the belfry beneath the tower is deeply groined, and there are two narrow lancet windows very much bevelled from the interior so as to be only a few inches in width on the exterior. Beneath a pointed arch, in the south wall of the chancel, is a Piscina, in a good state of preservation, discovered during the progress of some repairs recently effected. In the chancel there is a beautifully painted window, divided into three compartments: to the right is St. Peter, on the left St. John, in the centre the Saviour.
There is a National School, supported by the rector and the Earl of Pembroke.
Gentry:
Frederick King, esq.
Rev. Charles Tower, M.A., Rectory.
Traders:
William Baker, blacksmith.
William Bennett, farmer.
Mrs. Jane Bowles, post office.
Richard Burridge, parish clerk.
Miss Eliza Clark, mistress of National School.
John Cox, miller, Chilmark Mill.
William Flower, farmer, Rudge.
Thomas Fricker, farmer, Rudge.
William Fricker, ‘Black Dog’.
George Harvey, brickmaker and beer retailer, Rudge.
Eliza Jukes, shopkeeper.
George Lane, farmer and quarry master.
Thomas Warne, farmer.
Sarah Young, farmer.
Post Office – Mrs. Jane Bowles, receiver. Letters arrive from Salisbury at 7 a.m., dispatched at 7 p.m.
National School, Miss Eliza Clark, mistress.