Category: Crockerton: Gleanings

From The West Wiltshire District Guide 1978:

The Church of The Holy Trinity, at Crockerton, a Chapelry in this parish [of Longbridge Deverill] was built of Crockerton stone in the Byzantine style in 1843, at the expense of the Dowager Marchioness of Bath.

The village is mostly agricultural, most of the land is used for dairying purposes. The main street of Crockerton called Clay Street, is not far from the old clay pits.

Crockerton was the centre of the organisation of nonconformity of the district with the help of the Adlam family, starting about 1656 in Crockerton and Longbridge Deverill. From about the year 1800 the main centre was to be found in the towns of Warminster and Westbury.

The construction of a number of carefully located new dwellings and renovations to older cottages in recent years has done nothing to spoil the charm of the village.

February 1978

Advertisement

The Country Warehouse
(Crockerton Ltd.)
Crockerton, near Warminster.
Telephone Warminster 213993.

Your Out-Of-Town Shopping Centre
Free Parking for 400 cars.

Open
9 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday.
9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday.
Closed on Sundays.

Browse around at your leisure.
You will not be pressed to by but our helpful staff
are always ready to help.

Departments include
Food Supermarket, Do-It-Yourself, Gardening,
Hardware, Fancy & Soft Goods, Decorating,
Household, Furniture, Carpets,
Branded Goods at Discount Prices,
Cafeteria.

All under one roof!

Lakeside Garden Centre.

K.H. Rogers, in Wiltshire And Somerset Woollen Mills, published by the Pasold Research Fund Ltd., in 1976, noted:

Crockerton: Shearwater Mill
This was a fulling mill by 1727, when it occurs in a list of mills at which medley cloths were to be inspected. In 1732 a lease was made  to Edmund Tanner, yeoman, who in 1748 offered the mill, ‘the best for scouring in the kingdom’, with a handsome new-built house and lands for sale. The buyer was William Meares, a Horningsham clothier, to whom renewals of the lease were made in 1748 and 1764. At some subsequent date, John Barter obtained the lease by assignment from Meares’s creditors, and in 1791 he surrendered it in return for an annuity of £50. The parish was enclosed in that year, and the mill was probably bought in to avoid difficulties over water while the great ornamental lake at Shearwater was being made just up the valley. It stood idle for the best part of two years, but was worked by Peter Warren, a Warminster clothier, when water was available. The lake was filled in August 1793, but in the following year ‘the water in the great pond slackening soon after the repair’, very little was done, and at Michaelmas the mill was entirely stopped to water the meadows. In 1795, part of the water was recovered by boring under the great pond head, so that the mill could do some work as well as water the meadows. In 1798 an estimate was made for improving the mill by enlarging the wheel, which was then 8 ft. 8 in. in diameter. The millwright considered that the trunk shoot could be raised 1 and a half ft. and the ground at the mill tail lowered 5 and a half ft., and the mill being 16 ft. wide was large enough to take a new wheel. Warren continued to use the mill until 1810. No more is known of it, and it probably fell out of use on the collapse of the Warminster trade soon afterwards. It stood at the southern edge of the hamlet of Potters Hill.

A short distance below on the same stream another fulling mill once stood, but it had gone by 1745, when only its site, just west of the main road, was marked.

WRO, 845, lease books, estate papers, etc.;
SJ, 9.5.1748.

K.H. Rogers, in Wiltshire And Somerset Woollen Mills, published by the Pasold Research Fund Ltd., in 1976, noted:

Crockerton: Bull Mill
A clothier named Valentine Adlam was living in Crockerton in the early seventeenth century, and it is likely that he occupied this mill. In the later part of the century the mill was a meeting place for a group of Baptist nonconformists who later founded the chapel in the village. William Adlam, a clothier, took a new lease on lives of the fulling mill in 1732; he was succeeded by Samuel Adlam, also a clothier who went bankrupt in 1756. The mill, which drove four pairs of stocks, was offered to let, but Adlam remained in possession of the lease on lives until his death in 1768. It was then renewed to his son, Samuel, described as a fuller. To pay the large entry fine of £1,014 he apparently enlisted the financial help of a Warminster clothier, Daniel Capel, to whom the mill was assigned as security for a period.

The leasehold estate subsequently passed to a family called Rebbeck, who underlet the mill. One tenant was John Arnold, fuller, who made his will in 1789. He was succeeded by the partnership of Francis and Nathaniel Everett, clothiers, from c.1794 onwards, who no doubt rebuilt or added to the mill to use it for machinery. Francis Everett withdrew in 1800; Nathaniel carried on the business alone, but by 1814 he was in difficulties, and the property was advertised to let as a clothing mill, fulling mill and factory, with dye-house, drying stove and other convenient apartments. The main building was of three floors, 69 ft. by 19 and a half ft., and the fulling mill contained four pairs of stocks. It was claimed that the property could be enlarged because of the powerful and extensive head of water . In 1815, Everett finally went bankrupt and some of his effects were put up for sale; they included a press and plates, thirty pairs of shears, a timmeynog, a willey and a twisting (warping) mill.

Early in 1816, Nathaniel Everett died; he ‘filled his station in life with unswerved integrity and respect. During the latter part of his life he experienced a sad vicissitude in his affairs. A series of losses . . . plunged him into great distress which doubtless hastened his dissolution!’ He paid about 5s. in the pound; ten years later, his two sons, having been left £8,000 and £6,000 respectively by their uncle, paid his debts in full, leaving themselves, it was said, with only a few hundred pounds each.

The mill appears to have stood idle until 1823, when the machinery including two scribbling and three carding engines, three billies and fourteen jennies was offered for sale. The new tenants were the Ward family, long established silk throwsters at Bruton and other places in Somerset. They ran it in their trade, using a 22 h.p. wheel in 1833. The commissioners were impressed by the working conditions of the women and children there, and by the unusual care taken of them, including the provision of warm milk and water at breakfast times, and a lending library. At that time the mill was worked at night with a different set of hands.

In 1849 George Ridout Ward went bankrupt and the mill was offered for sale. The particulars show that Wards had added to or rebuilt it, for the main block was then of five storeys. A larger water-wheel of 30 h.p. had recently been erected at an outlay of nearly £1,000. The claim put forward that Wards had carried on business here continuously for fifty years, employing 200 hands, was evidently mistaken. The mill was taken over by the Jupe family of Mere, silk manufacturers, who ran it until the 1890s.

An engraving of the mill was included in the sale particular of 1849. The main block was of five storeys and eight bays, and apparently had windows of standard design. At one end of the roof was a small cupola for a bell. There were other two-storeyed buildings of considerable extent, and an octagonal school and dining room.

WRO, 845, lease books, estate papers, etc.;
Gunn, Nonconformity In Warminster;
WRO, 130/22;
SJ, 21.6.1756, 17.2.1800, 27.6.1814, 30.10.1815, 15.2.1816, 20.7.1818, 16.6.1823, 11.10.1826;
WRO Arch. Sarum, will of Jn Arnold, 1793;
WRO, 846/1.

Friday 8th December 1972

Foxholes Reading Room, Crockerton

Built in 1891 for £120 by Carson and Toone of Warminster, on land leased from the then Lord Bath for the peppercorn rent of £1 yearly, which has continued until now, a landmark in Longbridge Deverill and Crockerton for 81 years has been steadily dismantled over the past five weekends by a Crockerton man and his two teenaged sons.

It is the Foxholes Reading Room, and the former Longbridge Deverill Primary School is now in use as a village hall replacing it. With the final removal of the old reading room, over the weekend, the land at Foxholes will be restored to the present Lord Bath. The original builders’ names partly live on at Carson’s Yard, off East Street, Warminster.

A member of the hall committee, former bricklayer, Brian Bonner, of 69 Jersey Hill, Crockerton, has been dismantling the Foxholes Reading Room with the help of his sons, Mark (15) and William (14), who are pupils at Kingdown School, Warminster. The Bonner family’s work has saved the committee some £50 in dismantling expenses. As much salvaged material as possible is being sold to farmers for outbuildings (the reading room was made of corrugated iron with wooden inner walls).

The only snags in dismantling were delays due to wet weather and having to handle big metal sheets in high winds. Mr. Bonner said he found the exterior in surprisingly good condition. Some items – none of them valuable – which had been lost for decades under the floor, were discovered, including table tennis balls, books, and the blade of an old-fashioned mortice chisel which was probably lost by one of the builders. The wooden handle of the chisel had rotted away.

Originally a reading room and club, the building at Foxholes began to be used as a parish hall about 50 years ago, being home to various organisations in the village. This continued until recent years, when a lack of car-parking became a problem and usage declined.

Wilfred Middlebrook, in ‘The Changing Face Of Warminster,’ first written in 1960, updated in 1971, noted:

There is a legend that tells of Saint Thomas A’Becket coming through Southleigh Woods “dressed like a gentleman and going back dressed like a beggar.”

In the old days Crockerton held a Gooseberry Feast, about 7th July, which they celebrated by holding a revel. The story goes that Thomas A’Becket visited the revel after leaving Longbridge Deverill Church, and spent all his money, hence the expression “returning through Southleigh Woods dressed like a beggar.”

After that historic occasion the revel became known as the Feast Of St. Thomas Of Canterbury, and part of the revel was actually held in the woods, at a place called Robin Hood’s Bower; the revellers following an old trackway from Crockerton Green, crossing the river by a packhorse bridge that still stands there, and straight up to the Bower.

Circa 1970

HOUSES AND ALE
From Ushers Guide To The West

THE ART OF LANDSCAPING
It is remarkable that two of the finest examples of landscaping in Britain should be within a few miles of one another in Wiltshire. The National Trust owns Stourhead, whose lakes and gardens with Grecian temples are romantic and colourful in the extreme.

A few miles north, a chain of lakes makes the setting for Longleat, the magnificent home of the Marquess of Bath, which like Stourhead can be seen for a fee. It would be a pity to visit both Stourhead and Longleat on the same day – a surfeit of beauty can blunt the senses – and each has enough to keep a day occupied.

From the east, the Bath Arms at Crockerton stands at the threshold of the vast wooded Longleat estate, and is to be recommended as a first-class headquarters from which to plan a day at Longleat. The Bath Arms is also worth visiting for its own sake.

Text by Bill Bawden, circa 1970.