The Heytesbury Trail
Written by Bruce Watkin, 1983:
A handsome village four miles east of Warminster, built along a gravel terrace above lush Wylye valley meadows and sheltered from the north by the chalk hills of Salisbury Plain, in “a part of the country singularly bright and beautiful” (Cobbett, 1826).
Heytesbury has an imposing church, a fine almshouse of mediaeval foundation, and a mansion which was once the home of the nationally-important Hungerford family. It was head of a mediaeval Hundred, and a Parliamentary borough with two Members for several hundred years. It was the centre of the Hungerfords’ sheep-rearing empire in the 14th and 15th centuries and of the Everetts’ chain of cloth factories in the late 18th.
Here was the junction of ancient routes, north-south across the Downs, and east-west along the Wylye. It was well turnpiked before Warminster, granted market and fairs as early as Warminster, and had more motive power in its river.
Apart from Warminster’s favour from late Saxon kings, more factors favoured Heytesbury; yet (relatively) its prosperity, population and prestige were in slow decline from the 14th century. In 1826 Cobbett said “This place, which is one of the rotten boroughs of Wiltshire and which was formerly a considerable town, is now but a very miserable affair.”
The parish, six square miles in extent, has its bulk on the high downland to the north, and its tail south to the hamlet of Tytherington on the far edge of the valley. The name derives from a forgotten Saxon woman. In 1086 the Manor was held by King William but a priest Alfward held the church and an estate with perhaps ten families. The Manor was granted by Henry II to Robert de Dunstanville of Castle Coombe but was soon divided into three estates, East, West and South Heytesbury, with their own Courts. West, otherwise known as “Borough”, appears to have been one of the early “new towns” created with Parliamentary privileges. The burgesses were concentrated here. The estates were reunited by the late 14th-century purchases of Sir Thomas Hungerford, whose family had married an Heytesbury heiress and held large estates in Berkshire, along the Wylye and in Somerset. The Hungerfords now made Heytesbury the centre of their estates. The value of the place was then relatively high, perhaps threequarters that of Warminster, but in fewer hands.
The Church however retained its separate estate. This was granted to Salisbury Cathedral in the early 12th century, generously endowed by Empress Maud and given collegiate status with four canons. In spite of the abolition of such titles in 1840 it is still known as the Collegiate Church. It was favoured too by the Hungerfords who rebuilt much and converted its north transept into a family chapel and chantry.
The Hungerfords also built and handsomely endowed the Hospital of St John and St Katherine as estate almshouses in 1442. But the family had setbacks, backing some wrong horses in the Wars of the Roses and then falling foul of Henry VIII. Sir Walter, Baron Hungerford of Heytesbury, firm supporter of the Tudors, was executed for high treason in 1540; family property was seized by the Crown and their chantries at Heytesbury and Salisbury suppressed. Some of the property, including Farleigh Hungerford Castle, was restored to them by Mary I, but they did not get back the Wylye Valley estates and the great house here, which Sir Walter was rebuilding “fit for a king,” was abandoned and slowly decayed.
The estate passed to the Moore family of Taunton, who sold it in 1641 to Edward Ashe of London and Halsted. The land was inherited by his granddaughter, who married Pierce a’Court of Ivychurch, near Salisbury, and the a’Courts held it down to the 1920s. The Ashe and a’Court families thus held most of Heytesbury for nearly 400 years and represented the Borough in Parliament for much of that time. The old house, said to have been patched up by the Ashes, was not completely rebuilt until the end of the 18th century. As a Borough, parliamentary elections were decided by burgesses, whose houses were concentrated in the area of Little London (hence perhaps its name) but these were usually owned by the Lords of the Manor or one other landowner (e.g. the a’Courts and the Duke of Marlborough in 1785). The Borough had, in fact, no contests from 1689 down to its abolition in 1832.
At the time of the Inclosure Award, in 1785, two-thirds of the parish was owned by the a’Courts and the only other substantial holding was that of the Dean of Salisbury, which had descended with the Church. There was a smaller estate held by Richard Crowch at Tytherington and about 100 acres held by the clothier John Gale Everett. There was cloth production here, as in many Wylye Valley villages, by the 15th century and there was a fulling mill in the 16th which supplied white broadcloth to the London cloth merchant Kitson. The trade survived modestly till the late 18th century, when the Everetts built or converted mills to drive new cloth machinery, at Greenlands to the west of the village and Mill Lane to the east, as they had done or were to do in a long chain of places from Horningsham through Crockerton and Bishopstrow to Upton Lovell. But both Heytesbury factories (which had employed 127 in 1847 when Warminster’s clothiers employed none) had closed in 1847 and Heytesbury’s “industrial revolution” was over. Perhaps better use was made of the available water in “drowning” the local water meadows than in exploiting the village’s child labour.
A bigger disaster had struck in 1765 causing considerable hardship when uncontrollable fire swept down the High Street and destroyed most of its houses and the Hungerford Hospital. Rebuilding after the fire accounts for the urbanity of the main street today. There were big changes in the early 19th century as the village moved westward. A new road and bridge across the Wylye were built east of the churchyard and in 1839 the turnpike road to Warminster, which had previously zigzagged up Chapel Street and along Little London, was straightened on its present course. New houses were built in the Little London and backlane areas, while older houses along Park Street (the Salisbury road) were abandoned. The railway came in 1856 and made communication with Salisbury and Bath easier, and Somerset coal cheaper. The station was some way south of the village and had surprisingly little effect on its development (it closed in 1955).
The population of the village (“urban” pretensions went out with the abolition of the Borough) had risen from 1072 in 1801, to a peak of 1412 in 1831 but from then on it declined steadily, in line with most Wiltshire villages, to 454 by 1931. The Heytesbury Estate was broken up in the 1920s – the House was later acquired by the poet Siegfried Sassoon – and much land north of the village was bought by the War Department for inclusion in their Imber Range. But, thanks in part to the establishment of the Army Camp at Knook, on the parish’s eastern border, the population increased after the Second World War, to 555 in the year 1951 and to 649 in 1981.
In spite of the roar of Trunk Road traffic through its principal street it is still an attractive place and the completion of its long-promised bypass should give new life to the ancient village.
The village is largely of two-storey stone buildings, with one long group close to the south side of the High Street. The Church and the prominent “prow” of of the former maltings on the same side make it the more impressive. On the north side are the “blind house,” the Hungerford Hospital at the east end, and then, set back in a well-wooded park, the present Heytesbury House.
The Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul. Stone and flint, cruciform, with squat central tower. “Noble,” says Betjeman, inside and out. There was a Saxon church here which was rebuilt grandly from the 12th century, as a Collegiate Church for four canons. The chancel, with its lancet arches and detached decorative columns of Purbeck marble, is part of the early rebuilding; the nave arcades and the top of the tower were not completed till the 14th century.
More rebuilding was done for the Hungerfords down to the early 16th century. They converted the north transept into a family chantry chapel, dedicated 1421, separated by a delicate perpendicular screen with fan covering. There was another chantry founded by Clyftons in 1305, in the south transept, but both were suppressed in the mid-16th century and only the Hungerford screen remains. Damage and neglect followed in the Civil War and the 18th century, and the Hungerford monuments were removed to Farleigh.
By the 18th century the chancel aisles were pulled down, the crossing walled off, galleries disfigured the nave, and pews were turned to face west. This was not remedied until the extensive restoration in 1865 – 1867 by William Butterfield, who removed the crossing wall and the nave galleries, rebuilt the chancel aisles, put in a new wagon roof to the nave and decorated the chancel with his characteristic red and black tiles. The Church was renovated in 1967, when the nave roof was painted blue, its carved bosses coloured and the walls lime-washed.
Of special interest are the Hungerford chapel screen, the remains of a Hungerford tomb-chest. monuments in the Chapel to the Ashes and a’Courts and in the north chancel chapel to Thomas Moore (died 1623), with the damaged figures of Moore, wife and daughter, which were reinstated here in 1959. Note also the memorial tablets in the south transept to the Everett, Flowers and Snelgrove families, to William Cunnington (the archaeologist, died 1810) and to vicar David Williams, a pioneer of Sunday Schools. The lancet arches with Purbeck columns and late 19th century glass by Alexander Gibbs in the chancel should be viewed.
The Hall and Church Cottage. A malthouse converted to village hall in 1936, now disused. Church Cottage is dated 1727. Other cottages on the north side of the churchyard were cleared in 1907.
Little London. This was the site of the burbage houses (No.32 was typical). It includes the Old Vicarage on the corner of Chapel Lane, and the Congregational Chapel, built in 1812.
The Blind House. A small octagonal stone “lock-up” with a stone tiled roof.
Ivy House is a late 18th century two-storey brick building with a mansard roof and partly stone wall to the west. Nos. 59 to 73 are mainly two-storey terraced stone cottages rebuilt after the 1765 fire.
Little House, is of 18th century brick, with a hipped roof.
The Angel Inn. Mainly two-storey colour-washed brick with stone string at first floor. Rebuilt in 18th century and later, though a rain-water head is dated 1692. Scene of Parliamentary “elections”.
The Hungerford Hospital. The Hospital of St John and St Katherine was built by the 2nd Lord Hungerford in 1442, for 12 poor men and two women, with a chapel and provision for a schoolmaster. It was refounded by his daughter-in-law in 1472 (see Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine, volume 78).
It is a two-storey brick building with hipped tiled roof round three sides of a lawn. The central projecting pedimented bay has the Hungerford arms and a lantern. It is a rebuilding, after the 1765 fire, in a late 17th century style. It is still under the care of a “Custos” and has been extended at the rear in a neo-Georgian style.
Heytesbury House, a long low late-18th century rebuilding of the Hungerford’s mansion, done for the a’Courts in 1784. The eleven bay front is severely plain, only relieved by a semi-circular porch with Tuscan columns. Some of the rear was filled in, in 1820. Of the older mansion the only visible traces are a stone-mullioned window and old patterns of brick and stone, re-used in the hugely walled garden to the north-west. The a’Courts house has a fine dining room with a decorative chimney piece brought from Wardour. The manorial Court Leets were held here as late as 1931. It was sold by the a’Courts (now Lords Heytesbury) in 1926 and later bought by Siegfried Sassoon, the poet, who died here in 1967 (buried at Mells). The once splendid planting of the 95 acre park and the great stone wall to the Salisbury road are now decaying.
The Estate House, of 18th century stone, was the home of Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s archaeological colleague, William Cunnington, from 1775 to 1810. The “blue stone” found built into Bowls Barrow (on the way to Imber) was stored in the garden with many other finds before their removal to Salisbury and Devizes Museums.
In Mill Street is an early 18th century cottage labelled “R.Dann 1726”.
Parsonage Farmhouse was the home of Thomas Moore from 1615, when he acquired the Heytesbury Manor. It was bought by the Ashe family in 1726. Behind the pleasant 18th century road frontage is a dining room with a fine Jacobean ceiling and Moore’s arms over the fireplace. To the south is a Jacobean mullioned window.
Chancel End House is a two-storey 18th century brick house with stone quoins. The rear extension is 19th century.
Copyright Bruce Watkin.