Category: Little Langford: Gleanings

The Church Of St. Nicholas, Little Langford

The Church of St. Nicholas, Little Langford.

Notes by K.D.D. Henderson. (1980s).

Surviving Saxon charters show that the farm boundaries of Little Langford have not changed for a thousand years, and it is likely enough that there was a church on this site before the Conquest.

If so it was rebuilt by the Norman family which took its name from the hamlet, the earliest known member of which appears to be one Ellis de Langford whose name appears on a Wilton Abbey muster roll dated 1166 A.D. The Norman arch over the south door is earlier, dating from before 1120. The tympanum, the semi-circular space between this arch and the lintel of the door, is carved with the likeness of a bishop clad in dalmatic, alb and stole with the right hand raised in the act of blessing, while the left holds a pastoral staff whence a branch has sprouted: on the right are three birds perched in a tree. This staff may simply represent the tree of life, but might well represent the miracle of St. Aldhelm, first Bishop of Sherborne, who died in 708 A.D. According to legend his staff burgeoned while he was preaching at Bishopstrow, where the Great Ridgeway crosses the Wylye below Warminster. St. Osmund, Bishop of Sarum from 1078 – 1099, had a special veneration for St. Aldhelm, and if the Norman church was built during his tenure of the see it might even have been dedicated to the Saxon saint. The present church has, however, since records began been dedicated to St. Nicholas of Mira, who has gone down in history as Santa Claus.

The lintel stone itself portrays a hunting scene, probably a boar-hunt, but was once supposed to have been the slaughter of a monstrous maggot which patriotically bit to death a lady who tried to deprive the villagers of their wood rights in Groveley forest.

The Langford family moved north of the Plain at the end of the 13th century, but in 1325 John de Langford built a chantry onto the church in memory of his father Alan, verderer of Groveley in 1300. The chantry bridge over the Wylye survived in ruins till Colt Hoare’s day (early 19th century). It crossed into the east end of Steeple Langford Great Meadow. There was an endowment to enable the Hospital of St. John the Baptist at Wilton to provide a chaplain to look after it, but the names of only four chaplains have survived.

The manor and the advowson passed from the Langfords to the Dangers or D’Angers, after whom the boundary hedge with Hanging Langford, now called Cunneker (Coneygree), was known as Dangers hedge for many centuries. The lordship passed in 1443 to the Stourtons of Stourhead, who lost it to the Earls of Pembroke after the Reformation. The Stourton arms are over the north door.

The church was largely rebuilt in 1863-4 by T.H. Wyatt (third of the name), but retains traces of decorated work on windows and chancel arch. The small three light ogee lancet window in the lower half of the wall under the west gable is probably of about 1300, while in the south wall of the chancel is a square headed window opening (probably rebuilt) of the late 14th or early 15th century. In the east wall of the south chantry chapel there is (again rebuilt) a 13th century lancet window. Below it, built into the wall, is a child’s stone coffin lid and there is a similar built-in feature in the north wall of the chancel. In those days little was wasted and most of the stone blocks, as opposed to the flint, in the present church, were used before in the previous church or churches. In certain lights, features such as finger sundials, outlines of fish, etc., can be traced in these stone blocks.

The small bowl font is probably Norman on a 19th century base. In the chancel there is the remnant of an early piscina and a stone crucifix much worn: there is also a square table which was probably made up from the dado of a 14th century screen which previously existed.

In the south chantry is the tomb and effigy of an Elizabethan gentleman with the initials I.H., probably a member of the Hayter family who farmed here for several generations, and provided the village with a Rector, Thomas Hayter (1573 – 1581): but possibly one of the Herberts. It was moved when the church was rebuilt, and superimposed upon the tomb slab of Mrs. Moorhouse, wife of a later Rector (see below). There is also a tomb of Tristram Biggs of Stockton, whose family farmed here for about 100 years from the middle of the 17th century.

The re-dedication of the church in 1865 was celebrated by the holding of a Retreat by Thomas Carter, founder of the Clewer Sisterhood, at the invitation of the Rector, Edward Hill, a keen tractarian – the tractarian movement stressed the Catholic nature of the Church of England. During the restoration of the church, Sunday services were conducted in the Rectory drawing room.

In 1866 the railway came through the village, destroying much in its path. The original Rectory was demolished, along with the two farmhouses. The Victorian Rectory (now a private house) lies to the north-west of the church, and the farmhouse (now called the Manor House) lies to the south of the church on the other side of the railway. The old shape of the village – a tiny church surrounded by little cottages and two large farmhouses – was gone forever.

The list of Rectors begins in 1323 and there were no less than nine Rectors between 1323 and 1354. In 1443 Thomas Giffard was presented by Richard Leyt, Robert Longe and John Stourton, acting on behalf of the late lord, William Dangers. Forty years later, in the second year of King Richard III, the Rectory was broken into and the old Rector seriously injured by a gang led by a local yeoman called Edward Bays, who was duly hanged in Salisbury under Henry Tudor.

Hayter’s successor, Hugo Mansfield, also held the livings of Baverstock and Highworth. John Lee (1629 – 1634) and Alexander Hyde (1634 – 1660) combined the livings of Little Langford and Wylye. There was some connection between these two villages, leapfrogging Hanging Langford. Cromwell’s commissioners, in 1651, wanted to put Hanging Langford into the parish of Little Langford, but it came to nothing. Hyde was living quietly in Wylye at the time, his nominee, John Wilson, having also been dispossessed, and the tithes, valued at £85, assigned to one William Wimbleton. Considering that Hyde was first cousin to Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (whose mother was a member of the old Langford family) it is surprising that he was left undisturbed in Wylye, where his daughter Anne was christened in 1654. She was to be the wife of Francis Eyre, Rector for a short time of Steeple Langford. Alexander Hyde had meanwhile become Bishop of Salisbury in 1665.

His successor at Little Langford, Lancelot Moorhouse, earned himself mention, and commendation, by John Aubrey and Thomas Cox (Magna Britannica et Hibernia) for his controversy with Francis Potter, F.R.S., over the interpretation of the number 666.

The initials of his successor, Robert Haysom, are carved on a stone built into the wall of the stables of the 19th century Rectory, with the date 1679.

Later Rectors included William Moody (1798 – 1825) who was lord of the manors of Hanging Langford and Bathampton, and Charles Maitland (1828 – 1844), whose son succeeded to the Earldom of Lauderdale and is commemorated by a tablet in the chancel after having been killed by lightning in 1884. Four of the Maitland family are buried in the churchyard.

In 1973 Little Langford was united with the parish of Steeple Langford as the first step to a pastoral re-organisation which was once more to result in a connection with Wylye.

For over a thousand years Christians have worshipped on this spot. The church is still used for the worship of Him in whose sight a thousand years is but as yesterday.

May that same God bless your visit to this ancient place.