Etchilhampton is a small village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England, in the

Vale of Pewsey The Vale of Pewsey or Pewsey Vale is an area of Wiltshire, England to the east of Devizes and south of Marlborough, centred on the village of Pewsey. Geography The vale is an extent of lower lying ground separating the chalk downs of Salisbury ...

east of

Devizes Devizes is a market town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It developed around Devizes Castle, an 11th-century Norman architecture, Norman castle, and received a charter in 1141. The castle was besieged during the Anarchy, a 12th-century ...

History

The

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

of 1086 recorded a settlement of 28 households, held by

Edward of Salisbury Edward of Salisbury was a nobleman and courtier (''curialis''), probably part Anglo-Saxon, who served as High Sheriff of Wiltshire during the reigns of William I, William II and Henry I. The ''Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis'' (1293) names him as ...

. The manor came into the Malwain family by 1195, and in 1489 passed to the Wiltshire branch of the

Ernle Ernle was the surname of an English gentry or landed family descended from the lords of the manor of Earnley in Sussex who derived their surname from the name of the place where their estates lay. Origins Onomastic Onomasticians say that t ...

family, whose descendants included Sir Edward Ernle (c.1673-1729), a Member of Parliament. The land continued to pass by inheritance until it was sold in 1928. The village had an alternative name of Ashlington, which was in common use until the 19th century. The village grew along both sides of a street, with the church near the middle; after houses in the central section fell into disuse, by 1885 that part of the street had been reduced to a footpath, and today the village continues as two distinct settlements. Manor Farmhouse, a

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

two-storey

timber framed Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden ...

building, is from the early 16th century. Etchilhampton House, 1773, is a two-storey three-bay house in brick and stone. Etchilhampton stood on the

Upavon Upavon is a rural village and civil parish in the county of Wiltshire, England. As its name suggests, it is on the upper portion of the River Avon which runs from north to south through the village. It is on the north edge of Salisbury Plain ...

road until, in 1768, a new road (now the A342) was built on the southern slope of Etchilhampton Hill, avoiding the steep gradients of the earlier route. A few years later a monument – a stone plinth bearing a seated lion – was erected by the turning for Etchilhampton in memory of James Long of Wedhampton, who had promoted the new road. A school was built in the centre of the village in 1831, and rebuilt in 1875. Children of all ages attended until 1929, when older pupils were transferred to Devizes. The school closed in 1970 owing to low numbers of pupils. The population of the parish peaked in the mid 19th century, with 282 recorded at the 1841 census. Numbers fell to 170 by 1881 and have continued at or below that level.

Parish church

The

Church of England parish church A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...

of St Andrew dates from the 14th century and has a late 12th century font; other furnishings include 17th century

box pew A box pew is a type of church pew that is encased in panelling and was prevalent in England and other Protestant countries from the 16th to early 19th centuries. History in England Before the rise of Protestantism, seating was not customary in chu ...

s. The chancel was rebuilt in the 1860s. The church was designated as

in 1962. It has always been a

chapelry A chapelry was a subdivision of an ecclesiastical parish in England and parts of Lowland Scotland up to the mid 19th century. Status It had a similar status to a township but was so named as it had a chapel of ease (chapel) which was the communi ...

of All Saints' Church at

All Cannings All Cannings (pronounced "Allcannings") is a village and civil parish in the Vale of Pewsey in the English county of Wiltshire, about east of Devizes. The parish includes the nearby smaller settlement of Allington. The southern part of the pa ...

; today it is served by the Cannings and Redhorn team ministry, which covers a large area of the Vale of Pewsey.

Local government

Etchilhampton is a civil parish with an elected parish council. It is in the area of

Wiltshire Council Wiltshire Council is a council for the unitary authority of Wiltshire (excluding the separate unitary authority of Swindon) in South West England, created in 2009. It is the successor authority to Wiltshire County Council (1889–2009) and the ...

unitary authority A unitary authority is a local authority responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are usually performed by a higher level of sub-national government or the national governmen ...

, which is responsible for most significant

local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...

functions.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Wiltshire Civil parishes in Wiltshire