Hippenscombe is a hamlet within the
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 ...
of
Tidcombe and Fosbury
Tidcombe and Fosbury is a civil parish in Wiltshire, England, about southeast of Marlborough and south of Hungerford, Berkshire. It includes the three small settlements of Fosbury, Tidcombe, and Hippenscombe and lies on the eastern edge of th ...
,
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 ...
, in the southwest of England. Marked only on large-scale maps, it lies to the southwest of Oakhill Wood and the northwest of
Conholt Park, about south of
Hungerford
Hungerford is a historic market town and civil parish in Berkshire, England, west of Newbury, east of Marlborough, northeast of Salisbury and 60 miles (97 km) west of London. The Kennet and Avon Canal passes through the town alongside the ...
, Berkshire.
Hippenscombe has a long separate history of its own, having been an
extra-parochial area
In England and Wales, an extra-parochial area, extra-parochial place or extra-parochial district was a geographically defined area considered to be outside any ecclesiastical or civil parish. Anomalies in the parochial system meant they had no chu ...
.
Much of the land was assigned in 1553 to
Edward Seymour (1539–1621), later Earl of Hertford and the builder of
Tottenham House
Tottenham House is a large Grade I listed English country house in the parish of Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, about five miles southeast of the town of Marlborough. It is separated from the town by Savernake Forest, which is part of the Tottenham ...
in
Savernake Forest
Savernake Forest stands on a Cretaceous chalk plateau between Marlborough and Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire, England. Its area is approximately .
Most of the forest lies within the civil parish of Savernake. It is privately owned by the Earl of Ca ...
, and was owned by his descendants until sold by
Charles Brudenell-Bruce, 1st Marquess of Ailesbury
Charles Brudenell-Bruce, 1st Marquess of Ailesbury (14 February 1773 – 4 January 1856), styled The Honourable Charles Brudenell-Bruce from birth until 1776, Lord Bruce from 1776 to 1814 and The Earl of Ailesbury from 1814 to 1821, was a Britis ...
in 1827.
The area was severely affected by the
Swing Riots of 1830. The population taken at 19th-century censuses was never more than 59, and by 1891 had declined to 35.
John Marius Wilson's ''
Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales
The ''Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales'' is a substantial topographical dictionary first published between 1870 and 1872, edited by the Reverend John Marius Wilson. It contains a detailed description of England and Wales. Its six volumes h ...
'' (1870–1872) said of Hippenscombe:
In 1858 Hippenscombe became a separate civil parish. Hippenscombe was added to
Tidcombe ecclesiastical parish in 1879
and to Tidcombe and Fosbury civil parish in 1894.
References
External links
{{Commons category inline
Hippenscombeat old-maps.co.uk
Hamlets in Wiltshire
Former civil parishes in Wiltshire