Midway Manor is a country house and farm in Wingfield parish, about south of

Bradford on Avon Bradford-on-Avon (sometimes Bradford on Avon or Bradford upon Avon) is a town and civil parish in west Wiltshire, England, near the border with Somerset, which had a population of 9,402 at the 2011 census. The town's canal, historic buildings, s ...

in Wiltshire, England. The house is approximately midway between Bradford on Avon and Wingfield, on the B3109 road. It was originally an Elizabethan Manor Farm flanked by two large stone barns. In about 1723, the Midway estate was the property of the Shrapnel family who were prosperous cloth merchants from Bradford on Avon. Lieutenant-General

Henry Shrapnel Lieutenant General Henry Shrapnel (3 June 1761 – 13 March 1842) was a British Army officer whose name has entered the English language as the inventor of the shrapnel shell. Henry Shrapnel was born at Midway Manor in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltsh ...

(1761–1842), inventor of the Shrapnel shell, was born at Midway Manor which remained with the Shrapnel family until 1871. The house had stone cannonballs mounted in various places on the front façade, and a carving of the Shrapnel shell exploding with the Latin inscription ''Ratio Ultima Regum'' ("the Last Argument of Kings"), a phrase

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ver ...

of France had cast on the cannons of his armies. This carving is now immediately outside the Manor's entrance gates. On the back of the gate piers, the names of some of the battles that were won with the aid of the Shrapnel shell are engraved. These include the battles of Waterloo, Talavera, the Kyber Pass,

Salamanca Salamanca () is a city in western Spain and is the capital of the Province of Salamanca in the autonomous community of Castile and León. The city lies on several rolling hills by the Tormes River. Its Old City was declared a UNESCO World Herit ...

, San Sebastian,

Bidassoa __NOTOC__ The Bidasoa (, ; french: Bidassoa, ) is a river in the Basque Country of northern Spain and southern France that runs largely south to north. Named as such downstream of the village of Oronoz-Mugairi (municipality of Baztan) in the pro ...

, Bella Formosa, Tsage, Abyssinia, Monte Video, Maida, Ghuzznee (Ghazni), Bussaco,

Table Bay Table Bay (Afrikaans: ''Tafelbaai'') is a natural bay on the Atlantic Ocean overlooked by Cape Town (founded 1652 by Van Riebeeck) and is at the northern end of the Cape Peninsula, which stretches south to the Cape of Good Hope. It was named b ...

, Kioze as well as the

Crimean Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...

and Burmese wars. On top of each gate pier are four of the original spherical case shots. The late-19th century gate piers are Grade II listed since 1988. In 1892, the manor became the property of Henry Baynton who removed the front façade, necessitating an almost complete rebuilding of the houseMidway Manor Wingfield, Nr Trowbridge, Wiltshire
at shrapnel.org.uk. with stone provided from the barns which were then demolished.

References

{{Reflist Country houses in Wiltshire