Cherhill is a 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 authorit ...

in Wiltshire, England. The village is about east of the town of

Calne Calne () is a town and civil parish in Wiltshire, southwestern England,OS Explorer Map 156, Chippenham and Bradford-on-Avon Scale: 1:25 000.Publisher: Ordnance Survey A2 edition (2007). at the northwestern extremity of the North Wessex Downs ...

, on the A4 road towards Marlborough. The parish includes the village of Yatesbury.

Overview

Cherhill has a population of around 700 with a mixture of housing ranging from thatched cottages (some dating to the 14th century) to newly built detached houses. The River's Brook rises in the northeast of the village and flows west towards

Quemerford Quemerford is a southeastern suburb of the town of Calne in the county of Wiltshire, England. It is within both the Calne and Calne Without civil parishes, and lies on the A4 road towards Marlborough, which is some to the east. The River ...

, where it joins the

River Marden The River Marden is a small tributary of the River Avon in England. It flows from the hills surrounding Calne and meets the Avon about a mile upstream of Chippenham. The river has a mean flow of . Course The Marden rises just north of the val ...

Cherhill is known for the

Cherhill White Horse Cherhill White Horse is a hill figure on Cherhill Down, 3.5 miles east of Calne in Wiltshire, England. Dating from the late 18th century, it is the third oldest of several such white horses in Great Britain, with only the Uffington White Hor ...

cut into the chalk hillside in 1780, the Landsdowne obelisk on the Cherhill Downs, and the

crop circle A crop circle, crop formation, or corn circle is a pattern created by flattening a crop, usually a cereal. The term was first coined in the early 1980s by Colin Andrews. Crop circles have been described as all falling "within the range of the ...

s that appeared in the fields at the bottom of the Downs. The area around the horse and obelisk is owned by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

. On a clear day, the summit offers fine views, up to 25 miles, with the water tower at Tetbury in Gloucestershire visible. Atop the tall hill to the north of the village, opposite to Cherhill Downs, it is said to be possible to see the Severn crossings to South Wales, to the west.

Location

Cherhill lies on an old coaching road, now called the A4, which runs from central London to Bristol. Its nearest railway station is on the

Great Western Main Line The Great Western Main Line (GWML) is a main line railway in England that runs westwards from London Paddington to . It connects to other main lines such as those from Reading to Penzance and Swindon to Swansea. Opened in 1841, it was the o ...

, which is a stop for direct services between

London Paddington Paddington, also known as London Paddington, is a Central London railway terminus and London Underground station complex, located on Praed Street in the Paddington area. The site has been the London terminus of services provided by the Great We ...

and Bristol Temple Meads. The nearest motorway junction is junction 17 of the M4 north of Chippenham, away from Cherhill. The village is served by the Wigglybus scheme, which runs from Cherhill and other surrounding villages into nearby Calne and connects to further transport links.

History

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 ...

'' (1870–1872) says of Cherhill: The Lansdowne Monument, or Cherhill Monument, is a 125-foot stone

obelisk An obelisk (; from grc, ὀβελίσκος ; diminutive of ''obelos'', " spit, nail, pointed pillar") is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally constructed by An ...

erected in 1845 by the Third Marquis of Lansdowne on Cherhill Down in honour of his ancestor

Sir William Petty Sir William Petty FRS (26 May 1623 – 16 December 1687) was an English economist, physician, scientist and philosopher. He first became prominent serving Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth in Ireland. He developed efficient methods to su ...

. The civil parish increased in size in 1934, when Cherhill gained some land from

Calne Without Calne Without is a civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It is a rural parish surrounding the town of Calne, extending west to the Avon and south to the Roman road from London to Bath. Settlements in the parish are the village of Derry Hill; the ...

and absorbed the whole of Yatesbury parish.

Cherhill Downs, White Horse and Oldbury hillfort

Near the top of Cherhill Down stands Oldbury Camp or Oldbury Castle (not to be confused with sites having similar names in Somerset and Kent), which began as a

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

enclosure and was enlarged in the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly ...

to become a

hillfort A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...

. The

was cut out of the hillside in 1780. It has been restored several times due to chalk being washed away and weeds growing on it. The horse is visible from miles around and has become a landmark synonymous with the village and local area. From here it is possible to see the route of a

Roman road Roman roads ( la, viae Romanae ; singular: ; meaning "Roman way") were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, and were built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Re ...

heading toward the nearby Wansdyke trade route. The top of the hill is popular with ramblers, dog walkers and power kiters, owing to the powerful winds in action.

The Cherhill Gang

The Cherhill Gang was a notorious group of highway men who operated in the 18th century on the London to Bath main road (A4) which passes through the village – they were noted for their robbery technique of attacking the carriages of rich Londoners while completely naked, thus shocking passengers into handing over their money and also making it harder to identify them. A painting depicting one such attack can be seen in the Black Horse pub, on the A4 main road in the village.

Sundial

At one of the village's

bus shelter A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for ch ...

s is a millennium project of a

sundial A sundial is a horological device that tells the time of day (referred to as civil time in modern usage) when direct sunlight shines by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word, it consists of a f ...

. Consisting of a vertical sarsen stone inside a face of Roman numerals, it symbolises the passage of time.

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 James has 12th-century origins. Most of the building, including the tower, is from the 15th century. A west gallery in

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

style was added in 1840, and restoration in 1863 was by S.B. Gabriel. The church was designated as

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 I ...

in 1960. Cherhill was a dependent church of St Mary's, Calne until 1842. The ecclesiastical parish was enlarged in 1879 when 204 acres were transferred from Calne. Since 1973 the parish has been part of the Oldbury Benefice.

Governance

The Parish Council has a mostly consultative role, while the

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 ...

is responsible for all significant local government functions. The parish forms part of the

North Wiltshire North Wiltshire was a local government district in Wiltshire, England, formed on 1 April 1974, by a merger of the municipal boroughs of Calne, Chippenham, and Malmesbury along with Calne and Chippenham Rural District, Cricklade and Wootton Bas ...

parliamentary constituency.

Amenities

Cherhill has a primary school, built at Middle Lane in 1961 to replace a small school on The Street which was built in 1846 or 1847. The village hall was built in 1977, next to the old school. In 2015 a new building was proposed, on a larger site immediately east of the village boundary. Cherhill Cricket Club play in the

Wiltshire League The Wiltshire Football League is a football league in England, formed by amalgamation in 1976. All clubs are affiliated to a County Football Association. The area covered by the competition is the county of Wiltshire and 15 miles beyond the cou ...

. The village has a pub, the ''Black Horse''.

Bibliography

* Plenderleath, Rev. W. C., ''On the White Horses of Wiltshire and Its Neighbourhood'' (''Wilts Archaeological Magazine'', vol. 14 for the year 1872, pp. 12–30) *Plenderleath, Rev. W. C., ''White Horses of the West of England'' (London, Allen & Storr, 1892) *Plenderleath, Rev. W. C., ''Plenderleath's Memoranda of Cherhill'' (2001)Hobnob Marketplace
at Hobnob Press, accessed 19 July 2008

References

External links

*
Cherhill village website
* {{authority control Villages in Wiltshire Civil parishes in Wiltshire