Liddington 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 ...

near

Swindon Swindon () is a town and unitary authority with borough status in Wiltshire, England. As of the 2021 Census, the population of Swindon was 201,669, making it the largest town in the county. The Swindon unitary authority area had a population ...

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. The settlement lies southeast of Swindon town, close to junction 15 of the

M4 motorway The M4, originally the London-South Wales Motorway, is a motorway in the United Kingdom running from west London to southwest Wales. The English section to the Severn Bridge was constructed between 1961 and 1971; the Welsh element was largely ...

, which is approximately away via the B4192.

History

The parish has been an area of settlement since the earliest times. The ancient Ridgeway traverses the parish just north of the village and 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 ...

hill-fort known as Liddington Castle, which is a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and ...

, overlooks the present-day village. Liddington is recorded in the late Saxon period, around 940 AD. 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 refers to the settlement as Ledentone. Records indicate that Liddington was a fairly prosperous parish in the 14th century. The population of the parish peaked at 454 in 1841 and then gradually declined.

'Starfish' decoy control bunker

Liddington Hill is the site of a control bunker for a World War II '

Starfish Starfish or sea stars are star-shaped echinoderms belonging to the class Asteroidea (). Common usage frequently finds these names being also applied to ophiuroids, which are correctly referred to as brittle stars or basket stars. Starfish a ...

' bombing decoy site. This would have been used to control fires, which would have acted as a decoy to enemy planes targeting the town of Swindon to the north. The bunker had a hatch in its concrete roof and consisted of two rooms off a central passage; the room on the right housed generators, while the control room was on the left.

Economy

Just east of the village is the children's adventure centre PGL Liddington, based at the historic

King Edward's Place King Edward's Place is a country house at Foxhill near Wanborough and Liddington in Wiltshire. It is currently known as PGL Liddington and is owned and operated by children's adventure holiday operator PGL. Previous names for the estate inclu ...

. Whilst the centre takes its name from Liddington as the nearest village, the centre is in the neighbouring parish of Wanborough.

References

External links

Civil parishes in Wiltshire Villages in Wiltshire Borough of Swindon {{Wiltshire-geo-stub