Quidhampton 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 ...

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. It forms part of the

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of ...

urban area and is around west of the city centre. The parish adjoins Wilton to the west, Salisbury to the north and east, and

Netherhampton Netherhampton is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, immediately west of the city of Salisbury. The village is about from the city centre. History In 1993 the Salisbury Hoard was excavated within the parish. These Bronze Age ...

to the south. The village is on the

River Nadder The River Nadder is a tributary of the River Avon, flowing in south Wiltshire, England. Course The river flows north from Ludwell to West End where it is joined by the Ferne Brook, close to the Lower Coombe and Ferne Brook Meadows site of spec ...

and is close to the

A36 road The A36 is a trunk road and primary route in southwest England that links the port city of Southampton to the city of Bath. At Bath, the A36 connects with the A4 to Bristol, thus providing a road link between the major ports of Southampton an ...

between Salisbury and Wilton. The name Quidhampton probably means "muddy home farm" or "home farm with good manure", from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

''cwéad'' (dung, dirt) + ''hām-tūn''.

Geography

Quidhampton is situated on low-lying land between Salisbury and Wilton, close to the

. The parish is a narrow strip between the Rivers Nadder and

Wylye Wylye () is a village and civil parish on the River Wylye in Wiltshire, England. The village is about northwest of Salisbury and a similar distance southeast of Warminster. The parish extends north and south of the river, and includes the h ...

and consists of watermeadows and marshland, known as the Great Marsh. Much of this marsh was included in the park around

Wilton House Wilton House is an English country house at Wilton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, which has been the country seat of the Earls of Pembroke for over 400 years. It was built on the site of the medieval Wilton Abbey. Following the dissolution ...

when it was enclosed, and the remaining land is mostly used for arable cropping. In the eighteenth century there was a gravel pit in the parish, and many old chalk pits. The roads had to be rerouted when Wilton Park was formed, and are mostly straight and lined with trees planted at the time.

Local government

The civil parish elects a 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 all significant local government functions. Until 1894, Quidhampton was a

tithing A tithing or tything was a historic English legal, administrative or territorial unit, originally ten hides (and hence, one tenth of a hundred). Tithings later came to be seen as subdivisions of a manor or civil parish. The tithing's leader or ...

Fugglestone St Peter Fugglestone St Peter was a small village, manor, and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, lying between the town of Wilton and the city of Salisbury. The civil parish came to an end in 1894 when it was divided between the adjoining parishes, and ...

, and it then formed part of the new parish of

Bemerton Bemerton, once a rural hamlet and later a civil parish to the west of Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, is now a suburb of that city. Modern-day Bemerton has areas known as Bemerton Heath, Bemerton Village and Lower Bemerton. History In 1086, t ...

until it was established as a parish in its own right in 1934.

Notable landmarks

There is a pub, the White Horse, and a village hall. Quidhampton has no church. For

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...

purposes it is part of Bemerton parish. The chalk pit known as Quidhampton Quarry is outside the parish, to the north of the A36. It is owned by

Imerys Imerys S.A. is a French multinational company which specialises in the production and processing of industrial minerals. It is headquartered in Paris and is a constituent of the CAC Mid 60 index. Imerys has operations in over 40 countries and ...

and produced

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. C ...

and

china clay Kaolinite ( ) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4. It is an important industrial mineral. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedra ...

until its closure in 2009. The abandoned quarry has been described as a "derelict and ugly site", and in 2016 there are plans to fill it with imported recycled aggregate and level the site to remove the eyesore.

Notable people

Simon Forman Simon Forman (31 December 1552 – 5 or 12 September 1611) was an Elizabethan astrologer, occultist and herbalist active in London during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and James I of England. His reputation, however, was severely tarnishe ...

, a 16th and 17th century

astrologer Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Di ...

, was born at Quidhampton in 1552.Ann Hoffman, ''Lives of the Tudor age, 1485-1603'' (1977), p. 177

References

External links

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Quidhampton Parish Council
{{authority control Villages in Wiltshire Civil parishes in Wiltshire