Foxham is a village in Bremhill

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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated to Wilts) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It borders Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the north-east, Berkshire to the east, Hampshire to the south-east, Dorset to the south, and Somerset to ...

, England, about northeast of

Chippenham Chippenham is a market town in north-west Wiltshire, England. It lies north-east of Bath, Somerset, Bath, west of London and is near the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The town was established on a crossing of the River Avon, ...

and a similar distance northwest of

Calne Calne () is a town and Civil parishes in England, 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 ...

Manor

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 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086 recorded a small settlement of ten households at Cadenham, close to the east end of present-day Foxham. The

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were usually held the lord's manorial courts, communal mea ...

, Cadenham Manor, is a house of five

bays A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

built in the second half of the 17th century. It replaces an earlier house, from which part of a window-head survives in the north porch that was added in the 20th century.Pevsner & Cherry, page 251 The manor was owned by a branch of the Hungerford family, including George Hungerford (1637-1712).

Church and chapel

There is a record of Foxham being a

chapelry A chapelry was a subdivision of an ecclesiastical parish in England and parts of Lowland Scotland up to the mid 19th century. Status A chapelry had a similar status to a Township (England), township, but was so named as it had a chapel of ease ...

of the parish of Bremhill and Highway by 1219. The present

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 ...

of Saint

John the Baptist John the Baptist ( – ) was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early first century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, John the Immerser in some Baptist ...

was designed by the Gothic Revival architect

William Butterfield William Butterfield (7 September 1814 – 23 February 1900) was a British Gothic Revival architect and associated with the Oxford Movement (or Tractarian Movement). He is noted for his use of polychromy. Biography William Butterfield was bo ...

and built in 1878–81. The church is

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

, and has a stained glass window made in about 1855 that was part of the east window of St Martin's parish church, Bremhill. Today Bremhill parish is part of the Marden Vale benefice, alongside

St Mary Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under various titles such as virgin or queen, many of them mentioned in the Litany of Loreto. ...

and Holy Trinity at Calne, and the churches of Blackland and Derry Hill. A

Wesleyan Wesleyan theology, otherwise known as Wesleyan–Arminian theology, or Methodist theology, is a theological tradition in Protestant Christianity based upon the ministry of the 18th-century evangelical reformer brothers John Wesley and Charle ...

chapel was built at Foxham in 1855, but it has been closed and converted into a house.

Canal

Construction of the

Wilts & Berks Canal The Wilts & Berks Canal is a canal in the historic counties of Wiltshire and Berkshire, England, linking the Kennet and Avon Canal at Semington near Melksham, to the River Thames at Abingdon. The North Wilts Canal merged with it to become a ...

began at

Semington Semington is a village and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in Wiltshire, England. The village is about south of Melksham and about northeast of Trowbridge. The parish includes the hamlets of Little Marsh and Littleton.locks were under construction. By June 1800 the next section, from Foxham to

Dauntsey Dauntsey is a village and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It gives its name to the Dauntsey Vale in which it lies. The village is set on slightly higher ground in the floodplain of the upper Bristol Avon. Today, ...

, was complete, and the canal was completed to Abingdon in September 1810. The canal passed Foxham just east of Cadenham Manor, with two locks just north of the Foxham-Hilmarton road. It brought coal from the

Somerset coalfield The Somerset Coalfield in northern Somerset, England is an area where coal was mined from the 15th century until 1973. It is part of a larger coalfield which stretched into southern Gloucestershire. The Somerset coalfield stretched from Cromh ...

Swindon Swindon () is a town in Wiltshire, England. At the time of the 2021 Census the population of the built-up area was 183,638, making it the largest settlement in the county. Located at the northeastern edge of the South West England region, Swi ...

and Abingdon. Traffic declined after the Great Western railway was completed in 1841 and was minimal by the end of the century, then ceased altogether in 1901 after the partial collapse of the aqueduct over the

River Marden The River Marden is a small tributary of the River Avon, Bristol, 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 j ...

at Stanley, some south of Foxham. The canal was formally abandoned by an Act of Parliament in 1914. The main line of the canal is now being restored. As of 2010, restoration of the section east of Foxham Top Lock was complete.

Amenities

Foxham has one

public house A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption Licensing laws of the United Kingdom#On-licence, on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the ...

, the ''Foxham Inn''. The Reading Room was built in 1884 by the Lansdowne family and extended in 1979. It is Foxham's

village hall A village hall is a public building in a rural or suburban community which functions as a community centre without a religious affiliation. United Kingdom In the United Kingdom, a village hall is a building which is owned by a local gover ...

and also houses its Sub-Post Office.

References

Sources

* * {{authority control Villages in Wiltshire