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. 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. It forms part of the

Salisbury Salisbury ( , ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and civil parish in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers River Avon, Hampshire, Avon, River Nadder, Nadder and River Bourne, Wi ...

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 a ...

to the south. The village is on the

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

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 , or ), 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 developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

''cwéad'' (dung, dirt) + ''hām-tūn''.

Geography

Quidhampton is 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 ha ...

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, known between 1889 and 2009 as Wiltshire County Council, is the Local government in England, local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Wiltshire (district), Wiltshire in South West England, and has its headquarters a ...

unitary authority A unitary authority is a type of local government, local authority in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Unitary authorities are responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are ...

, 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, an ...

, 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, th ...

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

Notable landmarks

There is a

pub A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the late 17th century, to differentiate private ho ...

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

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

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 corporation, multinational company that specialises in the production and processing of industrial minerals. The main headquarters is located in Paris and are constituents of the CAC Mid 60 index. Groupe Bru ...

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. Ch ...

and

china clay Kaolinite ( ; also called kaolin) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition aluminium, Al2Silicon, Si2Oxygen, O5(hydroxide, OH)4. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedron, tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen ...

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 Divination, divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that propose that information about human affairs and terrestrial events may be discerned by studying the apparent positions ...

, 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