Local History

Welcome

The Parish of Heytesbury, Knook, Tytherington and Imber

Heytesbury
Wiltshire

Home ~ History ~ Tourism ~ Links ~ Parish Council ~ Village Hall  

As with many officers who served in both world wars, the poet Siegfried Sassoon who had been stationed in the area for training on Salisbury Plain decided to make Heytesbury his home. Near the end of the 1920s Sassoon purchased Heytesbury House and lived there until his death in 1967.

Nowadays he is more famed as an autobiographer with his posthumously published Diaries and also as a novelist with such works as Sherston's Progress and The Diary of a Foxhunting Man, but he is more well known for as one of the country's war poets, and as well as his War Poems of 1919 he had another eight volumes of verse were published.

Near the end of the 18th century a series of cloth mills were built along the banks of the river, as this was needed as a power source for the machinery. But this did not last long and Heytesbury was never competition for neighbouring Warminster.

heytesbury

Heytesbury House and the library circa 1966. Click thumb. Courtesy of George Sassoon

Heytesbury was a rotten borough in 1826 when William Cobbett rode through and it returned two members of parliament. Cobbett commented that 'what was formerly a considerable town, is now a very miserable affair'.

The population of the village was 1,412 in 1831 but due to the Great Reform Act of 1832 borough status was lost and people began to leave so that by 1931 the population was on 454. But today the village is thriving but fewer residents are employed within the community.William Cunnington (1754-1810) is one of the fathers of British archaeology and became the partner of Sir Richard Colt Hoare whose Ancient Wiltshire was published in 1812. The first volume is dedicated to Cunnington whose letters and reports
provided the material for the publication. Cunnington was a wool merchant whose doctors, for the sake of his health, had advised him to 'ride out or die'. 

This pronouncement was probably the original driving force behind his archaeological work. More than
most he turned the antiquary into the archaeologist and in later life was ably assisted by his wife and three daughters. The latter also wrote many of his letters and reports. There is a fairly complete set of these in Devizes Museum.

The Hungerford Hospital of St John and St Katherine was founded by the second Lord Hungerford in 1442 for the housing of twelve poor men and two poor women. It was provided with both a chapel and accommodation for the local schoolmaster. The present structure dates from after the village fire of 1765 and is to the design of the Trowbridge architect Esau Reynolds.

Also rebuilt in the 18th century is The Angel Inn, situated in the High Street. A sign of the earlier structure is a rain water hopper head, dated 1695. It was here that the Parliamentary 'elections' were held, although from as early as 1689 the only candidates were the two nominees of the Lord of the Manor. The Burgesses who elected the Members lived in properties owned by the major landowner; these were concentrated in an area known as Little London from at least 1773. It is believed that the name derives
from those electors who sent the nominees to Parliament in London, although in other villages the term was often jokingly used for a small or outlying part of the community.