With the longest day and the solstice celebrations at Avebury and Stonehenge our thoughts have turned to summer and summers past. In a rural county this was an important time with a succession of harvests that involved whole families for many weeks. In the 19^th century the school summer holiday was known as Harvest Holiday and was often adjusted if the grain harvest was early or late.

18th century representation of a Wiltshire shepherd

Children were often kept away from school to help in the fields, bring refreshments to their working parents or look after younger siblings. Women who apparently had no job according to census records would work long hours in the fields at such seasonal work. To find out more about how the season has made its mark on the Wiltshire landscape, please 'read more'...

In past centuries summer was the time when land and areas that were inaccessible or unusable in other months could be brought into use. We don’t have the hafods – the summer farms of the Welsh hills – but we do have certain names that tell us about these areas.

Great and Little Somerford are linked by a river crossing that really was a ford usable only in the drier months of the year. Even after a bridge had been built the baker’s cart was once washed off the road and the horse unfortunately drowned. At least six people drowned near the village during the 19th century and in 1605 the Rector Richard Attwood drowned too, six months after he’d been married (according to John Aubrey), fording the river. In 1799 the Reverend Demainbray had to take a roundabout route, avoiding the river crossing, to reach the church in order to take the service.

Great Somerford Church

The other ‘summer’ names of Wiltshire all relate to pasture land that was used in the warm dry months. Summer Down is perhaps the nearest we get to the higher Welsh hill farms; this is Upper Chalk downland in such places as Bratton, Market Lavington and Collingbourne Kingston. Sheep were moved here after lambing on lower ground and the shepherd spent all day with the flock, bringing them to lower arable land, which they made more fertile with their dung, at night.

‘The pale flock moving over the low green swells, now tailing out, now rounding into bunches, the slow figure stalking beside them, anon pausing in his measured walk and leaning motionless upon his stick, while they feed around him; the dog sitting up a little apart, emulating in little that human gravity and wisdom. All the sameness and silence of the Plain is in the constant spectacle.’

Or as the 18^th century thresher poet of Charlton, Stephen Duck, wrote,

            “But to his mouth the shepherd ne’r applies

            His mellow Pipe or vocal Music tries –

Propt on his staff, he indolently stands.”

Summer Field, first mentioned in Marlborough in 1202, and Summerleaze in East Knoyle (1549) are also pastures used in summer. Summerham Bridge, mentioned at Poulshot in the 13^th century is most interesting. Ham is the land or enclosure by a river and would often have been flooded in winter when the river water deposited valuable nutrients from lands upstream that resulted in lush meadow grass in summer.