Just recently I looked at a tiny house in the south of Wiltshire. Ansty has a population of about 125 but the head count is greatly expanded every May Day when Ansty holds its very popular celebration around the medieval duck pond, and near the Hospice or Commandery – a venerable 16^th century building on land once belonging to the Knights Hospitallers.

A rather more humble building is tucked away on the main street, almost hidden by trees and vegetation that has overgrown it. Nature very readily begins to reclaim its materials if we fail to keep it at bay! This tiny cottage dating to c1700 originally consisted of two small rooms – a living room/kitchen entered directly from the front door, and an unheated store. In 1768 it was leased to a carpenter named James Plowman, aged 55. Initials ‘IP’ found scratched on the soft Tisbury Greensand at the rear could have been those of James Plowman, as an ‘I’ could stand for a ‘J’ then.

 
The cottage

Comment (0) Read More...

Just lately my work has taken me to Manor Farm, a mixed farm at Broadchalke, one of those tiny, out-of-the-way places in the south of Wiltshire that you wouldn’t go through unless you had business there. It nestles in the Ebble Valley roughly between Salisbury and Shaftesbury. Manor Farmhouse is one of those long, low, rambling buildings that started at one end and carried on ad infinitum until stopped by a tall, square dovecote; a sort of punctuation mark in stone.  Additional charm is supplied by the weathered grey church of All Saints nearby presiding with quiet dignity over the centre of the village.

 
Manor Farm, Broadchalke

Every building I see that is of any age has had alterations made, almost as a matter of course, for the varying needs of successive tenants and owners. Looking at Manor Farmhouse it is possible to see its origins in the core of the building at the front. This core consists of a heated hall, then a general living room where the occupants cooked and slept and gathered for warmth, and an unheated parlour; a posh but cold room with a fine quadripartite ceiling (divided into quarters by chamfered beams) which showed off its status as the main secular building of importance or capital messuage of the estate. From digging in the records it seems that in the early 17^th century the parlour was too cold for comfort. A big external chimney stack was added onto the side of the parlour probably by Richard Aubrey, father of the celebrated Wiltshire diarist John Aubrey, who was to succeed him as the tenant of the Earls of Pembroke at the farm. Richard had married Deborah, the daughter of Isaac Lyte of Easton Piercey in the north of Wiltshire, where John was born on March 12^th 1625. John was removed from Trinity College, Oxford in 1643 because of the Civil War and brought home to Broadchalke where he later carried on the farm after his father died. 'Read more' to find out about his time at the farm....

Comment (0) Read More...