Some of the most popular talks I give are those dealing with the meaning of inn and pub names. Currently we don’t have a great variety of pub names in Wiltshire but we do still have some interesting ones. The Green Dragon at Alderbury was used by Charles Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewitt, as he was staying nearby while writing this novel. Dickens used many hostelries in his books and in this case he renamed it the Blue Dragon; perhaps the sign was somewhat faded to a pale blue and he misinterpreted it as it would have been unlikely that the name was on the building.

 
The Green Dragon at Alderbury

The green dragon came from the earls of Pembroke and many of the early names used the badges of great families. The red lion of John of Gaunt, the black bear of the earls of Warwick and the white hart of Richard II are still common today. From the 18^th century the full coat of arms was often used so that in Fovant we have the Pembroke Arms. The association with the badge or coat of arms often indicated that the family owned the property or were the chief landowners in the area.

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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....

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