Just before Christmas WBR looked at a farmhouse in the hamlet of Southcott, within the parish of Pewsey. It was the usual story – an old farm which was worked by generations of farmers is no longer viable. The lands are sold off and the farmhouse is turned into a country hideaway for busy people. The transition from rural dwelling to sophisticated mansion necessitates a good lot of tweaking of the original fabric to bring it up to date, as well as extending the accommodation to provide services such as our rustic forbears would never have dreamed of (Southcott has a swimming pool and sauna!).

The hamlet of Southcott, c.1960
Ref: P48999

Part of our remit is to look into the history of those that lived there before, and take a peek at what they were doing, partly to inform us as to how the building might have been used at a particular time, and although not strictly necessary, what sort of people they were.

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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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