The name Shrewton, the village set in the middle of Salisbury Plain, means the sheriff’s farm; the sheriff being Edward of Salisbury, Sheriff of Wiltshire who held the manor in the late 12^th and early 13^th centuries. But the present village of Shrewton is made up of seven medieval villages and hamlets, three of which were separate manors in 1086. One of these was Maddington – the maidens’ farm. The maidens were the nuns of Amesbury Abbey, later Priory, who held land here from Saxon times until the dissolution in 1539.

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One of our latest jobs has been to look at Seend House, a grade II* asymmetric villa based the on the Doric order in the centre of Seend, adjacent to the church. It was built between 1807 and 1815 for Thomas Bruges, a Melksham maltster and estate agent to Katherine Long of South Wraxall. 

He was born in 1751, the son of Thomas Bruges senior, a well-to-do farmer of Semington. The younger Thomas became rich as a Melksham maltster and also by acting as land agent for Miss Katherine Long of South Wraxall. He was a Justice of the Peace, and a Commissioner of both the Canal and Turnpike Trusts. Miss Long relied on Bruges’ friendship and advice. With her financial assistance, he bought Craysmarsh and Green Lane farms in Melksham Without, and built, just to the north of the church, the mansion later called Seend House. The Bruges’ family coat of arms is carved on the central pediment on the front elevation of the house, and the drive entrance on each side is flanked by a pillared lodge. Niklaus Pevsner in Wiltshire (the buildings of England series) calls it one of the two best houses in Seend, the other being the Manor House.

 
The Bruges' coat of arms

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 We recently had an enquiry regarding the origins of the road Sally In The Wood, which can in fact be found just over the border in the parish of Bathford, Somerset. It forms a section of the A363 as it journeys through Home Wood towards Bathford.

The explanations of the road name are both varied and intriguing, and as they are also closely related to the parish of Monkton Farleigh in Wiltshire, I thought I’d share them with you.

 
OS 1st edition, 1887, Ref: 32/5
Warleigh Manor can be seen in the top left corner, with the road Sally in the Wood running through Home Wood immediately to the right of the Manor.

John Chandler in his book ‘The Reflection in the Pond’, gives us three versions of the tale. The first is of a supernatural nature, and was published by Kathleen Wiltshire in 1984. It tells the story of a young couple who knocked down a girl dressed in white when she ran from trees across the road in front of their car. Another version, this time by Maggie Dobson and Simone Brightstein relate that Sally was murdered in the woods or imprisoned in nearby Brown’s Folly, or that she was an actual road accident victim. Interestingly, the name of the small section of woodland immediately below Home Wood is called 'Dead Man Wood'. Katy Jordan in her book ‘The Haunted Landscape’ mentions that Sally in the Woods does have the reputation of being an eerie place, where ‘no birds sing’, so you never know...
To find out more about the other versions of the tale, please 'read more'.

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