Wiltshire

by Edith Olivier

  Chapter Thirteen

  SOME WILTSHIRE VILLAGES

  NOT only the character of the village itself but the character of the villagers also is largely determined by their greater or less degree of isolation. Imber, for instance, prides itself on the truth of this couplet:

  Imber on the Down,

  Four miles from any town.

  And during the early years of the war Imber seemed to retain even more than its old exclusiveness. It was situated in the middle of an area for practising with long-range guns. These were placed some miles to the east of the village and their target was some miles to the west. Over the village flew the great missiles in their war-practice, but the village itself remained an oasis of peace. It is true to admit that this isolation had its disadvantages, when just at the end of the war some unknown hooligans broke into the church and greatly damaged the beautiful old Crusader effigies and other treasures which had lain there undisturbed for many centuries, and one is thankful to say that this church has now been reconsecrated.

  Another typical instance of the isolation of villages is given by W. H. Hudson, who tells how he was bicycling on a remote road in the Chalke valley, when far away he saw a boy bird-scaring in the field. “ He appeared to have caught sight of me,” and he ran quite a quarter of a mile in order to meet the cyclist at a point in the road.

  “I got off my wheel and waited for him to speak.

  ‘Well?’ I said, but there was no answer. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I didn’t want anything.’

  ‘Well, what was your object in running?’

  ‘Just to see you pass.’ ”

  In Hodge and his Friends, by Richard Jefferies, we see how round about the seventies in the last century a very modern young “ bicycle farmer” rode past the reapers who were on their way home after a steady day’s work.

  “That be a better job than our’n’,” said one of the men watching him as he rode on.

  “Ay. He be a vine varmer, he be.”

  Meanwhile the young farmer had reached home and was meditating over his dinner.

  “What had struck him most was the great loss of time that must result from the absence of rapid means of communication on large farms.… Hours were occupied in riding round such farms, hours which might be saved by a simple means.… Why not have a field telegraph like that employed in military operations? The cable or wire rolled on a drum like those used for watering a lawn. All that was needed was to harness a pony, and the drum would unroll and lay the wire as it revolved. The farmer could then sit in his office, and telegraph his instructions without a moment’s delay.… Practically there was no more necessity for the farmer to go outside his office than for the merchant in Mincing Lane.”

  Motor-buses running between the towns and villages and mechanisation on the farms have ended most of the disadvantages which in the old days came from this isolation, and in many villages life is just as individual as it used to be although the people are in touch, as their fathers never were, with the world outside.

  BISHOPS CANNINGS

  Geographically Bishops Cannings is almost in the very middle of the county: it has to a peculiar extent the quality of extreme Wiltshireness. This is partly given to it by its situation, profoundly isolated in a valley under the Plain, with as its near neighbours the ancient Wansdyke and some lonely barrows. The actual village is lowlying and level, with all round it the long flat summits of the downs. They rise in no sudden peaks. There is only that serene line along the sky.

  From time immemorial this village was the property of the bishops of Salisbury, who probably received it by grant from the crown of Wessex. There was one disturbed period between 1102 and 1139 when the proud Bishop Roger took a turbulent part in the war between the Empress Matilda and Stephen, but after the Bishop’s death the manor soon returned to its ecclesiastical owner.

  The people are as essentially Wiltshire as is their home. They too are the very middle of the county, and it is no wonder that it is a Bishops Cannings anecdote which has given to all Wiltshire men their sobriquet of “moonrakers”. It was here that, on one moonlit night in midwinter, an astute exciseman from the town found a little group of rustics fruitlessly raking a dewpond. For what? For nothing at all. Being a practical man he naturally asked the foolish fellows what in the world they were doing. They pointed to the reflection of the full moon in the water, large, and yellow, and round.

  “Zomebody has been and lost a cheese,” they said, “and we’m a-rakin of un out of thic thur pond.”

  The exciseman glowed with pride when he heard the roar of laughter with which this story was received when he told it, in his most farcical fashion, at the Bear Inn at Devizes. He did not know that the laugh was with, and not against, the men of Bishops Cannings, whose pond was a regular dumping place for the casks of whisky smuggled from the Dorset coast across the vast spaces of Salisbury Plain, which, in those days, was said to be “ never without a thief or twain”. The audience at Devizes knew most of the smugglers well, and enjoyed hearing how their neighbours had once more successfully pitted their wits against the world.

  The first impression of the village itself is of the beauty of its thatched cottages. Obviously the art of thatching is here by no means dead, for the latest thatch is quite as good as the earliest. In the churchyard are a good number of eighteenth-century altar tombs, and these tell that at that time there must have been living in the village a stonemason who was no mean sculptor, for many of these tombs are decorated with bands of carving in low relief, the designs of which are full of imagination and taste. A subject which often recurs is the Tudor rose, and this is to be seen again here and there in the wood-carving on the pew ends in the church. One wonders whether the rose was a part of the coat-of-arms possessed by some family in the village or whether it was a fancy of the sculptor himself.

  The church was built during the transition from Norman to Early English architecture and the nave pillars are Norman with rather Byzantine capitals: from these spring pointed arches. At the east end of the south aisle is a very pretty little chantry in pure Early English style: here the groups of little pillars supporting the arches are peculiarly graceful. This chantry was originally a Lady Chapel and was called “Our Lady Bower”, but in 1563 the churchwardens did “give and grant it to John Ernie and his heirs and assigns for ever” so that it should no more be used “for the celebration of papistical massess … repugnant and contrary to Divine Law”. Ernie was allowed to construct and build what he wished in the chantry and it now contains the tombs of his family. There is also in it a very curious painted and enclosed chair, about which there has been considerable controversy. In fact, it is quite unlike anything else, and cannot in its present form have ever been used for either of the purposes which have been suggested—as a confessional box, or as a “carrel” or chair of meditation such as was used by monks for their solitary devotions. It has obviously been considerably altered since it was last used, and it may well have been originally designed for either of those uses. What gives it its character today is the painting upon it—a large Hand with inscribed on the ringers various moral maxims in Latin, and below this a black cock and a white duck with legends issuing from their mouths. This painting is probably fifteenth-century and follows a fashion of that day when such speaking birds and animals were to be seen in churches in England, France, Italy, Portugal and Madeira.

  Early in the seventeenth century Bishops Cannings had a famous rector in a Mr Ferraby whom Aubrey calls

  “an ingenious man and an excellent musician. He made severall of his parishioners good musicians, both for vocall and instrumentan musick: they sung the psalms, in consort to the organ, which Mr Ferraby procured to be erected. When King James I was in these parts, he lay at Sir Edward Baynton’s at Bromham. Mr Ferraby then entertained his majesty at the Bush, in Cotefield, with bucoliques of his own making and composing of four parts which were sung by his parishioners, who wore frocks and whippes, like carters. Whilst hi
s majesty was thus diverted, the eight bells did ring, and the organ was played for state; and after this musical entertainment, he entertained his majesty with a football match of his own parishioners. This parish in those days would have challenged all England for musique, football and ringing.… When Queene Anne returned from Bathe Mr Ferraby made an entertainment for her majesty on Cannings Down, … with a pastorall performed by himself and his parishioners in shepherds weeds. A copie of his song was printed within a compartment excellently well engraved and designed, made of goates, pipes, sheephooks, cornucopias etc., it was by her Highnesse most gratiously accepted and approved and also bounteously rewarded; and by the right honourable, worshipfull, and the rest of the general hearers and beholders, worthily applauded.”

  Many funny stories are told about the “ Cannings volk”, always illustrating something of their humour and inventiveness. As long ago as when the church was being built by local masons the builders were chaffed by their neighbours because one of the two spires they had built was much shorter than the other. “ ’ E’ll soon grow as big as t’other,” they answered, and they carried a few loads of manure which they stacked round the little spire. By degrees the heap sank, and as it did so, the spire was again in sight. “There, ’e be growing up vine,” said the men of Cannings.

  A lovable story of the Bishops Cannings people is that the whole population of the village appeared one evening in Devizes market place. When asked what they were doing there they explained that they had heard that there was a comet to be seen just on that spot, and this so excited them that they all walked to Devizes on foot rather than miss this astronomical sight.

  And one more instance of the curious sense of humour belonging to Cannings people is the story of the man who said, “ When I wur walking whoam to Cannings, a fog come on, not so bad as I couldn’t zee my way. I see our Jem coming t’ords I, but as he come nearer, ’e didn’t zeem quite like our Jem; and when we met, why dang me! t’wern’t neither on us.”

  STOCKTON IN THE WYLYE VALLEY

  Long before the Romans came to Britain, the Stockton people already possessed the social gifts which have distinguished them ever since. This place has always been self-sufficient. It has organised itself for work and for play. It still does so.

  The first settlement which can be traced in Stockton was on the down a little to the north of Stockton Wood, so, like most early Wiltshire villages, it was well above the river level. This British village has been partly excavated, and enough was then discovered to prove that the aboriginal inhabitants were by no means savages. Their life demanded plenty of ornament. They wore brooches of bronze and enamel, bronze necklets and wristlets, and many beads. Their spoons were made of bronze and of bone, and with these they ate off pottery coming from Italy, Gaul and the New Forest. When their feasts were over, they “rose up to play” at draughts, for some of their draughtsmen have been dug up; and they were not averse to a little gambling with counters, which they made by roughly trimming the edges of broken fragments of pottery. Many of these relics were found in the neighbourhood of a cremated burial which has been dated at about 100 B. C.

  A Saxon charter of 901 is preserved at Winchester, and this shows that in King Alfred’s day the Lord of Stockton was a noble named Wulfhere, who seemed to have got into trouble with the Crown, and so forfeited his estate. Alfred’s son, Edward the Elder, then granted it to one Ethelwulf, who passed it on to his wife Deorswith, “ as her own possession, to dispose of as to her was most desirable”. It was “desirable” to Deorswith to present the estate to the monastery of St Swithun at Winchester; and Domesday Book records it as still belonging to that monastery. The priors of St Swithun took good care of it, for it is a remarkable thing that in this charter of 901, in Domesday, and today, the boundaries of Stockton have remained unchanged. Evidently a contented place. The names of the lords of the manor are all entered in the records, from R. Vernon, Prior of St Swithun, 1285—1346, to Henry Brooke (1530). He was the last ecclesiastical owner of Stockton, and then in 1559 Henry VIII appointed the first lay lord of the manor since Saxon days. This was William Herbert, the first Lord Pembroke.

  The population of Stockton has not varied much, and lists of the families living there exist from 1200 down to the present day. Early lists of names are short. There were four families in 1200, sixteen in 1300, and by 1400 the number had gone up to thirty. It was down to twenty-two in 1500, and was highest in 1600 and 1700—forty-six and forty-four. At the present day there are fifty-six inhabited houses containing a hundred and eighty-six people; and since 1801 the population has moved up and down between two hundred and twenty-four and one hundred and eighty.

  More interesting than these statistics are the various occupations of the Stockton people in the last two hundred years, and it is sad to see how far more varied these used to be than they are today. In 1847 there were three carpenters, one tailor—“ John Dyer sat cross-legged in the window at No. 22” and who also “played the ‘cello in Church”—three shoemakers, two grocers, one pig-dealer, two blacksmiths, one wheelwright, one butcher, one maltster, one curate, one parson, one beershop and forty-six cottagers. But there was no baker, for every woman was proud to bake her own bread.

  Nicholas Fleming had been the carpenter in 1694, and the trade was still in his family in the nineteenth century; and the Giles were the blacksmiths for a hundred years from 1809. When Tom Farley died during the war he brought an end to a family which had lived in Stockton for five hundred years.

  Coming to 1930, the village occupations included one keeper, one clerk-of-works, six gardeners, three railwaymen, two grooms, six farmers (one of whom was also a coal merchant), one houseman, one motor-driver, one rector, one innkeeper and one butler.

  At that time several people in the village employed domestic servants. At Stockton House there were three menservants, including a chauffeur, five maids, and seven gardeners; while at Long Hall the staff was five maids, a groom and three gardeners. Five or six people employed a maid apiece, and most of these also kept a groom or gardener.

  Agricultural wages then were thirty shillings to thirty-six shillings weekly, and rents were three shillings to six shillings.

  Particulars relating to 1847 come from a book compiled in that year by Mr T. Miles, the parson; and now, nearly a hundred years later, Mr Yeatman Biggs, of Long Hall, has made a similar book, and has also collected personal recollections of the past sixty or seventy years from old inhabitants. They give a lively picture of village life. Stockton was the only Wiltshire village to appear in the “Coronation Royal Record” of 1937, in recognition of its beauty and of the pains taken by its inhabitants to maintain this beauty.

  Mrs Giles, who remembered the village in 1877, says it was then “much the same as it is today”. The inhabitants were

  “genuine Wiltshire people, friendly, contented, and happy, always ready to lend a helping hand. Everyone joined in dancing, sliding, skating in the meadows, or picnics on the downs, … no merriment was complete without dancing, to the tune of accordion, concertina, fiddle, whistle pipe, and even mouth organ. If none of these instruments was forthcoming, the dancers made their own music, singing and whistling as they danced.”

  Stockton people must have been great dancers in those days. Not content with only two or three kinds of dance, like the lazy and limited performers of today, their programmes included: Up-the-Side-and-Down-the-Middle, Bricks and Mortar, Sir Roger de Coverley, Four-handed Reel, Ribbon Dance, Heel and Toe Polka, ordinary Polka, Polka-Mazourka, Waltz, Schottische, Highland Schottische, Varsoviana, Gallop, Swedish Dance, Lancers and Quadrille.

  In the winter the boys “made play of work” in the smithy, with sledge and anvil, and there was singing and boxing. The room was lit by stable lantern, and the seats were planks laid across barrels. The occupants were completely contented.

  In the memory of the oldest inhabitant of any date, Stockton Feast on the Sunday after July 6th was the great day of the year. It always “ began a week
of jollity”. For the day itself, “new potatoes were dug for the first time”, and everyone was sure of “an extra good dinner”. Five or six of the villagers got temporary licences for the week and sold beer in their own houses, for “tea was too expensive”. The whole village had a festal air, because there were “stalls by the road side from No. 11 to Almshouse Lane”, and at these were sold sweets, cakes, ginger beer and other fairings; while Charlie Topp from Codford did a roaring trade in cockles and winkles.

  Outwardly the present generation expects a more refined setting for its recreations, but the spirit is the same. The old barn has now become a theatre which has discovered a good deal of local talent, and in addition to regular plays once or twice each month, there are miscellaneous programmes consisting of playlets called “sketches”, songs and violin solos; and when Christmas comes, everyone dances at the Christmas party. Meantime, all through the winter, the reading-room in the village is filled with members enjoying papers, books and magazines; playing billards, bagatelle or darts; or continuing the ancient village tradition of draughts. All of this is managed by a committee of the members, who also elect an entertainments committee which gives a weekly village party. Stockton entertains itself, of course.