 
Copyright 2013: David C R Waymouth All rights reserved. This publication or any part of it may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author or his heirs

Published by David C R Waymouth at Smashwords

Downton: 7,000 years of an English village

Most of it written by David Waymouth

CONTENTS

PREAMBLE Another Millennium Ends

CHAPTER 1 The First Men in Downton

CHAPTER 2 The Normans Shape Downton

CHAPTER 3 A Busy Little Town

CHAPTER 4 Tudors And Others

CHAPTER 5 Challenges And Change

CHAPTER 6 The Great Estates

CHAPTER 7 Governing Downton

CHAPTER 8 Teaching Downton

CHAPTER 9 Downton in Difficulty

CHAPTER 10 Worship Changes

CHAPTER 11 Road And Rail

CHAPTER 12 War, Peace And Downton

CHAPTER 13 Downton's Latest Millennium Begins

Annex Families in Downton 1599- 1999, Emigrants to Canada

#  PREAMBLE ANOTHER DOWNTON MILLENNIUM ENDS

CELEBRATING IN STYLE

It is April 1998. Downton is to have a party. A big party. To mark a new Millennium. A year-long party, and the people who will help it happen are meeting, beer and sandwiches at the ready. Upwards of thirty of them, builder and baker, squire and vicar, old and young, in-comers and those who were born in the village, Top-enders and Bottom-enders - all have come with ideas and offers of help.

'Carnival - Irish ceilidh - bonfire and fireworks - rustic sports - open air concert and pageant - discos and dances - and, perhaps best of all, a New Years Eve party for the whole family together' come rattling out with much banter and laughter. Nearly two years away but already the party mood is on Downton.

A MILLENNIUM MARKER

As this team are planning to celebrate the start of a new Millennium probably most are only vaguely aware of how many other celebrations there have been in Downton over its many centuries. Coronations and Jubilees, great victories and declarations of peace, elections, even the passing of great reforms have all been excuses for this friendly village to let its hair down.

NOTE TO THIS ebook 2013 EDITION

This book aims to bring alive the happiness and the hardship of a history which goes back a long, long way. It sets out to do it in several ways. There are the historical facts as far as we know them. There are little playlets inspired and loosely based on those written by Dr Miranda Whitehead for the 1994 Downton Pageant. There are lists and tables, there are little nuggets that are meant to be fun or helpful. This is no work of scholarship. The book was written in three months to meet the Millennium deadline. There is some guesswork and plenty of generous interpretation of known facts and almost no original research, relying on earlier work some of which later turned out to be erroneous. Those errors uncovered have been corrected. Errors of emphasis are mine.

We hope it can give both those who already know and love Downton and those coming to it for the first time a sense of continuity. We want you to enjoy a marvellous heritage, the real story of England.

We printed 2,500 copies, sold 2,000, raising £4,500 for village charities, and gave every child in the village a personalised copy. Ever since there has been a steady stream of requests for the book. This is an abbreviated version but most of the meat is here. Sadly many pictures and plans have had to be omitted for this format.

# As mentioned above major errors have been corrected; others, no doubt, remain. This edition has been produced to help fund Downton's History Group for which contributions in kind – family histories, diaries, artefacts - as well as cash are always

welcome.

David Waymouth, July 2013

# CHAPTER 1 THE FIRST MEN IN DOWNTON

#

Downton is a very ancient Wiltshire village, six miles south of Salisbury. People have lived here for over 7,000 years because it was and is a good place to live. It lay between two lines of wooded chalk hills. It had a river, the Avon, which provided fresh water, fish, transport and lush meadows. It had plentiful game and plenty of good timber. Above all else it was a place where men and animals could cross the river and its hard gravel ford was the best for miles.

MAN ARRIVES

400,000 years ago herds of musk ox and elk made seasonal migrations across the dry land that is now the English Channel. Some of the very first men (either homo erectus or neanderthal) to venture in to England followed and lived off those herds. They might also have encountered elephant, rhino and monkeys. Finds of their stone tools show that they camped at Woodgreen, just south of Downton, before moving on up the river to Milford Hill, Salisbury. From there some went further north to Salisbury Plain and to the Vale of Pewsey.

They were skilled makers of Mousterian-type stone and flint axes and scrapers. They fished as well as hunted and they were happy living by water. The valley bottom was, however, twenty to thirty feet higher then than now so it is not too surprising if we have few traces of their time here. Whether Downton was already a place where they camped because it was where the herds forded the river we do not know. Only one of their very primitive Palaeolithic flint axes seems to have been found near the village so far although a number of later Mesolithic flint implements were found.

ICE AGES END

Except for a spell 20,000 years ago when the Ice Ages gripped the whole of Britain and drove man back across the land bridge to France, our ancestors (Homo sapiens) continued to live all over southern England. As the ice retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, 8,000 years ago, so the herds of wild bison, cattle, horses, red deer and elk would have once again been plentiful. They would have grazed on the savannah of Salisbury Plain rather as the cattle and ponies do today in the New Forest. As the herds moved south in the autumn and returned in the summer, small bands of hunters, each perhaps no more than 15 strong, moved with them. There may not have been more than 150 of these ancient people in the whole area.

OUR GENE POOL

Recent analysis of the DNA of one of one of these ancestral men found in a cave in Cheddar gorge only sixty miles west of Downton showed him to be quite closely related genetically to modern men living in that area today Other DNA tests show that most of us in Britain can trace our ancestry back to the earliest settlers - waves of Celts and Romans, Saxons and Normans seem to have done little to dilute the original gene pool already here.

DOWNTON'S DAWN

SCENE: It is a clear bright early summer's day. A girl, clearly pregnant, is sitting on the top of a small hillock looking over the river and the reeds and willow beyond. She is wearing simple leather clothes stitched with sinew. She is weaving willow to make a carrier for her baby, her first, due in a month or two. At the foot of the hill, close to the river bank on a gravel ledge perhaps ten feet above the river, smoke is rising from one of the three crudely thatched huts and an old man is sitting on his haunches napping flints. Skins are stretched to dry and a woman is scraping one clean.

We hear the girl's thoughts: 'I do hope the hunters find something soon. Last year's nuts and dried crab apples are not enough. We don't seem to catch enough fish although the old man's clever traps are good and my Man is good with a harpoon. I do hope he's safe and looking after my brother on his first hunt. I'm glad they took the boat - it shows they think there are big animals about. I wonder whether Grandpa is right and we can stay here until after you are born, Baby. This is a safe place - we've been coming here every Spring since I was little - but the young men say the game is better now further north where all the rivers meet. I don't like it there.'

Her mind wanders as she works and then something makes her look up and across the valley. She has known this feeling more strongly since she became fully a woman - an awareness of her kin however far away they are. This time however she can see the flailing arms and then hear the faint cries of her small brother as he comes across the marsh, alone.

'I must warn Granny and Grandpa - perhaps something has gone wrong with the hunters.' So she makes her way awkwardly down to the camp. "Boy is coming on his own. I do hope they are all right." "They'll be fine" says Granny without even turning and the Girl gasps because now she can see that Granny is getting ready all the makings of a feast and Grandpa has got out his skins and head-dress and is preparing a thanks offering to the Earth-mother. 'That can only mean that the men have killed a great beast and are on their way back with the meat carried between them hanging from staves. That is always the time for a party. Dare I ask Granny how she knows? And yet didn't I sort of know too?' "It'll come to you, my love." said Granny before the Girl can speak.

[This story is based on an incident reported by Laurence van der Post while watching the nomadic Kalahari tribesmen who live today much as these early men of Downton may have lived. He drove thirty miles from a kudu kill to find the camp already preparing a kudu feast.]

SETTLEMENT 7,000 YEARS AGO

By then Downton would have been one of the places where the herds crossed the river Avon. When the sea rose to cut the land bridge to France 8,500 years ago with a final catastrophic flood as the melt water in the North Sea broke the link between Dover and Calais, so the annual migrations would have ceased and a more static life was possible. Gradually our forbears tamed and herded the wild cattle, horses, reindeer and even pigs. Their diet was higher in protein than ours today which shows how much milk they drank and meat they ate..

In Downton the remains of a Mesolithic circular shelter dating from 5,250 BC were found in Castle Meadow. Those early Downtonians had chosen a ledge of well-drained gravel with a good view right across the valley. It was a safe, dry place to camp near the ford. We know this from excavations in 1953-7 which showed a few post holes round a shallow circular depression. The posts were to carry a lean-to or flimsy roof of skins or thatch and the pit was dug out to provide a surrounding bank built up to the roof as a shelter from wind and intruders. Such flimsy huts would protect the occupants from wolves, jackals and even bears by night at least long enough for warriors to rouse. It would be a good dry place to leave babies and stores by day, guarded by the elderly. Associated flint tools, evidence of fire pits and animal remains suggest it was seasonal shelter for hunter-gatherers or herdsmen. The archaeological dig yielded 38,000 flint workings of which 1,000 were finished tools or weapons. Much the same shelters can still be seen in use by Kalahari and Masai tribesmen in Africa today (and are like Hippies' 'benders'!.)

FARMING BEGINS

Around 5,000 years ago permanent settlement, farming and a marked increase in population had occurred in the Avon valley. Rivers were highways for primitive men but, as in the case of the River Avon at Downton, sometimes they became frontiers between tribes as well. The valley and the forested chalk upland behind the river were rich in game, wildfowl and fish.

The names given to prehistoric periods are very arbitrary but here they are taken to be:

PALAEOLITHIC 400,000 to 10,000 BC

MESOLITHIC 'Stone Age' 8,000 to 3,500 BC

NEOLITHIC 'New Stone Age'3, 500 to 2,000 BC

BRONZE AGE 2,000 to 800 BC

IRON AGE 800 BC to AD 43

ROMAN 43 AD to 400 AD

POST-ROMAN 400 AD to 500 AD

SAXON 500 AD to 1066

To the west, just above Downton on Newcourt Down, are the Giant's Grave, a Neolithic long barrow or burial mound, and the Bronze Age round barrow or tumulus called Giant's Chair. The lynchets of Standlynch are terraced fields cut out of the side of the hill to improved fertility. Similarly, a graveyard of an early British tribe found off Wick Lane indicates a considerable degree of social organisation and a settled population over thousands of years. Doubtless the villagers were recruited to help build Stonehenge, another massive communal project, only 15 miles to the north.

By 3,000 BC Downton men were of the 'Beaker' people, migrants from the Continent. They were ploughing, tending flocks of sheep and had pottery. They probably brought their domesticated stock with them from the mainland of Europe in large planked boats such as the one recently excavated at Dover. Their crops were 20% wheat, 80% barley. Their homes were still circular but quite sophisticated compared with the Mesolithic shelters of 2,000 years earlier. They wove cloth and made sophisticated pottery. In Castle Meadow, in much the same area as earlier man had built his shelters, several round Neolithic hut foundations dating from 1,500 BC were discovered.

As well as burying their dead in barrows they may already have set aside the yew covered hillock, close to water, that is now the churchyard, for their collective worship. They seem to have felt themselves surrounded by the spirits and very especially that of the Earth-mother. Whenever they were about to dig foundations or a storage or rubbish pit they first sacrificed some animal as a propitiation. They did something similar when leaving a place. Their burial chambers have an almost womb-like design.

IRON AGE DETERRENTS

Generally the hill forts built by the Celts - or British, as they came to be known - were not permanently settled although South Cadbury, Maiden Castle and Danebury certainly were. Many had plentiful storage pits suggesting that, when threatened, grain and other stocks were hoarded and guarded inside the defences.

At Clearbury, a couple of miles north-west of Downton, the highest hill, now tree covered, was one of these dominating, intimidating earth forts. With its high bank and deep ditch, built in the Iron Age, about 500 years BC, it must have been an excellent deterrent to neighbours thinking of trespass. Clearbury is only just over 2 Hectares in extent so large numbers of people or livestock could not have been protected for any length of time.

To judge by reports of men like Julius Caesar, who had a first look at Britain in 55 BC, these Celts were very aggressive and very quarrelsome. They would return from battles they had won carrying the heads of the vanquished. Particularly classy heads were preserved and brought out to impress visitors. They were very fond of a good party and their social organisation within each tribe was effective and just. However their failure to unite above tribal level made it easier for invaders.

A succession of hill top forts on both sides of the river served as boundary markers as well as defensive strong points for the local tribes and, as the sun shone on the bare chalk of their raised and palisaded banks, they would have served as a very visible deterrent to aggressive neighbours. One of the tribes was called Wilsaeta and they gave their name to Wilton. Did their territory extend as far as Clearbury, eight miles from Wilton ? Was it they who built the fort ?

THE BELGAE RULE DOWNTON .....

Downton - 'the farm (or hamlet) by the hill' (or, perhaps, 'by the water') in the language of the men who first dwelt here in any numbers - had all sorts of advantages for early settlers. Its biggest advantage, however, was its good river ford allowing trade to travel east and west as well as north and south. By 100 BC the tribes living in the Downton area were from a wave of Celts from Northern France called Belgae who had exiled themselves from northern France after their leader quarrelled with the rest of his tribe, partly on how to deal with the Romans.

The hillock which is now called the Moot was well placed to be a strong point to defend the crossing om attack although as yet we have no evidence of such use earlier than Norman times. The crossing itself was hard enough for horses and cattle and perhaps even carts to ford the river.

.....AND THEN THE ROMANS.....

When the Romans came in force in 43 AD under Emperor Claudius some of the Belgae and the neighbouring tribe of Durotriges to the south-west resisted their invasion. In subjugating them, the Roman General, later Emperor, Vespasian, destroyed 20 of their forts in the south of England. There was a particularly vicious battle at Maiden Castle in Dorchester.

Soon, however, their new British subjects were benefiting from Roman peace and order and resulting trade. More and more the administration passed back to the locals and in the Romano-British Villa, thought to be built before 300 AD, we at last get the remains of a house in Downton that we would recognise today. To people used to round, thatched huts the squared flint walls, tiled roofs, hot water and underfloor heating must have seemed the height of sophistication and luxury.

It was a long building, mostly one room thick. It had 17 or 18 rooms, some giving off each other, and outside, roofed passageways. With its fine tessellated floor (now in Salisbury Museum), bathroom and under-floor heating, it was clearly the home of a wealthy man, probably the local ruler, keen to show off his Roman culture at a time when Roman rule was already less secure but still dominant.

LIFE IN THE VILLA

Caste:

Marcus:Aged 35. Big, bluff ex-soldier now enjoying running the great estate and his own farm to supply the army locally and across in France. If only Flavia would cheer up and count her blessings...

Flavia:Just 30, she is slim, dark and neurotic! She does not like living in Britain and feels herself a colonial outcast. She has not yet accepted that she will never see Rome again but it will always be "Home".

Luke:The old family slave. He has been with Flavia since he was given to her when she married. He finds Britain cold but he can endure this - the alternatives for a slave can be worse. He is educated, even cultured.

Olivia and Octavius:10 and 12. They are Romano-British - their friends are almost all local boys and girls and they find Mummy going on about Rome rather a joke.

Setting: Downton Villa. Coming on the main road from Venta [Winchester] to Sarum [Salisbury] you would have turned off to the left, come along the ridge and then downhill to the ford. Instead of crossing the ford you would have turned left again. As you walked along the river bank you would have found the decaying remains of a Roman fortlet left over from the early days of the occupation and now partly demolished to provide timber for the Villa. The well rutted lane would take you past the huts and hovels of the estate servants and slaves and then uphill to a fine long, single storey, tiled roof house facing across the valley to the west.

In the centre is a fine room with a handsome tessellated floor and decorated plaster walls. In this room which is warm, but not as warm as Flavia would wish, she is seated. Across the room sitting at a small desk is Luke with pen poised ready to write....

FLAVIA (drawing her shawl round her irritably: 'The Gods help me! If it gets any colder I'll perish ...where was I, Luke?'

LUKE: 'You had reached "Dearest Mater..", Madam.'

FLAVIA: 'If someone doesn't get this heating soon this will be my Last Will and Testament..."Dearest Mater .... at long last the winter seems to be coming to an end.... hah!....The children have had a succession of what these ignorant savages call"...No...Cross that out...

LUKE(innocently): ' "The children"? "Ignorant savages"?'

FLAVIA: 'Cross the whole country out as far as I am concerned. Will this winter never end?'

She gets up and crosses to look out of the window. 'Snow, hail and sleet followed by fog, mist and rain... What possessed our revered ancestors to colonise this Gods-forsaken country in the first place?'

LUKE: 'Not my ancestors, Madam'

FLAVIA: 'No..they had more sense.'

LUKE: 'We have reached... "had a succession of.."'

FLAVIA: "What the British call "colds". Coughs and sneezes all the time. How I long for some of Rome's glorious sunshine!"

LUKE: 'Put that in ?'

FLAVIA: 'Certainly! It's the truest word I've spoken'

LUKE: 'We don't want to upset the dowager, Madam'

FLAVIA: 'Oh, all right! Umm.. "if the estate is really successful we may manage to come home for a visit one day....but, for the moment, I must wait impatiently for news of you by the next messenger... if he hasn't frozen to death on the way..."

FLAVIA and LUKE together: 'Don't put that in!'

FLAVIA: "We planted the snowdrop bulbs you sent us two years ago (Ye Gods! Is it that long?!) on the slopes of our fields, down by the river. They have taken to this alien climate very well and this month there has been a wonderful display..."

LUKE: 'Wonderful. A sheet of flowers blossoming like the snow'

FLAVIA: 'Mmm I like that... put it in...snow...then put "The children love the snow When it is very cold they build statues out of it Mercifully it seldom comes this far south but Marcus tells me he used to see lots of it when he was fighting the barbarians in the north"

Marcus, Octavius and Olivia rush in. They are in great spirits. Flavia's reaction to this heartiness is to draw her shawl a bit tighter round her shoulders....

MARCUS, having kissed Flavia warmly, he offers a mocking bow: 'Greetings, O Flavia, mistress mine...we bring great news ... they've finished the bath house and it will be firing up tonight.

OCTAVIUS: 'I really like the colours - orange and red is just right for somewhere hot and steamy...'

OLIVIA: '...well, I think these pale green and yellow stripes in here go even better. It looks like the forest in spring time. And they go so well with the patterns on the floor - but you wouldn't have the taste to see that...

OCTAVIUS: 'Oh, you girls...pretty, pretty. Fancy a game, Luke? I'll get the dice.'

FLAVIA: 'Just a moment, darling...I'm dictating a letter to Granny. Marcus, that's lovely about the bathroom but did you remember to get someone to fix the hypocaust flue - this floor is barely warm. I'm sure it's not working properly and I'm cold...'

MARCUS, swinging her out of the chair and spinning her round: 'What you need is a bit more exercise, old thing. We aren't in Rome anymore - you have to run around to keep warm'

FLAVIA, cheering up but pretending to be annoyed: 'Put me down! (hissing ) Not in front of Luke!'

MARCUS: 'He's used to us by now aren't you, Luke'

LUKE,bowing his head slightly : 'Sir ?'

MARCUS: 'You see, quite used to it! What do you think is wrong with the flue ?'

FLAVIA: 'It's not efficient, like these British workmen. Honestly, you would think they had never heard of under-floor heating.'

MARCUS (cheerfully): 'Of course they haven't! Still it isn't complicated - I'll talk to Cadwael tomorrow - he's a good chap'

OCTAVIUS, has set out a gaming board and is rolling the dice: 'Come on, Luke. Best of five, how do you say ? Pater, Mater, can we go to the potteries tomorrow ?'

FLAVIA: 'Luke and I are writing to Granny so you must wait'

OCTAVIUS: 'Oh.....'

FLAVIA, suspiciously: 'And what have you broken this time ?'

OCTAVIUS: 'Ahh...well...my discus sort of slipped...and sort of knocked over a couple of very old beakers..

FLAVIA: 'And they sort of broke ?'

OCTAVIUS, brightly: 'That's right. They were very old ones...'

FLAVIA: 'You're impossible, Octavius. I sometimes think you do it on purpose because you like going to the Forest potteries'

MARCUS: 'Tell her the rest....'

FLAVIA: 'There's more !?'

OLIVIA, cheerfully : 'You're not going to like this !'

FLAVIA: 'Not going to like what, Octavius ?'

OCTAVIUS: 'Well, I sort of hadn't quite got around to the new glass'

FLAVIA: 'In the window, Gods preserve us !'

OCTAVIUS: 'It's a bit sort of chipped'

FLAVIA, exploding : 'I don't believe it. I really don't believe it. How could you ?'

OLIVIA : 'Don't get upset, Mater. It is only a bit chipped'

FLAVIA, working herself up : 'Here I am trying to write a cheerful letter to your Grandmother back home so that she won't worry about us all, stuck out here in the back of beyond... (she starts to sniffle in to her handkerchief)... the back of nowhere....and you are destroying the place even before it is built...'

MARCUS, putting his arm around her while the children look uncomfortable and perhaps even a little contrite : 'Flavia ! Cheer up ! Tell your mother all the good news. The estate is doing very well and I manage an area over three leagues long and one league wide. It's good land and we supply the army here and in Gaul. Our home farm is making enough profit so that we might soon be able to come home for a visit but we have a lovely new house with 18 rooms and every modern convenience here. Tell her that, my dear'

FLAVIA, sniffling still : 'I know, I know...'

MARCUS: 'Life is peaceful...'

FLAVIA : 'Yes it is...'

MARCUS : 'When did we last have a raid ? When did we last even hear of one ?'

FLAVIA : 'I can't remember'

MARCUS : 'Exactly. Belgae is a good Canton - write and tell her that. The sun's out ! Just look at that view - the river and the swans and the flowers.'

FLAVIA, blowing her nose : 'You're right. It is very pretty. Perhaps Spring is on the way.'

She puts her arm round Marcus' waist and the children gather with them looking out of the window.

MARCUS : 'Of course it is. Look how beautiful our land is. Look at our strong healthy children... they don't even remember Rome any more...this is truly our home.'

Downton's villa would probably have been the centre of a country estate geared to producing food for export to Rome and its Empire and to feed the Roman army. We know they harvested at least three kinds of wheat and some barley. About 15% of the crop was a vetch, possibly as a supplementary feed for the cattle which were the most important of the farm animals they reared.

Given the date, the first owner might have been of Romano-British rather than Roman stock. During the 5th Century AD as the Roman power waned, the southern Britons recruited German mercenaries to defend them from marauders from the north and from overseas. Some of the mercenaries lived and were buried at Charlton, a couple of miles upstream from Downton.

AMBROSIUS PLEADS WITH ROME

Ambrosius was a princely Romano-British ruler. He may have been uncle to 'King' Arthur. Half way through the 5th Century he wrote to Rome: "I beg you to listen to the groans of the Britons for the barbarians drive us in to the sea and the sea drives us back to the barbarians." Rome did not reply.

Apart from the villa already excavated there are also intriguing signs that there may be remains of something like a Roman gatehouse near the Moot but these have not yet been excavated. Some Roman encampment near this valuable ford would have made military sense in the early days of Roman occupation, the peaceful villa coming 200 years later.

....THEN THE SAXONS

Perhaps these men told their families at home that England was for the taking. By the end of the century armed Saxon invaders had arrived. Some of the pottery found in the Downton Villa was of Saxon manufacture so it was probably still in use as a house after the Saxons arrived although it then fell in to disuse.

The Saxon Chronicle tells of repeated landings of Saxons in our area. Ealdorman Cerdic and his son Cynric, the earliest, having landed at Totton near Southampton in 495AD, then worked their way north and west to the River Avon, defeating the Celtic British King of the land on the east bank of the Avon, Natanleod, in 508. One tradition has it that Natanleod was buried at Downton near the Moot at Natanbury, a name in use here since at least 1798. This may just be a misunderstanding of the suffix 'bury' which has a more usual meaning of 'fortified place'. Among other Saxon invaders, Port landed at Portsmouth and Wightgar was given the Isle of Wight.

In 519, according to one version, the Saxons wanted to push further westward across the River Avon but found Downton staunchly defended by the British. Cerdic is said to have diverted his army to a ford down river, north of Castle Hill, and won his crossing at what was now to be called Cerdices-ford or, today, Charford. This outflanked defenders of the best ford at Downton who were perhaps relying on the Moot, Clearbury and Witherington hill forts as their fortified strong points, the forts at Castle Hill and Godshill having already fallen to Cerdic. After the battle Cerdic had established the kingdom of the West Saxons and rule over the Avon valley.

Although there is little or no contemporary written evidence to corroborate this story it fits well with the slow build up of Saxon power as more and more migrants arrived and demanded more and more land up the Avon valley. On the early Saxon charters one of the boundaries of Downton went from Telegraph Hill to Charford and was called the Warpath.

Cynric fought and won a battle somewhere between Charford and Salisbury and then was victorious at Salisbury in 552. One old map shows Witherington camp as the scene of a battle, others thought it was Downton. Once the Saxons had taken Downton and Salisbury there seems to have been another pause before they continued their Western advance in to Dorset and Devon, splitting the British Celts whom they called Welsh. Some were pushed in to Wales and others in to Devon and Cornwall (and Brittany, in France, named after them).

In secure possession of both banks of the river, the mound now called the Moot, would have been less relevant as a defensive position. This may explain the absence of superficial traces of its use as a fort by the Saxons although no substantive excavation has yet been carried out there. Traces of Saxon dwellings have been found in the Castle Meadow area but many more are probably buried beneath our present houses and some cottages may even share the original Saxon foundations.

WELSH WALLIES !

'Wal' from which Wales and Welsh derive had the meaning of 'slave' or 'serf' and the hamlet of Walton, where Newcourt and Wick now are, was presumably where the existing population were housed and allowed to continue living and farming after the Saxon conquest.

WAS DOWNTON A SAXON ROYAL STOPOVER ?

Less important militarily once the river had been crossed, Downton is still thought [A Regional History of England - Wessex to AD1000] to have been the site of one of a dozen Saxon royal villas in Wiltshire and its choice as well for one of the early Saxon churches points to Downton having remained an important centre of government right through the Dark Ages.

We may never be sure where the royal villa was in Downton but the Saxon Kings liked ready-made moats and often chose islands or places almost surrounded by rivers - Wilton is a good example. If they did that in Downton, what is now an island below the mills but might then have been on a promontory sticking out from the East bank could be the place they chose. The Moot only took its present shape when the mill race was cut through to give a straighter flow back in to the river many centuries later.

There are also suggestions that at the time when the Moot was fortified the river ran through where the pond now is - this would explain why the bank and ditch were built as they are, not reaching the present water's edge. Whether or not the Saxon villa was there, it almost certainly was the site of the Bishop's palace more recently. It came to be called Old Court or King John's Palace.

OLD COURT OR KING JOHN'S PALACE

Little excavation has been carried out on the island below the mills but a trial pit suggested that there was indeed a large building there which contained greensand stone blocks, brought perhaps from Chilmark, and one small decorated capital [column's top] found was dated as 12th - 13th Century. Old Court went through many changes but seems to have been used last in 1578 by which time it was already very dilapidated.

With Britford and Wilton, parts of Downton were passed in Saxon royal Wills indicating that these were key elements of the Saxon kingdom not to be handed out to others able to misuse their strategically important positions. It is quite likely that the basic composition of the Downton Hundred and later the Parish dates back at least to Roman times with Downton's Roman villa as what might more recently have been called the Manor House then at its heart. There is far more continuity in our English landscape than is always immediately obvious.

DOWNTON, DOUNTONE, DUNTON, DUNCTON, DONKETON, DUNTONE.....

Spelling was never too important to our ancestors. The derivation of the name is not known but one widely accepted and simple explanation is that it comes from the Saxon words dun or down for a hillock and ton or tun for a farm or hamlet. Tuns were, however, often named after their owner and we know that the le Dune or Dun family still held land at Witherington only a couple of miles north of Downton in 1089. The Dunc or Donk prefix seems to date from the time when the Duncombe's owned most of the village so it may just be their attempt to appropriate even the village's name.

ST BIRINUS COMES TO DOWNTON AND THE SAXON CHURCH IS BUILT

In 638 AD the first Bishop to the West Saxons, St Birinus, came to consecrate a church in Downton. This followed the conversion and baptism of King Cynegils in 635. He had had King Oswald of Northumbria as his sponsor or Godfather. At the same time Birinus also consecrated another small church where Winchester cathedral now stands.

This was only four years after Birinus, a Roman monk from Northern Italy, had been told by the Bishop of Genoa, by order of Pope Honorius I, to go and sow the seeds of 'our Holy Faith in distant lands beyond the English dominions where no other teacher had been before him'. He was hastily made a Bishop and on landing in Hampshire in 634 he found the West Saxons, comparatively new arrivals in Britain, so completely heathen that he decided to preach the word of God amongst them rather than seek more distant converts in Scotland.

The present dedication of the church in Downton to St Laurence may well go back to St Birinus for whom St Laurence, martyred in the 3rd Century, would have been a familiar and much revered Saint. After consecration as a bishop, St Birinus was based at Dorchester-on-Thames and it was there he died in 650 AD.

He and the other missionary bishops following on from St Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, took advantage of the custom that each pagan chief selected and financed his own shaman or priest with what we now call tithes. When the rulers converted to Christianity they were 'allowed' to continue this practice by nominating and paying for their own priests. This gave the bishops a funded priesthood who could work closely with the rulers.

ST LAURENCE

Legend has it that the church which Laurence led before a period of persecution had been very wealthy. The pagan ruler summoned him and demanded the church's treasure. Laurence said he needed three days to gather it. At the end of the three days he took the ruler to the church and showed him hundreds of poor and sick people there, saying 'These are the riches of our church'. For this he was roasted on a gridiron, demanding to be turned over 'as that side was done'.....

Kings in those days needed to keep moving around, making their presence felt and ensuring local Jarls did not get ideas above their station. A characteristic of the more permanent Saxon royal stopping places was that they all had a church close to the royal villa. Downton now also had its royal manor house next to a new church and round it will have gathered and dwelt those who were to run the royal estate, serfs and slaves and tenant farmers.

DOWNTON GIVEN TO THE CHURCH - FROM TIME TO TIME....!

In 648 King Cynwalh gave his manor estate at Downton to the See of Winchester in fulfilment of the dying wish of his father King Cynegils, grandson of Cerdic, and himself had a new Minster built in Winchester. Although sometimes taken back in to royal hands, perhaps to provide land for some of their thegns (thanes), and perhaps because they had temporarily reverted to paganism, later Kings reaffirmed the gift of Downton to the church.

From 860 the West Saxon capital was in Sherborne because the Vikings/Danes had seized and burnt Winchester. King Alfred, a descendant of Cerdic, finally defeated them in 878 and returned the capital to Winchester.

In 997, when Downton was once again and finally returned to them by King Ethelred, the Bishop's estate was divided. Downton was one unit, down from 100 mansae to 55 with Bishopstone taking the other 45.[Mansae seems to be the monks' bookish Latin for tithings or what we might today call holdings or farm tenancies. It derives from the Latin for dwelling. It may equate to Hide as the Bishop held 60 Hides 100 years later.] Various bits had been alienated or chopped off. King Canute (1016-35) took Witherington and Standlynch out of the Bishop's portion. By Domesday in 1086 Redlynch, Hamptworth, Woodfalls and Charlton were all hived off and the Bishop's Downton estate was assessed at not quite 60 hides - still a substantial holding of perhaps 7,000 acres.

The fifth Bishop of the West Saxons, and the first to be based at Winchester, was Hedda who probably died in 705 on this estate at Downton which for many years afterwards included Haeddi's Grove at Pepperbox Hill. He was said to be buried up there and his grave is mentioned in the description of the boundaries of Downton in early Saxon charters. The Venerable Bede says 'many miraculous cures have been wrought in the place where he died through the merit of his sanctity'. Hedda had had the remains of St Birinus transferred to the cathedral in Winchester where one may also see the chests containing the bones of the early Saxon Kings.

MONKISH FORGERY?

There are scholars who use the fact that some of the documents referring to Downton, St Birinus and the Kings date from some hundreds of years later than the events they record to cast doubt on the stories themselves. In some cases the original records had been destroyed in Viking raids and monks were setting down their memory of what was in them. Although there was a power struggle between the Sees of Winchester and Salisbury, it is hard to see how the scribes could have totally falsified the story even if they embroidered it. Oral tradition was still very important and their contemporaries would soon have complained of wilful invention. There were a number of corroborative documents from successive Saxon Kings still in existence, then and even now, to show that Downton had been given to Winchester.

SAXON FARMERS

The farming of the second half of the first millennium in Downton was similar to that practised by the Saxons in Germany. Individual plots, common tillage and common pasture required a degree of social organisation which had resulted in the moot or village gathering to settle disputes and plan communal activity. To some extent this would have applied even on a royal estate. Clear direction at the top would be needed to manage the annual migration of sheep up on to the downs for summer grazing, the ploughing, sowing and harvesting of arable land in the valleys, the beginning of planned drainage of the marshes and the rearing of cattle, goats and pigs. Forest clearance both provided timber for housing an expanding population and also more grazing.

CHAPTER 2 THE NORMANS SHAPE DOWNTON

NORMAN INVASION: NEW BISHOPS - NEW CHURCH

By the time of the Norman conquest in 1066 Downton was a long-established community, a centre of one of many large land holdings owned by the Bishop of Winchester, given to him or confirmed by successive Saxon Kings.

It gave its name to a Hundred stretching 11 miles from No Man's Land to Nunton. One can still see from the top of the hill at Clearbury the typical land division, known as tithings or hides, which divided the land in strips running from the river straight up to the ridge behind so that each tenant got some of the marshy fertile valley land and some of the dryer less fertile but valuable hill pasture.

A HUNDRED HIDES

A Hundred has various descriptions but one of the most useful is that it was divided up in to 100 Hides, each Hide or tithing being enough land to support a farmer and his family and servants - commonly about 125 acres.

The Bishop's estate was becoming ever more focused on arable farming. Sheep were very important not only for their wool and meat but also to fertilise the corn-lands; the lighter the land the more sheep were kept for this purpose. Eventually this was to rob the hill tops of fertility so that they were of little use until the invention of chemical fertilisers.

Downton was affected by the creation of the King's New Forest next door. It was said to have lost 2 Hides - say, 250 acres - to the new inclosure. Quite likely William the Conqueror's visit to Downton was to establish the limits of his new hunting areas. The fanatical pursuit of hunting by the Norman Kings who had built Clarendon Palace as a hunting lodge for Melchett Forest, just up the road from Downton, may well have been of profit to the Bishop's estate. Doubtless when the Court was there supplies were bought from Downton and the Court often was there.

SAXONS SUPPLANTED BY NORMANS

The Saxon Church in England had gone through a reinvigorating upheaval in the century before the Normans came. St Dunstan, born in Somerset, Abbot of Glastonbury and then Archbishop of Canterbury for 18 years, brought a new discipline, vitality and scholarship which showed in a great upsurge of ecclesiastical art and music as well as some fine new churches and cathedrals.

The Normans recognised the importance of this by rapidly imposing a new ecclesiastic hierarchy and building many Norman-style churches and cathedrals. William the Conqueror was a toughie, determined to control his ever larger kingdom. He feared the Church - his seizure of England had been grudgingly accepted by the Pope but there were plenty of other rulers seeking the Pope's ear to get him to change his mind. William would not accept the Pope's authority in such matters and ordered the Bishops not to correspond with the Pope.

One of the Normans' most political acts was to build a new cathedral in Winchester, starting in 1079. They then knocked down its fine Saxon predecessor, the centre of the Saxon religious revival, which had only finished a refurbishment, started by King Alfred's son Edward, in 994 AD.

In 1086, as part of the Norman reorganisation of the church and probably partly to decrease the power of the Diocese of Winchester, the Bishop of Sherborne was transferred to Old Sarum and continued to oversee the Diocese of Ramsbury as well. Downton then became part of the Salisbury Diocese although mostly still owned by the Bishop of Winchester. To acknowledge this the rectory of Downton paid half a mark (17 pence) annually to the Bishop of Salisbury. These days it is still paid by Winchester College but to the Church Commissioners until, and if, it is finally commuted!

The Normans had already refortified the old hill fort at Sarum and a new cathedral was built there by Bishop Osmund. His successor, Roger, who was also Henry I's chief minister, managed to get control of the castle and soon had enlarged his cathedral and extended the outer defences to enclose it.

ECCLESIASTIC POLITICKING?

We know from Domesday in 1086 that there was still a church in Downton four hundred years after St Birinus had consecrated it. Downton was the largest manorial estate in Wiltshire.

Although belonging to the Bishop of Winchester it now had its diocesan bishop seven miles up the road and it may help us understand some of the events of the next two or three hundred years in Downton if we think of it as once again a frontier town but this time a politico-ecclesiastical frontier rather than between tribes.

DOMESDAY BOOK

Originally called the Roll of Winchester it was indeed a roll of parchment listing holdings and what they were worth in men and agricultural yield so that taxes and calls for military manpower could be more easily assessed.

In the early 12th Century there was civil war between the supporters of King Stephen and those of Henry I's only legitimate surviving child, Matilda. Bishop Roger, having been Henry's chief Minister, was on the side of Matilda. He held castles in her interest at Salisbury, Malmesbury, Sherborne and Devizes. Bishop Henry of Blois in Winchester was Stephen's brother and in 1138 he built or strengthened castles at Downton (almost certainly the Moot, perhaps refortified, and almost certainly only a temporary timber structure as there is no evidence of stone walls), Taunton (where he had huge estates), Farnham, Waltham and Merdon.

In 1147 an enterprising Count Patrick seized Downton Castle 'out of the authority and possession of the church of Winchester' notionally on Matilda's behalf but mainly for the plentiful loot. Count Patrick was nominally Earl of Salisbury as Empress Matilda had ennobled him when she landed at Arundel. However Matilda had all but given up her claim by 1147 and retired to France next year. After a siege, Downton was soon back in the hands of the Bishop of Winchester as King Stephen consolidated his power.

By 1208 Peter de Roches was Bishop of Winchester and so owner of much of Downton - but no castle as these had been mostly knocked down after the civil war. He was a strong supporter of King John and later became chief Minister to Henry III. John visited the Bishop in Downton three times and probably stayed with him in the Bishop's Palace. We are not sure where the Palace was but currently the island opposite the Moot and below the mills finds most favour.

However there has been much myth muddling over the years. Some of it comes perhaps from confusion of the legislative Court or Leet and the actual Palace where the Bishop stayed and the Court may sometimes have been held. The Court seems to have moved from Old Court (the Bishop's Palace) to the Borough, somewhere near the cross and the White Horse and then, in mid-14th Century, for a time, to New Court.

It seems that the last time the Bishop actually held his own Court in Downton was in 1571 by which time Old Court was dilapidated if not a ruin. From the 18th Century until the beginning of the 20th Century the Court was held in Court House, South Lane, which straddles the border between Borough and Manor, each half being labelled on stones fixed in inner and outer walls. One of its main jobs to the end was to sort out wrangles over inheritance and tenancies.

DOWNTON MOONRAKERS

Another myth attributes to Downton the Moonraker story. King John and his Court made so many visits to Downton, so a contemporary poem tells us, that the villagers refused to support his retinue. The King was cross so he sent knights to punish them. When his delegation arrived they found the peasants up to all sorts of crazy antics including the famous raking of a pond to capture the moon's reflection and trying to drown an eel. King John laughed so much that he forgave them .... or so the story goes! The people of Gotham or perhaps Devizes may have first claim to this story but it was undoubtedly expensive to have royal visitors wherever you lived and the poem points to Downton.

1135 AD: THE DOWNTON CHURCH REBUILT

N   
ow we must turn back to the church itself. As we have seen, Downton had a special place in the hearts of the early West Saxon kings perhaps because the battles for its control were such important steps in establishing the whole kingdom of Wessex. It was the site of a royal home and then of the bishops to whom it must also have been important as they built and stayed often in their palace there.

We can I think safely assume that if stone churches were being built by the Saxons at Britford and

Breamore the original, possibly wooden, church consecrated in Downton by St Birinus, the loved and trusted guide to the newly converted Kings and people, would also have been rebuilt in stone. The north transept is out of line with the rest of the present church and the spacing of the pillars is uneven suggesting use of earlier foundations or a melding of old and new. Master masons favoured old foundations because they knew that they had carried loads for many years and had finished settling.

That none of that stone church can still be identified except, so the experts say, in the general layout of the church, is perhaps a measure of how important the church already was rather than any idea that only an old and dilapidated wooden chapel was being replaced in 1135. It is mentioned in Domesday.

The earliest visible part of the present church, the west end of the nave, is dated between 1130 and 1150 which coincides with the fortification in the village and fits well with what we know of Bishop Henry of Blois' other work at this time, notably at St Cross, Winchester. The three western bays of the nave have pointed arches linking Norman or Transitional pillars with simple, slightly amateurish, carved decoration of their capitals. It is of note that the very first pointed arches in England had only been built a few years before, suggesting perhaps that this was the innovative Bishop's personal project along with the palisades at the Moot and refurbishment of his Downton Palace.

Perhaps the three new bays of the nave were a modern extension to the original Saxon cruciform church but if so the builders were soon encroaching on the old works as they put in a further two bays with taller pillars and arches. It is the positioning and spacing of these which suggests they replace something rather than that they were begun from scratch. One has, moreover, to explain the fact that there are clear signs that the third pillars butted on to an end wall before the next two arches were constructed to link with the crossing.

DOWNTON NEW TOWN - THE BOROUGH......

When in 1209 Bishop Peter de Roches began his new town or Borough in Downton he was asserting his worldly authority very visibly at Downton, Dinton and Stockbridge by building new towns with their mills and markets in, or on the border of, the See of Salisbury.

When Peter de Roches created the Borough in Downton he did it by letting building plots in 'Free Burgage Tenure' with enough back land to support a family in vegetables and even livestock. Gradually these houses became occupied by tradesmen and we find by 1215 a fulling mill for finishing cloth (one of the first in Wiltshire) as well as a corn mill, a tannery, shoemakers, two weavers, several blacksmiths, a wheelwright and basket makers. The fulling mill paid forty shillings - £2 in the money of those days, worth so much more today. By 1230 there were 120 of these tenancies but they never increased beyond 127.

Each tenant paid the Bishop of Winchester one shilling a year and their 'Burghage' gave voting rights. These had only local importance until around 1265 when the first Parliament was summoned to which Downton sent two Burgesses - which it would continue to do until the Reform Act of 1832!

He also started up a market and Downton might well have grown further but that, ten years later, the construction of Salisbury was started and it became the commercial centre for the area. It was too close for both to thrive.

Neither Downton nor Wilton, important Saxon centres, were ever again to challenge Salisbury but fifty years later the Bishop of Winchester might still have been well satisfied with Peter de Roche's decision. Partly this was luck - the 13th Century had marvellous weather - but it was also good management. In 1264 his great manor, stretching 11 miles from No Man's Land in the South to Nunton in the North, had produced £110 pounds from 677 acres of arable, 100 cattle and 1,700 sheep. For no effort at all the Borough produced another £9 in burgage rents and the profits from the markets.

In England we have relatively few of these 'new towns' but all over South West France one can see the Bastides which were their inspiration. 130 of them were built by their Norman-English overlords to increase commerce. Many of them have grown little and are still functioning as small market towns today much as they and Downton did 750 years ago.

ANCIENT COINS IN THE BOROUGH

All this restructuring seems so long ago but only fifty years ago some work in an outhouse at Leicester House in the centre of the Borough uncovered an old wattle and daub wall [a woven frame of sticks covered with plaster left to dry] with pictures of animals scratched in to the surface while it had still been wet. Tucked in to a little hollow in the wall was a small cloth bag which contained coins minted for King Edward 1 who died in 1307 and two even earlier from the 12th and early 13th Century, over 100 years earlier. In 1301 William Leicester was one of two Downton Burgesses to represent Downton in that year's Parliament - one of its earliest MPs. Perhaps he hid them before setting off for London?

A 14th Century silver coin was found in South Lane and is in Salisbury Museum.

........AND THE CHURCH

Bishop Peter was also a spiritual authority and under his leadership the church in Downton was reshaped yet again. As we have seen, the nave and aisles were continued for a further two bays and this was done at about the same time as the new town was being created. The junction at the third pair of pillars is very clear.

That was not the end of it. Work continued in the middle of the century when the crossing arches and transepts were built or rebuilt, probably, at least in part, also on old foundations. Finally the chancel was started ca.1275 with provision being made for a tower (dated before the end of the 13th Century) over the crossing. The chancel seems to have been built in two phases and completed by 1320. It is of a markedly higher standard than the rest of the church, probably because this part of the church was for the Bishop. The flint work on the outside is of a very high standard and there are many fine details.

BUILDING FUNDS

Who paid? We do not know but a usual pattern in the Middle Ages would have been for the parishioners themselves to pay most. This was a time of growing population and prosperity but also of political uncertainty. The Church was the outward sign of an inward peace and security that ordinary men and women sought. We find it hard today to realise the insecurity of ordinary men and women who owned little, had no control over weather or pestilence and were constantly finding themselves drawn in to the wars and political upheavals of a very unsettled time.

Their belief in their need for intercessors on their behalf was very deep. Not only were they willing to pay with money and labour for their own church to be built but many of them were to go on the great Crusades or help supply and fund them. In 1334 Downton was paying more tax than any other non-urban place in Wiltshire and the quality and scale of its church building partly reflects that wealth.

Christianity was profoundly important to them. It is no accident that the new church seems to have been built alongside the old, only replacing it once the new work was complete enough for no break in worship. St Birinus' church may well itself have been put on a pagan site of great antiquity - missionary priests presented their ideas as fulfilling all that was best in the old ways. Pope Gregory told them to 'Knock down the idols, not the temples.'

As both Bishop Henry and Bishop Peter saw Downton in political as well as economic terms, they would probably have partly funded the building themselves so that we have a much larger church than one would expect in a place that in 1377 had only 733 Poll Tax payers. Certainly there is evidence in the quality of design and workmanship that they supervised what was done here.

Over at least three centuries the Bishops of Winchester maintained a Palace in Downton and the chancel would have been his chapel. There was a separating wall or partition with a door between the chancel and the rest of the church which was not demolished until 1860. The stone altar in those days was in the crossing, not at the end of the chancel as it is today. He would have had a private chapel in his Palace, as well.

CHURCH FASHIONS

The Norman bishops had by 1350 completely replaced the Saxon church with one after their own taste. The church would however go through many more changes in fashion over the centuries that followed as the Renaissance reached across Europe.

Probably any of the vigorous early English carving characteristic of the Saxon church and still to be seen at the surviving Saxon church at Breamore would have been destroyed in the Downton rebuild by the Normans who had a different artistic vision. There would however have been fine carving of stone and wood in the new church and the walls would have been covered with murals of different biblical scenes. There would have been statues of saints, stained glass windows and much else to bring to life the stories read to the largely illiterate congregation Sunday by Sunday.

A great Rood Screen near the end of the nave with a graphic and massive wooden sculpture of the crucifixion, painted in vivid colour, would have stretched up towards the roof and dominated their worship. The corbels on which this probably rested can be seen on the last pillars before the crossing.

Box pews would have been introduced and, sadly, soon there would have been a rental charge for sitting in them. You paid more if you were close to the pulpit, less at the back. On a headstone just inside a church (not St Laurence) was the following inscription:

Here I lie at the Chancel Door;

Here I lie because I'm poor;

The farther in, the more you'll pay;

Here I lie as warm as they

Today, after the fury of the Reformation and the Commonwealth, almost all we have left from mediaeval times is one faded mural painting of a donkey, those corbels or supports that may have carried the Rood screen beam, a small reinstated glass window found in the churchyard, the beautiful great oak door made in the 14th Century and a fine font made of Purbeck stone in about 1200. Even the font has been much altered over the generations but we do have, still, the lovely church itself to remind us of the commitment of those men and women of 800 years ago.

#  CHAPTER 3 A BUSY LITTLE TOWN

CROSSING OF THE WAYS: DOWNTON A HUB

The lines of the old roads converging on Downton are still clearly visible. Some of them are still in use as roads, more of them are now just footpaths and a few can only be seen as the line of a hedge. Those roads are what made Downton. Wick Lane from over the downs to the west is the clearest, heading east and down Long Close until it disappears in line with the back boundaries of the Borough plots. The land to the north, Catherine Mead, was turned in to water-meadows in the 17th Century and the continuation of Long Close eastward is now a bund and ditch rather than a lane.

The ford to which it led seems to have been somewhere below the church and manor, upstream of Catherine Bridge. Wild Weir, further upstream from the bridge, was raised in height to give a greater head of water to the mills. That together with the construction of the water-meadows makes it impossible to be sure now where the drovers used to cross with their cattle. There are some signs and a local tradition that there was also a ford just below the cottages below Iron Bridge.

Logic suggests that the line of the Borough was chosen to lead traffic to the new bridges across the Avon which seem to have been built or improved at the same time as the Borough together with the mill leets and races for the five mills. All helped make Downton a new commercial centre. Catherine's Bridge, now called Iron Bridge, has been rebuilt at least three times since.

These changes would have made the ford less important although perhaps still used by the ox drovers coming down Wick Lane on their way east to London. This was part of the Weymouth to London 'main' road which came through Martin and joined with Ox Drove on Wick Down before dropping to the Avon valley and Downton.

Having crossed at the ford, the Wick lane through-route may originally have run up past the Manor and Parsonage Farm along Doctor's Alley up the hill till it forked on the ridge above but by 1837 the present High Street/ Lode Hill road was well established. A 19th Century map shows the old lane cutting through the new railway station and continuing up the hill but one must assume that by this time it was already less used although still listed as a footpath. At the top, Salt Lane, now Muddyford Road but possibly then the main east-west route, went along Barford Down and Pepperbox Hill, another went through Lover and a third went along the Ridge. Lode Hill cutting was deepened to allow the new railway line to pass over it.

In early times, before the Borough was developed, the main road to Salisbury would likely have been Barford Lane (rather than Gravel Close) which ran much more directly along the east bank of the river than it now does. The diversions of Barford Lane round Barford Park and Standlynch House, later Trafalgar House, are evidence of gentrification in the 17th and 18th Centuries when the landowners created their own enclosed deer parks and forced the peasantry to go round.

What was probably initially a secondary road to Salisbury followed the line of Gravel Close and South Lane. It was eventually upgraded to bring coaches in to the centre of the village and then in turn lost status when the north/south road through Wick and the headlands was built in the 18th Century, probably around 1720 which is the date of 'The Bull' public house.

TRAVELLERS' REST The White Horse Inn

a fine market hall upstairs on left, merchant's hall house on right

The Bull was relatively late in providing travellers with places to eat, drink and sleep in Downton. We know of a 'hostel' in the town in 1503. . The White Horse (which was probably that hostel) is mentioned by name in 1599. It was also probably the inn sufficiently well established by 1576 to be persuading the justices not to allow rivals to trade in competition with it. A great mushrooming of hostelries and bars occurred at this time and both wine making and brewing were well established.

The earliest parts of what is sometimes known as the Manor House but ought perhaps more properly be known as the Rectory or Parsonage Manor, next to the Church, may have been built as early as 850 AD to house the five clergy who ministered to the people of Downton. They may also have run the Bishop's estates until this was taken over by lay bailiffs. The Bishop of Winchester was a great feudal lord and by Norman times he was running his many estates just as commercially as his lay rivals.

13TH CENTURY ECONOMICS

It is easy to say that the parishioners paid for the church but how did they earn the money ?

On the appointment of the first Rector, William de Hamilton, in 1281, Downton ceased to have a Minster or Parsonage with a group ministry and bailiffs running the demesne lands (the ones not rented out). To be a Rector of a parish like Downton was to be a wealthy man. Rectors appointed curates to do the pastoral work and often lived away. William de Hamilton had moved on within 5 years to become the King's Vice-Chancellor.

In 1208 there had been 838 acres of demesne [land directly managed by the church] given over to arable. These fields would have been worked either by tenants (villeins and bordars) who owed labour as well as produce to their lord as rental for their tithing or small farm or by serfs who were landless servants tied to the manor for housing and food in exchange for their service. Much of the area would have one great open field worked in narrow strips. These now belonged to the Parsonage Manor which funded the Rectorship which also took the Great Tithes for the whole huge parish.

The Bishop's estate may by this time have been managed from New Court which was first built around 1218 and it is assumed that Old Court, now on an island, slowly fell in to disuse. It is likely that the channel cutting it off from the Moot was part of the work done to build the mills for Bishop Peter de Roche's new town. In 1647 Old Court was still there but valued only for its materials.

STRANGE VICAR

Only nine years after William de Hamilton, that first Rector, had been installed by the King, Downton had one of its strangest incumbents. He was called William Burnell. He was 21, nephew of Edward I's Chancellor. He had not even been ordained a priest, and had been given special dispensation by the Pope to be Vicar of Downton even although he held other benefices.

Hold other benefices he certainly did as he was Provost of Wells, held prebends [salaried posts] in York, Lincoln and Salisbury and had been licensed to live away from Downton 'to study'. The Bishop of Salisbury challenged his appointment but it was confirmed by the Pope.

In 1292, with his uncle Bishop of Bath and Wells, he was elected Dean of Wells and by a dispensation from his uncle was able also to remain Provost of Wells and Rector of Downton but only until it was declared a breach of canon law. As soon as Burnell was elected Dean of Wells the Bishop of Winchester nominated his Clerk, Robert of Maidstone, as Rector on the grounds that Burnell couldn't be in two places at once. The outcome of a long wrangle seems to have been that Robert de Harwedon took Burnell's place in 1304. He was a Royal Justice and Keeper of the Bishopric in Winchester where he may well have remained. Burnell was not quite done with Downton as he endowed a Chantry Priest to say prayers for his soul in Downton. The Priest's cottage was on Lode Hill near the Slab Lane turning.

THE CHURCH AND ITS TENANTS

The tenants were able to sell produce, cattle and sheep. Slowly the Church and great landowners moved over to a straight money rental rather than taking in kind or labour and this forced the tenants to increase production. By 1347 the demesne arable acreage in the bishop's estate in Downton was down to 300 and in the next century to 200. The fact was that the great expansion of corn growing to match the increase in population was too much for the land. So much so that by 1250 the average smallholding was down to 2 acres as the landowners and farmers inclosed more and more common land. One third of the men were landless. If the harvest failed many starved.

Desperate measures were taken. Strip lynchets were cut in to hill sides to provide extra acreage although only occasional and slight traces are visible in Downton. A terrible harvest in 1315 showed how marginal the farming economy had become. The price of corn trebled and death rates increased by 10%. This was just the worst of many bad years - it has been called a mini-Ice Age with rain and snow seemingly unceasing for years on end.

Despite this the population in the Avon valley grew steadily right up to the Black Death which swept England in 1349 and 1361. Within the Downton Hundred, only seven people survived the outbreak in Bishopstone and we can assume Downton's losses were savage. Through this time the Bishops of Winchester were letting out more and more of their demesne land as individual farms or whole manors in an attempt to maintain revenue, preferring rental to running their own estates. It was the mediaeval equivalent of privatisation in what we would call a recession if not a depression.

WINCHESTER COLLEGE TAKES OVER

In 1380, with the King's blessing, Bishop William of Wykeham made over 5 hides of demesne land attaching to St Laurence church (which ran from the north side of High Street up to Barford) to his newly-founded Winchester College together with the advowson or right of appointment of the Rector or Vicar. He also made over the tithes for the whole parish - more than 30 square miles of it - yielding 10% of all its produce to support the college.

The College, having started with just 70 'poor and needy scholars', is now perhaps the premier, certainly the best, Public School in England, still has the right of appointment of the Vicar of St Laurence, Downton and it still pays 17 pence every year to the Church Commissioners in acknowledgement that Downton is in the See of Salisbury! In its early days it was expected to reserve places for poor boys from Downton from which it derived so much of its income.

Perhaps the switch of Downton lands to the new College, which had been set up partly to train replacement clergy, coincided with an unfilled and unfillable vacancy here. In 1383 Nicholas de Alresford was appointed as the Rector and in 1385 became the first Vicar, the College taking over the Rectorship. We do not know where his vicarage was but it is thought to be where the old vicarage, Chalkhill House, now stands.

THE BUBONIC PLAGUE

Melcombe Regis (or Weymouth) was where the Black Death landed in England in 1349. It came from the Black Sea, borne by fleas living on rats. Each flea bite became a centre of decay with blood-filled pustules known as buboes - hence the name Bubonic Plague. Swellings under the arms and in the groin, high fever and the certainty of death within five days for three in four who caught it. It killed one third of the population.

'They are like a shower of peas, the early ornaments of the black death, cinders of the peelings of the cockle weed, a mixed multitude, a black plague like halfpence, like berries. Woe is me of the shilling in the arm pit; it is seething, terrible, wherever it may come, a head that gives pain and causes a loud cry, a burden carried under the arms, a painful angry nob, a white lump.

We see death coming into our midst like black smoke, a plague which cuts off the young, a rootless phantom which has no mercy for fair countenance.'

LIFE IN 14C DOWNTON

We know all too little about how people lived in Downton then but we get clues from Wills and from Poor House records as well as the Pipe Rolls. The Wills show that even a Yeoman with his own rented farm of perhaps 120 acres (one hide) would count most of his wealth in his livestock. He might have a table, a bench and a chair and a very few cooking pots. He would probably have one thick cloak. He would have bread and beer or soup for breakfast. Meat of some kind for three meals a week and bread and cheese on the others. There would be only one bedroom and often only one enormous bed for all the family. One hearth, often with no chimney, and its use not encouraged because timber on the chalk lands was scarce. Bread would be baked in a communal oven in the village. He and his family would go to Church twice on a Sunday.

WYCLIF AND THE LOLLARDS

Sadly, the good times before the plague were too good to last in other ways as well. The clergy had got soft and corrupt as well as the people and it took a John Wyclif to bring a challenge to new spiritual life. He attacked the Church's corruption and set in motion what would, a hundred years later, become the great revolution of the Reformation by translating the bible in to English and questioning the hierarchical authority of the Church.

Harvests were bad through much of the 14th Century. The poor and landless became increasingly restless having lost much and gained little from the plague. 'When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then a gentleman' was a popular ballad of the day. Wat Tyler's rebellion in 1381 brought matters to a head. There were riots in Winchester and Salisbury and doubtless Downton was affected. It was a near thing but in the end the property-owning middle and upper classes regained control.

Wyclif's followers, the Lollards, were counterattacked by the clergy and the landowners. He died in 1384, baffled though not silenced, deserted by most of his followers. His ideas however went, of all places, to Prague and from there to Martin Luther in Germany. The resulting upheaval we call the Reformation was to return to transform England - and our Church of St Laurence.

Wyclif's ideas were being absorbed by a society already under strain after the devastation of the Black Death. A third of the work force was dead. Much land was lost to cultivation. There were so few workers that they began to demand more money but this was stamped on with a wage freeze. To move away was forbidden. Although many young men defied the ban it was harder for small holders and men with families.

We believe that many of the poorer clergy were active in their villages during the epidemic because so many of them died there. It is probable that Downton's Rector was not resident as just before the Black Death he was also Master of the Hospital of St Nicholas in Winchester. It was not unusual for men to hold several Rectorships, appointing their own Vicars and Curates to carry out the pastoral work.

For the next one hundred years the Lollards continued to protest against Romish doctrine and doubtless they were heard in Downton because Salisbury was frequently the focus of their criticism and attacks. They questioned the authority of the Pope and Bishops, they wanted the Bible in English and they were against indulgences, pilgrimages and veneration of saints and images.

In 1449 the Bishop of Chichester was killed at Portsmouth because he failed to bring the back pay for Henry VI troops and the Bishop of Salisbury, a close adviser of the King, was murdered in 1450 near Salisbury by men from the town who went on to plunder a priory.

RICHARD II'S VISIT

In 1393 Richard II journeyed to and from Downton to Salisbury in order to have a huge party with or for the Greyfriars in Salisbury. He was an erratic and despotic King rather given to excesses and the bill for the party may explain why he stayed overnight!

BOROUGH BY PRESCRIPTION

Downton, as we have seen earlier, had long been an important centre of local government. It was a Borough by prescription rather than by Charter which meant that its independent status had been accepted, probably from Saxon times.

From 1395 onwards, although not without interruptions, until the Reform Act of 1832 the village elected two Burgesses or Members of Parliament. To begin with they were Downton men elected by Downton men. Free Burgage tenure on the Borough and a few houses on the island where the mills stand carried the right to vote.

MANOR OF DOWNTON

Although Downton itself survived the Black Death it was not unaffected and the changes to more intense farming that followed to cope both with the sudden fall in the labour force and the loss of fertility of the arable fields required far more central control from the manor. New Court became the Manor House or Court Baron for those lands, including the Borough, still under the direct control of the Bishop rather than the College. It became the administrative centre in succession to Old Court.

In 1551 the Bishop let the Lordship of Downton manor to a succession of Lords Lessee (or Lord Farmers). Initially to Sir William Herbert who was created Earl of Pembroke in the same year. Then for over 100 years it stayed with the Earls until 1662 when Philip, Earl of Pembroke, was replaced by Sir Joseph Ashe as Lord Farmer. It stayed with the Ashe family until 1741.

Downton remained important to the Bishop of Winchester although he seems to have been a less frequent visitor. Old Court, his Palace, stayed habitable probably only until the end of the 15th Century, if then. The present buildings at Newcourt are 17th Century and later.

FARMING AND INDUSTRY CHANGE

We have little information on life in Downton itself in the 300 years from the Black Death to the 17th Century. We can only conjecture that what was happening in the rest of the country applied to our village, too. Huge flocks of sheep would go up each day on to the chalk downs to feed and then, like walking dung carts, were brought down for the night to manure the cornfields. 1,000 sheep would be folded overnight on a fresh acre each day, the hurdles being moved while the sheep were away. It was the duty of the tenants to make the hurdles which were also used for catching fish in the river.

In a place like Downton, farming in this way, the social organisation had to remain very strong with tenants being required to conform to the communal pasturage and folding of the bishop's sheep if they were to benefit from it. The fact that it was taking all the goodness out of the uplands was not understood until much later. Even the sowing and harvesting of the common lands had to be managed. Some land was let for grazing: a meadow called la Nywemede in Witherington, a small hamlet then, cost 10 shillings for a summer's grazing.

On the demesne land, worked directly by the bishop's men, cattle, pigs, hens and rabbits were reared. The dairy probably made cheese from sheep's milk as well as cows'. It was well equipped and flourishing to judge by the quantity of salt consumed although the dairymaid was only paid two shillings and sixpence for a year's work.

When William Fucher was outlawed for causing the death of Maude Pytte in 1249 his worldly wealth was set down. It tells us a little how one fairly ordinary peasant lived. He had a weak draught beast, two old cart wheels and one young bullock. (Was he an independent carter fallen on hard times?) He had one and a half acres sown with oats and flax and beans. This wealth was valued at sixteen shillings and five and one half pennies. Compare this with the rent for grazing, the dairymaid's wages for a year or the daily wage of two and a half pennies for a skilled man like a carpenter. [240 pennies to the pound, 12 to a shilling]

Fish were required for Friday's meals so as well as letting out fishing rights the bishop would have had his own fisherman.

For Wiltshire as a whole this was a time of great expansion of the broadcloth weaving industry away from the towns. Downton's fulling mill, still owned by the Bishop, would have bought the raw wool and sent it out to cottagers to spin; the mill would then send out the yarn to the local weavers and it would be returned to be dyed and finished in the mill. From there it might either go to Salisbury to be marketed or perhaps direct to Southampton for export.

THE WATER MEADOWS ARE BUILT

As the pressure for ever higher corn production required ever more sheep the limit became winter fodder. Eventually, to overcome this problem, water-meadows were established along the whole Avon valley including Downton. This technical revolution did not begin until about 1635, probably on one of the Avon tributaries owned by the Earls of Pembroke. Sir Joseph Ashe had become Lord of the Manor in Downton just as this innovation caught on and immediately set about converting the meadows north of Downton. Water-meadows only reached south of Downton in the 1680s.

Newcourt controlled the construction of spillways, carriers, sluices and drains which flooded the warmer river water over the meadows, bringing it 'on at a trot and off at a gallop', at critical times in the winter both to prevent the land freezing and to bring on an 'early bite' of lush grass perhaps a month earlier than normal in the spring. Although drowning water meadows has stopped at Downton it continues to this day at Britford a short way upstream.

There were also attempts in the later stages of this management of the river to make the Avon navigable through Downton to Salisbury but it was not ever a success. A map of the water-meadows in 1712 shows navigation bridges over the drains in to the river for the bargemen and their horses and a lock at the weir to pass the traffic up or down stream. The bridges were made of timber and close to the river where the towpath would already have been.

INFLUENTIAL ASHES - 1

Sir Joseph left his estate to his son James and it in turn passed to another Joseph Ashe more often called Ashe Wyndham or Wyndham Ashe. In 1741 it was sold to Anthony Duncombe of Barford House. On and off Ashes were Members of Parliament for Downton from 1648 to 1742.

In 1715 it could be said of Joseph Ashe that he had 50 Members of Parliament who were his relatives but he does not seem to have been representing Downton at that time.

#  CHAPTER 4 TUDORS AND OTHERS

THE REFORMATION REACHES ENGLAND......

It is important at this stage to catch up on the developments in faith and belief that paralleled the economic recovery from the Black Death.

We have looked at the continuing religious unrest starting with Wyclif and the Lollards and dissatisfaction with a rich priesthood and wealthy dominant monastic houses. It had all seemed to no avail. Henry VIII, who had been intended for the priesthood until his elder brother Arthur died, was an ardent Catholic who had earned the title Defender of the Faith, given by the Pope.

So it might have continued if Henry VIII's wife, Catherine of Aragon, had borne him a son who had survived and perhaps even then if he had found her rather more agreeable! He wanted a divorce but the Pope in Rome refused and that was not only frustrating to a strong willed man but also a direct affront to his secular, political authority in his own country. A challenge up with which he would not put, to misquote Winston Churchill, another Englishman who did not like his will crossed.

Everything began to change from 3 November 1529 when the Reformation Parliament started its sessions. Having stated the all important principle that the King was now the head of the Church in England and not the Pope, the measures that followed such as the Dissolution of the Monasteries did not greatly affect ordinary people who in any case were happy to see the cleansing of a corrupt clerical regime.

.....AND EVEN DOWNTON

Churchwardens could see the way things were going and sold most of the valuable silver. This probably explains why Downton has no church plate older than 1620 - our best chalice is in the Treasury in Salisbury Cathedral, too valuable to be kept unused in the village but there as a reminder of our heritage.

In 1538 the Royal Injunctions ordered that a bible in English should be set up in each church and that registers of baptisms, burials and marriages should be kept. This was immediately obeyed. One church bought 'a boke for wrytt yn al christenynge, weddyng and beryng' at a cost of 8 pence.

The Injunctions also ordered the removal of objects, images or paintings which could be regarded as idolatrous. Probably little actually changed at St Laurence until the reign of Edward VI. From 1547, when the nine year old King was crowned, there began a Protestant purge, under Archbishop Cranmer, which probably led to the covering of the wall paintings and the removal of statuary, the stone altar and the great Rood screen at the top of the nave.

In 1549 Cranmer introduced his marvellous prayer book and, in 1551, the famous 42 Articles (later reduced to 39) which defined Anglican doctrine. We could see these today as a political statement defying Rome and Spain and the rest of the Catholic world but they were to colour English thought for the next 400 years and even today are embedded in our language and culture however much the modernists may wish otherwise.

On succeeding Edward in 1553, Queen Mary restored Catholic worship and the Churchwardens would have had to replace their new wooden altar with a stone one and buy new plate. The Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, who had been imprisoned in the Tower by Edward and then, was restored by Mary. It was he who conducted the marriage service of the Queen with Phillip II of Spain in Winchester Cathedral. This alliance with a foreign power and the persecution of Protestants with the martyrdom of Cranmer, Latymer and Ridley was deeply resented and was to have a profound and lasting effect on Englishmen. Cranmer was burnt at the stake and put his right hand in to the flames first as he was ashamed of having used it to sign papers giving the Queen support. To this day any member of the Royal Family who marries a Roman Catholic renounces his right of succession to the throne.

QUEEN ELIZABETH, THE COLLEGE AND DOWNTON

When Queen Elizabeth began her reign in 1558 she found a groundswell of national opinion which fitted well with her own inclinations and there was a further reversal as Mary's Roman Catholic restorations were removed. Within two years Elizabeth had had the Act of Supremacy passed which required all clergy to acknowledge her as Supreme Governor of the Church in England. In Wiltshire only fifteen priests refused and a year later there was only one 'Popish' altar found in the whole county. Bishop Gardiner in Winchester was long gone.

As well as coping with all these upheavals the Churchwardens were given more and more, largely secular, duties. They supervised the Rogationtide beating of the bounds of the parish and were supposed to ensure regular church attendance as well as looking after vagrants and the poor.

It was a puzzling anxious time for ordinary worshippers but their essential faith in God's power in every detail of their daily lives remained intact. A hard-headed exporter could put against each entry in his ledger 'God send it saff' .

CLERGY AND THE CHANGES

Many of the local clergy were able to accept the switches without too much difficulty, perhaps rightly seeing the cure of souls as their first charge. They varied from semi-educated men little different to the farmers they served to wealthy patricians, the younger sons of nobility. Some readers will know the song The Vicar of Bray which recites in many verses how he trimmed and bent with the wind through all the changes and so remained the Vicar of Bray.

We know that the Vicars of Downton were often educated men, Doctors of Divinity or Masters of Arts. In the latter half of Elizabeth's reign, in 1585, Rev.William Wilkes DD became Vicar and, if the records are right, he stayed in office for fifty years, a steadying influence after a time of great stress for all.

THE RALEIGHS GET PARSONAGE MANOR

In 1581 the lease of Parsonage Manor had been reluctantly ceded by the Governors of Winchester College to Queen Elizabeth for 40 years. The Queen gave the lease of the Parsonage to Thomas Wilkes, her Clerk of the Privy Council, and he promptly turned the gift in to good money by selling the lease to the Raleigh family who remained there over 100 years. Raleighs were MPs for Downton periodically until 1701.

There is here a coincidence of names and dates that catches the eye. Whether Sir Thomas Wilkes, a power in the land, came to some deal with the College over the appointment of Rev.William Wilkes, his cousin, we do not know but Thomas was a man to keep in with. William Wilkes was to become preacher to both Queen Elizabeth and to James I and although the Queen may have visited Downton it is likely that the Vicar usually relied on a curate to serve his Downton flock while he lived elsewhere.

WINCHESTER, DOWNTON AND THE QUEEN

On one side of the stage Queen Elizabeth is enthroned. Close to her are the Earl of Leicester and other courtiers and attendants. Leicester occasionally crosses to a table to write. Opposite, sometimes facing her, sometimes conferring among themselves, are the Warden and Fellows of Winchester College.

Somehow the Queen has heard that the College has recently gained possession of Parsonage Manor in Downton and decides that this holding would suit her as a present to Thomas Wilkes, Clerk of her Privy Council, one of a small group round her who did the administrative work of her government. She has written to the Warden saying this is what she wants and offering a very low rent for 40 years but had no reply. Leicester has penned a follow up letter recommending compliance - or else!

LEICESTER, reading the letter to the Queen: "With my hearty commendations. You shall understand that the Queen's Majesty at her special favour and right good deserving of Mr Wilkes, Clerk of Her Majesty's Council, hath whryte to you and your company for lease....

The Fellows are listening intently to the Warden who continues reading the letter.

WARDEN: 'for a lease in reversion to be made over to herself and so to be made in like sort to the said gentleman her servant at her pleasure...'

1st FELLOW: 'What! "At her pleasure" indeed!'

2nd FELLOW: 'Hush. Read on Warden.'

WARDEN, adjusting position to get more light: "As it is not unlike that you and the rest will be well content to gratifye Her Majestye in so reasonable request...'

1st FELLOW: 'Reasonable request!'

WARDEN: 'So hence I thought good to let you understand the good opinion that Her Majestye had conceived of the seyde Mr Wilkes her servant and also of the place he serves in ...'

2nd FELLOW: 'No doubt he does think good to let us know'

WARDEN: "which I doubt not that it is sufficient to persuade you to fulfil her request" Oh dear, this light is no longer favourable to my eyes (beckoning to one of the younger Fellows) Partridge, dear boy, your eyes are youthful - come and read the rest of this missive so that the Fellows may know Her Majesty's Pleasure'

PARTRIDGE: "which otherwise, if not Her Majesty had written, both myself and others of Her Majesty's Councillors had of themselves favour of the gentleman knowing his worthyness and well deserving...."

WARDEN, tetchily: 'Yes, yes, certainly he is most worthy and deserving, Partridge, but is there any more meat in this letter, you can spare us the dressing'

PARTRIDGE, hastily scanning the rest of the letter: 'ummm..."Whereby it will appear unto you upon your conformity Her Majesty's thankful acceptance thereof and thus will I cease for this time and recommend you to the Grace of God..."

1st FELLOW, furious: 'As well he might.'

PARTRIDGE: "...at Court this 17th day of January fifteen hundred and eighty one."

Silence. The Fellows look at one another in dismay.

WARDEN: 'Barnaby, remind me how large is our manor at Downton?'

BARNABY: 'It is 194 acres of good land by the river, Warden'

WARDEN: 'and the house?'

BARNABY: 'The house stands by the church and is of a goodly size. Shuffling through some papers.

It was leased to the Earl of Pembroke and then until a couple of months ago, to John Stockman, Esquire. So, at the moment, it is vacant.'

WARDEN: 'How does she know these things - oh! I expect it is those Herberts at Wilton. No matter. Is there any way out of this loss. He looks around the silent, troubled fellows. I have spent much of the night pondering this and can find no answer save compliance. We'll meet again this day sennight. Perhaps the Lord will show us a way out of this dangerous maze.'

Back to the Court. Leicester and the Queen are flirting but evidently business goes on.....

LEICESTER: 'But Ma'am!'

QUEEN: 'I will have not 'buts', Robert. Wilkes is waiting. Where is the Downton Manor?'

LEICESTER: 'The Fellows have advised me that it has pleased God to call their venerable Warden away to His bosom.....

QUEEN: 'How very convenient for them!'

LEICESTER: '....and being aware of their duty to your gracious self....'

QUEEN: 'Of course'

LEICESTER: '...they are at this moment electing their new Warden'

QUEEN: 'and who will that be?'

LEICESTER: 'It is a secret election'

QUEEN: 'My Lord of Leicester, I fear that you are losing your faculties! You doubtless did not hear me aright. I asked who was to be the new Warden of Winchester College.'

LEICESTER: 'Dr Bilson, I believe, Your Majesty.'

QUEEN: 'Indeed....will we have any trouble with Dr Bilson?'

LEICESTER: 'I think not, Ma'am'

The Queen laughs and they talk sotto voce as the scene shifts to the Fellows. Dr Bilson is sitting in the Warden's chair reading from the next letter from Court.

BILSON: "And to that end you are hereby required, upon receipt hereof, that you do accordingly seal and confirm to Her Majesty the said lease ... which we doubt not that you will dutifully perform according to your promise contained in your former letters"

1st FELLOW: 'Our promise, indeed. Pure coercion'

2nd FELLOW: 'There is nothing for it but to assent?'

BILSON: 'I fear not'

1st FELLOW: 'If the Queen's Majesty sees fit to denude the College of its property at such favourable terms to herself how are we to support our scholars?'

BILSON: 'Gentlemen, I have given much thought to this matter. As I see it, there is nothing that can be done about the manor at Downton without the appearance of treason. However, if we bend before the might of Her Gracious Majesty's August presence then... in the future...we just may be able to preserve some other of our lands'

3rd FELLOW: 'How, pray, do you propose to accomplish such a feat of diplomacy?'

BILSON: 'With honey, my dear Hatton, with a great deal of honey!'

Back to the Queen and Leicester. Leicester is reading the Warden's letter to the Queen.

QUEEN: 'Continue, Robert.'

LEICESTER: 'We, the Warden and Fellows and Scholars, clerks of this College, have confirmed the lease unto Your Highness...'

QUEEN: 'Aah.....for how long?'

LEICESTER: 'For forty years... of the patronage and Rectory of Downton in the county of Wiltshire...

QUEEN: 'Excellent....most satisfactory...'

LEICESTER: 'There is more, Your Majesty'

QUEEN immediately on guard: 'More? What more else could they possibly want to say?'

LEICESTER: 'They want you to agree not to ask them to provide property at cut prices, Ma'am, if I may put it that way...'

QUEEN: 'Do they indeed? So how do they word such a rash idea, pray?

LEICESTER: 'Very prettily, Your Highness.'

QUEEN, laughing: 'Let me see how these learned gentlemen turn their hand to courtly compliments (takes the letter from Leicester's hand) "We do "...good "most humbly desire and beseech your Most Excellent Majesty..."by your Majesty's princely affection towards the maintenance of learning".... very good....aha..."Be a sufficient occasion to make a stay of like suits to be tendered by any person".....there we have it....the very pith and substance of their argument....and again.. "a particular mark of Your Majesty's most gracious good meaning to discharge us of the hazard of decay of our maintenance"...dear, dear... Do you think they are going to starve, Robert?'

LEICESTER: 'I doubt that, Ma'am'

QUEEN, laughing and reading on : 'Oh, but I must agree to this request...harken to this "and as a true Mother of all virtue and true learning, to yield unto us a defence against all other attempts..."

Who else would take their lands if not myself? And they appeal to my Own Gracious Majesty to protect themselves from My Acquisitive Majesty! I salute you, Dr Bilson! A worthy adversary.'

Laughs and throws the letter at Leicester 'We will leave these scholars to their books and their lands ..... it's time for less weighty matters' They exit with him holding her hand in a courtier's deferential but intimate grasp, both laughing and in high spirits.

William Wilkes' successor in 1637, fifty years later, was John Chalkhill and in 1640 he rebuilt the Vicarage next to the Church. Today it is called Chalkhill House but what one sees facing the lawn was built by a later Vicar, Thomas Lear who took out a mortgage for £450 to do the work in 1784. The old house had been there since 1385 when an acre was set aside from the Rector's land for it. In a dry summer the outline of foundations for a three roomed building can be seen on the lawn, possibly the original Vicarage. The living had lost much of its revenue but it certainly looks as though men of quality and means still sought it.

PARSONAGE MANOR UPLIFT

There is a story that the Raleighs were alarmed to hear that the Queen intended to take lunch with them at Downton on her way through to see the fine new house at Breamore. Parsonage Manor, or whatever it was then called, was little more than a barn - a great hall, if one wanted to be generous - and not up to standard for a Queen.

She was known to take personal hygiene very seriously; indeed, her favourite Godson, Sir John Harington, had invented the water closet for her while also finding time to translate naughty Roman plays and fight in Ireland - typical Elizabethan man. .

The legend, and it may well have been embellished over the years, is that Sir Walter Raleigh had an old ship towed up the Avon and that a great refurbishment was hastily put through, using its salt-sodden timbers. Whether every modern convenience was provided for the Queen we are not told although a blocked up hole in the wall is said to have been its site.

Ship's timbers are there and the house was brought up to a high standard. Breamore House has most of its records still and, sadly, there is no mention of the Queen's visit either directly or indirectly. In a later refurbishment of Parsonage Manor a full length portrait of the great explorer, pirate,and patriot, Sir Walter Raleigh, was found behind panelling and is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London. It was the Gallery's first purchase.

DOWNTON TRADESMEN

Odd glimpses of life in Downton come from licensing records and magistrates court proceedings of the late 16th and early 17th Centuries. Central government had progressively interfered more and more in the economic life of the country partly as regulators and partly to raise revenue.

Many of the surviving reports are of misdeeds, alleged or real. In 1577 John Lecyter the Elder was fined one sixth of a pound(3/4d) by John Eyer and Aemy Clifford, JPs, for 'batterey of Ellen Justian'. This is of added interest because, as mentioned earlier, we have Leicester House still in the centre of the Borough, a William Leicester was representing Downton in Parliament in 1301, and because the probable descendants of John Eyer are living at Newhouse today.

INFORMERS AND ENGROSSERS

It was a lucrative trade to inform on lawbreakers and informing was often run as a business by London entrepreneurs as they could collect half the money or goods fined. They operated as a very corrupt commercial police force thriving on the multiplicity of laws that could be broken. 'Engrossing' was a particular favourite of theirs because the pickings were so good. An engrosser was a middleman who cornered the market, buying up the bulk of a product in an area so as to put up the price. If convicted under an Act of 1552 he went to prison for 2 months and lost all his goods; for a second offence, 6 months and twice the value of the goods and for a third offence, life imprisonment, the pillory and his entire estate forfeited.

John Eastman [probably from Downton but there were other Eastmans at Nunton] was indicted by Robert Bedoe of London, yeoman, for buying sheep for 20 shillings and lambs at 10 shillings each and selling them in Westminster within five weeks. Presumably at great profit and without adding any value by first fattening them and illegal. He protested his innocence but was fined just the same. In 1612 William Stockman, Edward Fanston and Henry Welstead of Downton were turned in for engrossing, [cornering] wheat, barley and oats. Stockman was probably the holder of Barford from Winchester College as well as parts of the Bishop of Winchester's Downton estate and the man who founded Stockman's Charity in 1626.

KING'S CLERK OF THE MARKET

Weights and measures, quality of merchandise, rules for apprenticeship - no one could be a baker unless he had seven years training - all were subject to the King's Clerk of the Market. This office was maintained for 500 years, starting simply as the official who paid suppliers of food directly to the Court rather than through middlemen in order to save the King money.

We can imagine the drovers taking their cattle up the road from Downton to Clarendon Palace or to Wilton and being paid by this official. We know that after King John had stayed at Clarendon in 1209 he made payments to the Bishop of Winchester, Peter de Roches.

DOWNTON DRINKING HOLES

There were a bewildering variety of places where you could get a drink and each had to be licensed. Old English ale had been supplanted by beer brewed with hops in the 1520s and this was a much headier quaff. Inns were primarily for travellers although they also sold wine and beer to locals. Taverns were wine shops but sold food and drink for consumption on the premises. Alehouses sold only ale and beer. Finally, a tippling-house was a low class alehouse.

Widows were encouraged to open taverns and alehouses in their homes so that they did not become a burden on the parish. Perhaps the equivalent today would be running Bed and Breakfast. A 'keeper of an ordinary table' ran a restaurant. In 1576 Anne Maple was keeping the Inn in Downton and she persuaded the magistrates to make an injunction for others to 'leave of'. 'All the rest that toke upon them to kepe eny Inne in Downton to leave of and receave no more horses nor horsemen nethr fotemen....'

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS 400 YEARS AGO

A contemporary could say 'A wife in England is de jure [in law] but the best of servants, having nothing in a more proper sense than a child hath,....their condition de facto [in fact] is the best in the world, such is the good nature of Englishmen toward their wives.' This was true although not necessarily for the reason given! Households were by this time the principal economic productive unit. Wives were No.2 in the firm, kept the accounts and stood in for their husbands when away. They often continued to run the business when their husband died. Marriage was therefore an important step, the setting up of an independent business for those of 'the middling sort'. A good dowry was often more important than good looks.

In 1590 John Jennings was fined 5 shillings (the church tithe for Downton - roughly equivalent to the rates - was 1 shilling in 1579) although he pleaded not guilty to keeping an alehouse without a licence and John Snelgar, husbandman, was fined the same amount although he too pleaded not guilty.

JAMES TIGHTENS THE SCREW

James I had a host of statutes and proclamations to check drunkenness and to judge by the number of licences in Downton he had good reason. It was against the law to get drunk or even to tipple for more than an hour. Licensing hours were fixed and so was the strength of ale and beer.

King James had a particular obsession with Lenten fasting. We hear of him in 1620 going to St Paul's to hear a sermon on Mid-Lent Sunday. On his last visit to St Paul's he had noticed a tippling house and a tobacconist by the West Gate so he had instructed the Bishop of London to have them razed to the ground before his next visit - which they had been.

In 1619 he had forbidden the eating of meat in Lent and on Fridays throughout the year

To begin with this was effective only in big towns but in 1620 we know of 2 Inns, I Tavern, 1 Alehouse and 2 Tipplers in Downton because they had had to swear to comply with King James' proclamations on pain of losing a large deposit, paid beforehand to the Exchequer, if they broke the rules.

Nobody knows how the two licensed butchers in Downton survived this complete stoppage of their trade for over a month. Other tradesmen we know of at that time are bakers (often in trouble for baking spice buns - also illegal in Lent), weavers and linen weavers, tanners and shoemakers.

WHITE HORSE IN GOOD FOOD GUIDE OF 1617?

Although English inns were much criticised at home, Fynes Morison, who had travelled widely in Europe, could make this comment in 1617: 'The world affordes not such Innes as England hath for good and cheap entertainment, after the Guests own pleasure, or for humble attendance upon passengers; yea even in very poor villages'. So, "Well done" to the 'White Horse' of 1617 - for it was well established by then, by that name. There are many reasons to think it was in fact also the unnamed hostel mentioned in the 13th and 15th Centuries and Anne Maple's inn seeing off the competition in 1576.

DOWNTON MILLERS

A great influence on the life of Downton were its mills. In 1086 the Bishop of Winchester had had seven of them on his Downton estate but several of those would not have been in Downton itself. Some of those in Downton appear always to have been where they are today, opposite the tannery and between the old village and the Borough. The leet supplying water to them was taken off the Avon some 400 metres upstream. An even greater head of water was created by the reconstruction of Wild Weir which in 1647 was said to be 200 metres long and presumably a few years later was to be further modified to accommodate the new system of water meadows. The Manor Mill had been at Wild Weir but was moved to join the others.

Perhaps when an additional mill was built about 1247 a channel was cut below the mill race between the Moot and Old Court to take the used water away quickly. The mills remained in the Bishop's gift. When Queen Elizabeth 'persuaded' the Bishop to lease the Parsonage Manor to her for forty years the mills came with it and were in Sir Thomas Wilkes' name in 1593. There were by then two corn mills, a malting mill to grind the mash for beer or ale and, since 1215, one of the first in Wiltshire, a fulling mill to cleanse and thicken the cloth woven in the area.

FULLING

For several centuries fulling, which consisted of hammering cloth which had fullers' earth embedded in it till it felted and so became much more wind and waterproof, was the only part of cloth manufacture which was mechanised.

INFLUENTIAL ASHES - 2

Although the Ashes held much of Downton and did a great deal in and around Downton they also lived at Twickenham and we have a note from there to Mr Snowe, the Downton Steward which shows how people like Sir Joseph operated. Dated 20 October 1701 it goes: "You must speak to Mrs Hayter forthwith to putt up four pots of butter, each pot to hold 20 lbs weight and send as soon as ever she can. She must see to do it up very nicely. He desires that she continue to send the fowls she spoke of beginning of next December and that she get him 4 flitches of best bacon".

FLOODING

Flooding of the flat land either side of the River Avon must always have happened. Much of the Borough must have been vulnerable even when the Bishop set up his new town there but the weather in the 13th Century was particularly good so perhaps the threat seemed remote or at least

acceptable. Raising weirs to give a head of water for mills, the engineering of water meadows and,

more recently, fish farms constricted flow deliberately. So much so that Downton qualified for a major flood alleviation scheme.

We know there were floods in Downton in 1636 because the burgage tenants complained of them when pleading their poverty, no doubt to avoid or reduce some tax. The prosperous part of the village was round the mills and up the High Street at this time.

Thomas Snelgrove kept a Day Book or diary in which early entries are:

January 29th 1791 Married this day Thos. Snelgrove to Elizabeth Bloomer Thor.

May 18th 1791 Downton election settled with Bovery & Scott and Shafto & Rightson. The news came on Wednesday.

June 12th 1794 Downton lewmeneated for the battle of Lord Howe and French fleet. ['Glorious First of June'. James Chalk, a Downton diarist in 1869, noted the 75th anniversary with an 'I remember it well' comment.]

January 27th 1795Water risen

January 28th 17951 days flud.

February 9th and 10thSecond flud.

February 1st 1796Done nothing waitin for a fludd.

February 4th 1796Done nothing high water.

Flooding sufficient to stop Borough traffic and flood some homes occurred on average every five years. There is a story that Mr Hickman whose grain store, now a block of flats, was at the end of the Borough just short of Iron Bridge, was so inured to the water that he sat in his office in his rubber boots doing his paperwork, regardless.

There had been at least ten floods in the 20th Century. In 1961 Mrs Eastman would recall 1916 especially: 'Remember how we all had privies in the garden, all awash' In 1990 it was back to boats with two people marooned and in 1999 the lorries that persisted in ploughing through the floods on the Borough swept water in to nearby houses that would otherwise have been flood-free. Bad enough for a reluctant government to fund our new protective bund and pumps.

STOCKMAN'S CHARITY

Both John and William Stockman have been mentioned. The Stockmans held Barford Park and much other land both in Parsonage Manor and the Manor of East Downton. The Stockman Charity was established in 1626 by William Stockman. It was endowed with 6 cottages and 60 acres at Whiteparish (next door to Downton, to the east) called Chadwell Grounds and Stillman Moor. The income was to be applied for the relief of certain poor persons in Downton. Specifically, it was to go to poor workers with large families and was to be paid in quarterly instalments. It was not to go to the Poor Box.

By 1794 some of it had been converted in to £300 of 3% Government Stock. In the years up to 1832 it was able to distribute £40 a year which was the annual rent of Chadwell Farm. It is interesting to contemplate the value today of 6 cottages and 60 acres - probably not less than £250,000 it could today have been producing an annual income of around £11,000 but instead it has been swallowed up by inflation. The Charity itself survives to this day, making small annual donations.

CIVIL WAR

England went from great prosperity to desperate poverty in those terrible 15 years of the Civil War, Commonwealth and Restoration of Charles II. The nearest battles were at Winchester and Basing. Cromwell narrowly escaped being killed in a skirmish at Longford Castle. It is said that Royalist soldiers were camped in the Great Barn at New Court - some got married while there and others died.

Few places avoided the depredations of one army or the other. So much so that many locals joined together as the Clubmen to oppose whoever wanted to take their produce.

'If you offer to plunder or take our cattle

Be assured we will give you battle'

was inscribed on one of the Clubmen's banners.

COMMONWEALTH PAINS

The troubles were not over when the war ended. The Bishop of Winchester, a committed Royalist, lost his Downton estates until Charles II came back to claim the throne. Some of the best standing timber was to be sold off but this was stopped as it might be needed by the Navy.

The ordinary people of Downton would have had to adjust to the imposition of a Presbyterian regime in their church. Whatever remained of Catholic images and glass in the church may well have been destroyed by the Puritans at this time (there is a suggestion that even more havoc was caused by the Victorian architect T H Wyatt, whose older cousin so savaged Salisbury Cathedral, when he 'restored' St Laurence in the 19th Century).

It is a curiosity that the south aisle and present porch date from 1648 in the middle of this terrible time. People in Downton would have suffered as trade collapsed and harsh taxes were imposed. It was a bitter time. Many lived on starvation or near-starvation diets, deaths increased, and births declined.

A RALEIGH IN TROUBLE Dr Raleigh, nephew of Sir Walter, chaplain to the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton and Dean of Wells must have sorely provoked the Roundheads and Levellers because he was captured in the Civil War and stripped of all his wealth. In 1645, as an old man, he was taken to Bridgwater as a prisoner and given in to the care of a vicious and cruel shoemaker who often beat him and finally stabbed him, causing his death.

THE EYRES AND NEWHOUSE

Thomas Eyre was one of three nominated representatives from Wiltshire in the Commonwealth Parliament of 1653, often called the Barebones Parliament after one of its members, Praisegod Barebones. 'Nominated', not 'elected', as Cromwell, Lord Protector, was not ready to trust the people with elections but did not want to be an absolute dictator and refused to be King.

Thomas Eyre is not listed in any of the thirteen powerful committees set up by that Parliament to regulate such diverse matters as Scotland, the advancement of Learning and receiving Petitions. It must be likely that he was from the Eyre family of Downton and Hamptworth. William Eyre of Newhouse had been an MP for Downton in Charles I's Parliament and a Gyles Eyre of Brickworth was an MP for Downton in 1660 in Charles II's reign.

Newhouse was built some time before 1619. There is dispute whether it was built by Stockman of Barford or by Sir Edward Gorges, the builder and owner of Longford Castle, to whom Stockman had sold the land. What is not in doubt is that Gorges sold Newhouse in 1633 to Giles Eyre of Brickworth who gave it to his second son, Ambrose. Ambrose sold it to his cousin, Sir Samuel Eyre, whose descendants live there still. The house may have been a hunting lodge and is an unusual 'Y' shape. The arms of the Y were considerably extended with fine rooms decorated with high quality plaster work in the 18th and 19th Century.

GYLES EYRE: 'A VILLAGE HAMPDEN'

In Whiteparish church there is an inscription which reads in part:

'Buried here Gyles Eyre Esqre and Jane his wife. A man much oppressed by publick power for his laudable opposition to the measures taken in the reigns of James I and Charles I

In the year 1640 ... he was plundered of 2000£ value and imprisoned for refusing to pay the sum of 400£ illegally demanded of him by two instruments under the Privy Seal at Oxford, 14 February 1643. He was Baptised February 1572, dyed January 1655 having issue seven sons (three of whom were likewise members of parliament) and four daughters.'

In March 1655 Colonel John Penruddock lead a Royalist rising in Salisbury in support of Charles II. It was a total failure and Penruddock was beheaded. Penruddocks had been MPs for Downton in 1570 and 1601.

Standlynch Manor had been held by the Bocklands since 1585 and it was said to be there that a number of local people gathered to organise themelves for Penruddock's action. This is plausible as Bockland was a Royalist and married to Penruddock's sister. A John Hely got wind of it and told the other side. By 1661 the Bocklands were clearly back as two of them were MPs for Downton until 1690. They sold Standlynch in 1726 to Sir Peter Vandeput who built a fine new house on the hill above where the dilapidated old Manor stood.

PAPIST PLOTTERS

"The information of James Hely, of Sarum, in the County of Wilts saith:

'that on the 12th March last, being the day of the rising at Sarum, there were seen at Mr Brocklands' of Stanlynch in the said County, some ten horsemen in a party, with swords by their sides, among which were Sir William Courtney, Sir Charles Blount, Sir Alex Carne and one Mr Raleigh of Downton, this being according to the relation of a Justice of the Peace for the said County Witness my hand the 17th July 1655:- Ja. Hely

These were all Papists, and the party at whose house they were seen of the same religion"

#  CHAPTER 5 CHALLENGE AND CHANGE

CHANGE IN THE AIR

Two processes had begun even before the Reformation which now, at the end of the 17th Century, seem to have accelerated around Downton.

The first was the growth of big landed estates. Wealthy landowners were replacing the Bishop and the College as the controllers of Downton. They competed for influence, buying up as many vote-carrying burgages as possible so as to be able to nominate who should be the two MPs for Downton. We shall see their influence too in St Laurence Church.

The other, only in part a reaction to the restoration of worldliness in the church, was the growth of Non-Conformist worship. It is that that we now look at in Downton.

NONCONFORMISTS AND THE ESTABLISHMENT

The ferment started by Wyclif 300 years earlier led on to the Reformation and the Protestant revolution which ebbed and flowed with successive monarchs, often with bloody consequences. Although the Civil War was ultimately political - would Parliament or the King prevail - there was also an underlying religious divide in the country between Church of England Royalists and the Puritan Roundheads who ranged from low church Anglicans to the very intolerant New Model Army Presbyterians. Catholics were excluded from public life and if they refused to attend the Established Church they were called 'recusant' and at some times suffered fines or worse.

BAPTIST BEGINNINGS

The earliest English Baptist church had been founded by John Smyth in Amsterdam in 1608 where he and others had emigrated to escape persecution. Others there were the English Separatists who had left at the end of Elizabeth's reign. At the same time several of the English Plantations or colonies in America were started for the same reason. Between 1630 and 1643 20,000 were shipped to New England and Maine while another 40,000 went to Virginia. Three quarters died early but they had free land and freedom and Rev Hugh Peters could say in 1645 'in seven years I never saw a beggar, nor heard an oath, nor looked upon a drunkard'.

DOWNTON BAPTISTS

One group of Amsterdam Baptist exiles under the leadership of Thomas White is known to have come from the Downton area. It is possible that one of them, Cuthbert Hutton, a pewterer, came from Downton itself. It is thought that it was these emigrees who were instrumental in getting John Smyth's books up the Avon valley. These and, perhaps, the return of some of the exiles, led to the founding of General Baptist churches at Fordingbridge, Downton and Salisbury - in Salisbury this was as early as 1626.

The earliest Downton gatherings of Baptists were at night on the Downs above Wick. The first Baptist congregation in Downton is believed to have existed during the Protectorate (1653-58). In 1662 a small group of them was led by Peter Coles, the tanner. One of their number was called Mary Peenhorne which suggests that she and others may indeed have come back from Holland. That would also explain why they were General rather than Particular Baptists.

GENERAL OR PARTICULAR General Baptists held to a universal or 'general' view of the atonement whereas Particular Baptists had decided that the atonement was only for those 'particularly' chosen by God for salvation and in their view that was them! The Amsterdam exiles had stuck closer to Smyth's original teaching but those who set up independently in England faced such persecution that a more exclusive interpretation is hardly surprising.

DOWNTON'S FIRST BAPTIST CHAPEL

In 1680 John Sanger was the minister with Peter Coles his assistant. Both were constantly at odds with the Bishop of Salisbury and Coles was imprisoned for several years in Fisherton gaol despite Charles II's 1672 Declaration of Indulgence which allowed dissenters to obtain a royal licence to worship. For some reason Downton's church did not do this.

John Sanger was also probably the schoolmaster in Ashe and Eyre's Free School (of which more later) as he is known to have kept a grammar school and there was only one. He had a hard time. There was much persecution of nonconformists under the Conventicle Act,1664. This was the time of the Restoration of Charles II, always a bit cagey about his religious orientation, and of James II who was openly Catholic.

The Establishment of the day saw this new way of worshipping, which rejected the authority of the hierarchy of the Church of England, in the belief that each had a direct and personal relationship with God, in much the same way that in our time we saw Communism. It was a threat to their power and values.

It is a feature of these early Baptist congregations that they embraced all sorts, many of them with quite a lot to lose in the 'sufferings' they experienced for not conforming with the strict rules about church attendance. One such conventicle, not far from Downton, was reported to the Bishop as meeting, illegally, every Sunday and Thursday 'at the Court House' [which suggests a wealthy patron] and consisted of 'townes people and strangers and some Gentry, ye most meane people'

'SUFFERINGS'

'Sufferings' is a fair description of the savage fines and imprisonment they endured even though the 1664 Conventicle Act and the Five Mile Act of 1665, collectively known as the Clarendon Code, had the perverse effect of making it just legal for the first Baptist chapel in Downton to be founded in 1666 although any congregation of more than five remained illegal. They are said to have met in a cottage in Gravel Close where they later built the first chapel, probably on the site where the Downton band now have their building.

Sangar lived until 1708. Initially, Downton Baptist church continued to grow, especially after the accession of William and Mary in 1688, and was considered to be the 'most wealthy and influential church of the General Baptists in the county.' By 1699 however numbers had dropped to 13. At about this time Benjamin Miller became pastor and remained so for nearly fifty years, a time of new vigour.

It was a successful ministry and Miller also became Moderator of the General Assembly of General Baptists in 1709 although Downton seems to have resisted releasing him to be a Messenger who would go round other churches in the area to ginger them up.

SCHISM

In 1734 there was schism in Downton and some of the congregation began meeting in South Lane to 'preserve orthodox teaching' and became Particular Baptists. They got support in the town and were joined by some local Presbyterians who had first joined the Baptist congregation at Broughton in Hampshire. Broughton thereafter took them under its wing. In 1791 they built a chapel in South Lane where the present one stands. The very first page of their Church Book is taken up with the application for and receipt of a licence from the Bishop of Salisbury - a reminder that even 150 years on nonconformists were not fully accepted. In 1801 they appointed their first minister so there was one in Gravel Close and one in South Lane, perhaps 300 metres apart.

After Miller's death in 1743 the Gravel Close chapel had no minister for 15 years, relying on visiting preachers and leadership coming from Miller's son-in-law. Numbers dropped to 40 and it seems to have been an unhappy time. In 1777 some of Peter Coles' descendants who had control of a large

endowment left by a later Peter Coles withheld the income and even the meeting place. 'A long and painful state of darkness ensued.'

The struggle continued until 1799 when the Court of Chancery gave judgement in favour of the church. £1,000 was invested and the interest from it to this day goes towards supporting the Baptist ministry in Downton. Numbers fluctuated but seem to have stayed around the 40 mark. In 1804 they joined the New Connexion of General Baptist Churches. By the end of the century they were reunited with their South Lane brethren although the Gravel Close chapel was still in use up to 1939.

NON-CONFORMISTS NOT CONFORMING

On a lighter note, the church elders may have been nonconformist as far as the Church of England saw it but as the outside pressures and sufferings decreased they became more and more concerned that their own flock should themselves conform to the disciplines of the Baptist ministry rather than to the CofE. In October 1795 Rachel Dove reported to them that Brother Mitchel, while returning from Salisbury Fair, 'did make use of prophane language such as is inconsistent with his profession as a follower of Christ' Two months later a further charge of the Brother's drunkenness was added by Rachel's husband, Richard Dove.

When it all finally came before the church, Brother Mitchel was accompanied by Brother Dove who himself stood accused of having attended the Prayer Meeting 'disguized in liquor'. Both confessed and were restored but Brother Dove subsequently was accused of drunkenness many times and as far apart as Salisbury, Wimborne and finally on the Lymington-Poole road where he was caught by the Lymington Baptist minister. This was in 1802 and he was accordingly 'cut off'

OTHERS ARE CUT OFF

After years of attempted restoration two men, Johnson and Shilly, were also finally excluded. In that time they were variously accused of 'being seen Breaking the Lord's Day in training a young horse to the neglect of Divine worship'; 'maliciously shooting his neighbour's dog...and challenging him to a fight'; playing cricket when there was preaching; being in the company of an ungodly character; being 'an habitual liar and deceiver'; 'reveling'; 'going to a horse race'; gathering nuts on the Lord's Day and, possibly the biggest and decisive error, failure to repay a loan to a fellow member. Shilly's final misdemeanour was that, having given himself up to a life of cursing and swearing, on a Saturday evening 'he went to play the fidle to some dancers at Whiteparish. The Landlord at a late hour turned them out and ... Shilly burst open the door and continued in the house till one o'clock on Lord's Day morning.' Too much for the very forbearing brethren.

OF A MIDDLING SORT

A final glimpse of this congregation in 1798 shows that, as in other parts of the south of England, a number of them were of 'the middling sort', papermakers, millers, maltsters, weavers, a chairmaker and a baker as well as several landowners. They accepted the discipline of their brethren. When one of the richest was accused of and admitted to fornication with his maid 'by which act she was pregnant prior to his marriage to her' he was suspended. On being reinstated nine months later he asked to remain suspended longer in order to 'show to the sister churches and the world that he did not from his affluent circumstances influence the Church..'

It was men of this sort who, in their thousands in Wellington's army, held great evangelical meetings on the hillsides by their camps. Fortescue, the historian of the Army, believed that it was their high morale which saved the Flanders army, eventually to confront Napoleon at Waterloo, from mutiny against the appalling conditions which negligence and incompetence in the War Office had caused. Whether any were from Downton has not emerged but it must be likely.

#  CHAPTER 6 THE GREAT ESTATES

LORDSHIP OF DOWNTON

As early as 1551 the lordship of Downton manor was leased by the Bishop of Winchester to William Herbert. By 1621 the Herberts of Wilton, Earls of Pembroke, had also got the lease of Parsonage manor from the College although the Raleighs seem to have stayed on as tenants in the Parsonage Manor house and we find one of them joining the Royalist side in the Civil War.

In effective control of the burgages and thus of the votes, the Earl nominated Edward Herbert as one of the Downton Members for Parliament. From this time Downton was a close Borough in the hands of whoever was the principal landowner.

The Bishops and the College had been benign and feudal landlords but they now divested much of their land to wealthy commoners. In the 17th and 18th Century it was these new landowners who shaped the countryside round Downton.

DOWNTON DEER PARKS

Barford Lane, a back way to Salisbury, is first mentioned in 1539. Its original route is not entirely clear but it certainly did not go the way it does now. The first detour occurs just outside the village where the road turns sharply right, up the hill. This was to take it round Barford Park which had been enclosed by its owners, the Stockmans, as a deer park.

It makes another detour, again to go round a deer-park, at what is today Trafalgar House but which in those days was Standlynch House, owned by the Bocklands, maternal ancestors of the present Earl of Radnor. Standlynch was a rallying point for Royalists and, supposedly, Roman Catholics although the latter story may just be political propaganda of the time. Large, comfortable houses had been built in both places and any cottages other than the farmhouses themselves were destroyed. Standlynch and Barford Park Farms alone remain of those settlements.

Moot House, earlier Downton House and/or Thrings, was the Manor House for the East Downton tything. It had been held by the Coles family from whom it descended to the Shuckburghs, already mentioned. The Coles later owned and upgraded Wick Farm.

New Court we have already discussed as the Bishop's manor and this was leased from the Bishop at the end of the 17th Century by Sir Joseph Ashe who was a benefactor of the village in many ways but in particular founded its first school. His reasons may have been enlightened self interest as he was seeking election as one of the two MPs and was causing very considerable and doubtless unpopular upheaval with his construction of water meadows both north and south of the Borough.

HOUSES AND HOVELS

The ostentation of the great country houses was in sharp contrast to the burgeoning poverty especially in the south where there was no alternative employment however menial. Driven out of their tied cottages belonging to the landowner for whom they had worked, many built hovels on common land, squatting where they could. No Man's Land was a whole settlement like this but even in Downton proper it happened.

Munday 16 May 1698

An account of those that in a riotous manner broke the Lady's waste within the Franchises of Downton by digging holes in the ground to putt posts for erecting a Cottage on the said waste.... and notwithstanding the workmen (whose names are hereunder) were forbidden by John Snow, servant to the Lady Ash, from proceeding any further in the said work, yett in contempt thereof they have proceeded and finished the said cottage.

Nicholas Lawes, senior, who is the owner of the Cottage

Samuel Wheeler, carpenter

Walter Sheppard, apprentice to Abr. Wheeler

Joseph Chalke, junior, who thatched the said Cottage

George Noble who breaded the walls of the said Cottage

One other man who holpe digge the holes for erecting the said Cottage

This cottage may well have been completed in a single day - they often were as that could give the occupier additional rights.

THE GREAT LANDOWNERS

A number of names of landowners have been mentioned and as they now took over large sections of St Laurence's for their private use as well as playing an important part in the life of the village it is appropriate to look at them. Both the chancel, previously, possibly, the Bishop's chapel, and the South transept became for a time private chapels for the gentry. Their memorials remain as do faint traces of where the chancel partition stood.

Four great families came to dominate the Downton area and, to a degree, the church. The Duncombes, the Eyres, the Pleydell-Bouveries and, later, the Nelsons.

DOWNTON'S RICHEST FAMILY

The story of how Charles Duncombe, a successful goldsmith, banker and Lord Mayor of London, came to buy the 800 acre Barford Park estate in 1690 from a fellow City Alderman and all that followed is well told in "Downton's Richest Family" by Conrad Saunders, published by and available in the church.

BARFORD PARK IS BOUGHT

As a young man Sir Charles Duncombe was already lending money even to the King and in large amounts: £31,600 for just one loan, £50,000 for another, the equivalent to several million pounds as the Millennium ends. He became Receiver of Customs, Cashier of the Hearth Tax and a Commissioner of the Mint.

He was an active Member of Parliament and this may be why in 1690 he bought land and property in Downton. As a burgage borough the right to vote was vested in the properties he bought. He had just become an MP for Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight but Downton could be made the safest of safe seats by buying the burgages. By the time he died in 1711 he is thought to have owned three quarters of them. He had been MP for Downton, on and off, from 1695 till he died revered and honoured by many, reviled by some.

In 1695 he had built Barford House in his newly fenced-in Barford Park. He was unmarried so when he died his nephew Anthony inherited the Downton holdings. Sir Charles died in Teddington but is buried here and his memorial is in the South Transept.

Anthony Duncombe was only aged 16 on inheriting. He settled down in the great house in about 1720 when he also bought the neighbouring Parsonage Farm, today called the Manor House. Next year he became one of New Sarum's MPs and held the seat until 1734 when he took over one of the Downton seats until he was made Lord Feversham in 1747. In 1741 he had bought the lease of Downton Manor from the Bishop of Winchester and this gave him the right to appoint the returning officer and so Downton was securely in his pocket.

The memorials in the chancel tell something of a life of tragedy. He was married for 36 years to Margaret Verney but by the time she died when he was 60, all their children had died. They were especially saddened by the death of George, the son and heir, aged 19. His memorial is eloquent. Lord Feversham's next wife, Frances Bathurst, from Clarendon Park, was only 25 when they married in 1756. She died after giving birth to a daughter, Frances, only a year later.

FAITHFUL DILIGENT AND CHEERFUL

On the outside wall of the south Transept of St Laurence's there is a stone plaque: "This stone is erected in memory of William Kervil of this parish Servt to Anthony Duncombe Esq who died May 23 1743 Aged 32 years Judge of his character by the general Regret of his Fellow Servants and by this Testimony of his Affectionate Master's and Lady's Regard for his faithful diligent and cheerful Service during the space of Twenty One Years." A brief sum will show that he started work aged 11.

In 1758 Anthony Duncombe married Anne Hales from Kent and she, too, was in her early 20's .They had a daughter they called Anne in the following year. He died in 1763 leaving his widow Anne with a daughter and step-daughter. He is buried in St Laurence's with a fine memorial in the chancel.

BOUVERIES AND LONGFORD CASTLE

Up the road and river, towards Salisbury, on the next great estate, Edward, the son of Sir William Bouverie who had been Governor of the Bank of England when Sir Charles Duncombe was Lord Mayor, had bought Longford Castle and its land.

The castle had been built by Sir Thomas Gorges, c1590, in an unusual triangular form apparently to please his Swedish wife. His family were active in the exploration of America with Sir Ferdinand Gorges becoming the first Governor of Maine. This was nearly thirty years after he had first become interested in Maine after meeting the explorer whose description of the East Coast of America was the trigger for its successful settlement. Lord Zouche not far away in North West Hampshire and the Earl of Southampton, Arundell, were working on this project, too.

In 1765 Lord Feversham's widow, Lady Anne, now aged 29, married William Bouverie, 2nd Viscount Folkestone and, soon, 1st Earl of Radnor. This did not bring Bouverie the inherited Duncombe wealth which mostly passed to a Duncombe cousin in Yorkshire. However, the burgages and the lease of Downton manor were entailed in a complicated fashion to Lord Feversham and, more significantly, as he had an older daughter, Frances, to Lady Anne's 3 year old daughter Anne.

By a devious, costly but seemingly inevitable process the daughter, Anne, eventually became the next Countess Radnor when she married her step brother - and her inheritance ended up at Longford. The resulting quarrel with the Yorkshire Duncombe cousins dragged on for many years with the Radnors and Duncombes frustrating each other's attempts to put Downton MPs of their choice in Parliament. For example, in the election of 1784 each side objected to virtually every vote cast for the other side and it took many months to sort out. The Radnor line of argument was, generally, that Duncombe's bequest was invalid. The other side argued that Radnor had improperly claimed burgage rights for property not in the Borough.

BOBBY SHAFTO

Bonnie Bobby Shafto, famous from the song about his jilting a lover, had married an Anne Duncombe from the Yorkshire branch of the family. He lived in the Downton area and was Downton's MP from 1779 to 1790. Having been defeated by the Radnor candidates in 1790 and 1796, he sold his burgages to Lord Radnor, dying shortly afterwards. His wife, Anne, had three children in 1775, 76 and 77. She died in 1783 and was buried in Downton.

Their son inherited the Barford estate but seems to have had little interest in it. Barford House was taken down in 1815, perhaps after a fire. The Barford estate went to the Nelson family at neighbouring Trafalgar House in about 1835 and later to the Radnors.

DOWNTON AS A GIFT

Charles Shaw-Lefevre became one of Downton's two MPs in 1830. This is an imagined version of how it happened according to his account

.

Scene: A gentleman's club in London. The elderly Lord Radnor is seated and has just put down his 'Morning Post' newspaper when he sees young Shaw-Lefevre standing in the doorway looking a little lost.

RADNOR: 'Ah, Lefevre. Just the chap. Hoped to see you soon. Come and join me.'

LEFEVRE: 'Good morning, Your Lordship. Thank you, Sir, it would be a pleasure'

RADNOR : 'I've got a proposition for you. Just the thing. I'm sure you are the man for the job. How would you like to go into Parliament?'

LEFEVRE: 'Why, Sir, I would like that very much. Very much indeed.'

RADNOR : 'Capital. Capital. That's done then.'

LEFEVRE: 'Sir ?'

RADNOR: 'I have a seat for you in Wiltshire. Coming up soon. You will be most comfortable there, I'm sure'

LEFEVRE : 'Well, Sir,, I am very much obliged to you.....'

RADNOR : 'Don't mention, dear boy. Don't mention it. How's your Uncle keeping these days? Haven't seen him in ages.'

LEFEVRE : 'Lord Eversley doesn't get out much these days - his old trouble, you know - still he has done pretty well, Sir, hasn't he? When should I go down to visit...?

RADNOR : 'Visit? Visit? No, no, no. No need of that at all. The village is my affair. You do as you please in the Chamber, but this won't cost you a farthing. Leave it all to me.'

LEFEVRE : 'But, Sir...'

RADNOR : 'No buts. Do as you please and don't let them get a penny out of you. I must be off. Meeting in ten minutes. So glad we have settled everything so satisfactorily. Good bye, dear boy...'

LEFEVRE : 'Forgive me, Sir, I must insist....'

RADNOR : 'Yes, well, out with it boy...'

LEFEVRE : 'The name of the Borough, Sir ?'

RADNOR : 'The Borough! Good Heavens! What a noodle I am ... it's Downton, not far south of my place at Longford. You'll hear at the election and I'll see you in the House shortly....' He bustles off leaving a rather bemused young man who then turns to the audience and speaks

LEFEVRE : 'Of course the whole thing cannot be defended. I wasn't in the Commons very long - only a year and then old Lord Eversley died and I was in the House of Lords. Still it was a very comfortable seat and Lord Radnor was as good as his word. I once had a request for money from the Vicar of Downton and the old Earl was very indignant as that was his affair, not mine. I always heard good reports of him, had a mind of his own....'

THE NELSONS OF TRAFALGAR HOUSE

We now turn to the family of Viscount Horatio Nelson, the victor at the Battle of Trafalgar. He was killed during the battle which historians see as the climax of a long and successful campaign at sea to contain Napoleon and which his contemporaries saw as a triumphal reversal of years of humiliation at Napoleon's hands.

A year after the battle a grateful nation had endowed the Nelson family with £90,000 [late 1990's value: £2,000,000] used to buy Standlynch House and estate under another Act of 1814 and a perpetual pension of £5,000[equivalent to about £150,000p.a. today]. The Nelson Earldom passed to Thomas Bolton, the nephew of the first Earl, Nelson's elder brother William, and son of Nelson's sister Susannah.

Bolton changed his name to Nelson on succeeding. He was married to Frances Eyre who in turn was descended from Maurice Bockland and his wife, Joan Penruddock. The Nelsons, therefore, had family links with their new home that went back three and a half centuries.

THE LONG CONNECTION ENDS

The Nelson family retained Trafalgar House and over 3,000 acres until the middle of the 20th century when they too left.

In the 20th Century successive governments jibbed at continuing to pay the Nelsons their pension. They in their turn jibbed at not being allowed to sell the house or its estate which they claimed was costing them more than the pension! This was not resolved until a Labour government insisted and persisted.

In 1947 a special Act of Parliament amended the original 1806 Act so the pension stopped and the Nelsons were free to sell. The Duke of Leeds was the first buyer but he had soon sold on the bulk of the estate to the Earl of Radnor leaving Trafalgar House and 11 acres which passed to Lord Chandos, the former Oliver Lyttleton, who had had a distinguished career in Churchill's government. Lyttleton is best remembered for presiding over a great number of colonial independence negotiations as the British Empire evolved in to the present day Commonwealth.

Standlynch House had been built for Sir Peter Vandeput, a wealthy banker, in 1733 to replace the semi-ruined manor house on lower ground near Standlynch Mill which has been there since the 14th Century. It is likely that the architect was Sir Peter's brother-in-law, Roger Morris, and his design was among the earliest in England reflecting the renewed interest in Greek architecture. Morris was a great admirer of Inigo Jones and was assisting the Earl of Pembroke in designing the Palladian bridge at Wilton at the same time as he worked at Standlynch.

Vandeput's family like that of his neighbours, the Bouveries of Longford Castle had fled from Catholic persecution of Protestants in Belgium and Holland by the Spanish Duke of Alva. The Bouveries were Huguenots and had earlier left France, before the terrible massacres of their brethren.

Standlynch was bought by Henry Dawkins, a dilettante, who had the designer Revett greatly enlarge and embellish it in 1766, building large wings to north and south connected by corridors to the main house and a magnificent Doric-pillared portico to Morris' original house. The wings were the work of John Wood the Younger of Bath.

It was called Standlynch House until it was bought by the Crown in 1815 for the family of Vice Admiral Viscount Horatio Nelson, the victor at Trafalgar. Under the Nelsons it was called Trafalgar House. After a number of owners who hoped to find uses for the house it was bought by Mr Michael Wade whose family had built over 600 ships for the Royal Navy. His plans for the house include turning one wing in to an opera school but so far a viable compromise with English Heritage and other conservationists has not been found.

DOWNTON AND THE EARLS

We have not quite finished with these powerful families and their effect on Downton and its church. In 1791 the then Lord Radnor decided that, as it was in his Manor, he ought to be able to see Downton's church so he had an extra tier built in brick on to the tower of St Laurence's to achieve this. It was not a success. Remedial work needed between 1810 and 1815 to prevent the tower falling was not adequate and in 1859 the tower was reduced to its present, and original, size with only the four handsome stone pinnacles being reused.

Having acquired the Lordship of the manor and the burgages, Lord Radnor was in dispute with the Bishop of Winchester over whether the Bishop's bailiff or the steward of the Lord of the Manor for the time being was the returning officer for elections. This was an important position in a Rotten or Pocket Borough like Downton where the owners of burgages would fill them with their friends and relatives just before and for no time after an election. Again Lord Radnor prevailed.

It was during this struggle that their respective owners ordered their numbers to be painted on the eligible houses. The only surviving example (no.16) can still be seen on Creel Cottage by Iron Bridge. A later form of marking can be seen on many houses in the Borough today. Set in to the walls are small stone panels with a number chased in to them. It is probable that this was done only to the houses owned by Lord Radnor and which in his view carried a vote. The rather capricious numbering is said to come from his Rent Book.

One of the houses no longer existed after the Newcourt Carrier was cut through but its right to vote lived on, marked just by the stone visible from Moulds Bridge, or so it was said by Lord Feversham when speaking in the House of Lords during the Reform Bill debate.

HAYWARD, STEWARD AND BAILIFF

Lords of Manors had many duties and as many lived away they delegated to paid subordinates. Some of these functionaries with legal duties were still being formally appointed as late as 1905 and these days most of the work of a Steward is done by an Agent or Manager.

Mr George Futcher was Downton's last Hayward and Bailiff. He was Hayward from 1897 and Bailiff from 1905. His granddaughter still lives in Downton and she has provided some of his papers and his town crier's bell for safekeeping by the Downton Society.

Hayward The word derives from Old English hege ward or hedge keeper. His job goes back to Saxon times at least and he was an officer of the manorial court, duly sworn, serving the Lord of the Manor. Common meadows had many sharing them and each shareholder was responsible for a section of the communal hedge. The hedge kept the grazing animals from the equally important common arable land. The Hayward saw that the 'hedge' was kept intact. Often temporary hurdles or 'dead' hedges were used.

The Hayward's sanction was to impound stray animals. The pound in Downton was in the middle of the Borough more or less opposite the Memorial Hall. Not an easy job as entry for 1389 shows:

'If anyone's swine or porkers shall be so wild that they cannot be enclosed in the pound the hayward shall follow the animals to the house where they dwell and there by the view and testimony of the neighbours and trustworthy persons he or they shall have compensation according to the extent of the injury from him who claims the said swine'

Four hundred years later in 1798 we find the customary charges for Hayward's Fees include:

'8.for impounding pigges that is rung fourpence each 4d

9.for impounding pigges that is not rung six shillings and eightpence each 6s 8d'

An unrung pig in a pound would do untold damage to meagre pasture with its snout in just one night so a charge twenty times as great was set and accepted. The same charges held in 1897.

Downton's Hayward had many other duties. He was the manorial official who saw tenants in and out, he supervised the elections of members of parliament, he was the Court and Town crier and was required to go to two market towns to cry 'straid horses cowes pigges and sheep.... imedetly after there entry' He then had to keep them, if unclaimed, until the next Court Leet or his Lord would not be able to get his money - after a year and a day they were to be sold to 'the best bedder to deffray expences'.

Bailiff Initially bailiff and steward seem to have been largely interchangeable with the general inference that the bailiff was more in the legal chain and the steward more managerial but with considerable overlap. In Downton it was the Bailiff who decided the outcome of elections to Parliament but he was already subordinate to the Steward.

In 1905 Mr Futcher's duties were few. Chief among them was managing the 'Shows on the Green on Fair days' where he was allowed to charge two shillings for a large stall and one for a small one. He must keep counterfoils (none to be torn out !); he could keep the money but must send the receipt book for annual verification.

His appointment came from a London firm of Solicitors who mention Mr Coxe as the Steward; the name of one of the partners in the firm is P H Coxe.

#  CHAPTER 7 GOVERNING DOWNTON

ELECTIONS TO PARLIAMENT

While Downton still had its two seats for Members of Parliament with an electoral roll of around 120 voters the electoral procedure had changed a lot since the 13th Century. Elections were rumbustuous affairs. They were held out in the open space on the Borough in front of the White Horse. Candidates or their agents ensured that their tenants with burgage rights were there. They gave them their deeds as they went to the poll and collected them as they came away. 'Electoral roll' meant just that - the roll of parchment on which the electors were listed.

The voters would be well supplied with beer and waverers would be bribed as well. Technically, the right to vote went to a 'person having a freehold interest in burgage tenements held by a certain rent, fealty and suit of court of the Bishop of Winchester, who is Lord of the Borough, and paying reliefs on descent [i.e. Death Duties!] and fines on alienation' [a premium to the landlord when selling on]

When Parliament held a commission on what actually went on at elections they had several witnesses who cheerfully admitted to taking money from both sides - without fear or favour! The election was managed by the returning officer. This was why it was so important to establish whether the Bishop's bailiff or Lord Radnor's steward held that office. He would stand on the balcony and call for a show of hands for each candidate. The heckling and general involvement of the crowd of voters and onlookers would at times be more like a riot. Name-calling and fights were usual and often the candidates had gangs of thugs to intimidate waverers.

It was remarkable how different the count would appear to those looking out for the candidate's interest. Frequently, indeed during the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, almost invariably, the election result would be challenged in Parliament. We saw earlier how family feuding between the Bouveries and Duncombes spilt over in election battles.

In 1832 places like Downton lost their burgage rights in the Reform Act. The then Lord Radnor, to his credit, backed the passing of the Bill which was to take away his powers. Even in 1900, 60 years after Downton's Rotten Borough status ended, we can find a rather disapproving comment in the Parish Magazine about a rowdier element's Election Day behaviour.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Because Downton had been given to the bishopric of Winchester it was not subject to general royal taxes or administration. The Bishop or his bailiffs were the law. Effectively the Rector of Downton, after one was appointed, was the sheriff. The huge mediaeval parish was subdivided into six tithings: Downton, Church, Wick, Charlton, Bodenham and Witherington. 'Downton' contained Redlynch, Woodfalls, Warminster Green, Bohemia and Hamptworth. When the Borough was created it became a seventh administrative unit and was sometimes called Downton Foreign until the name finally settled as East Downton tithing.

There seem to have been three centres of government in Downton: the courts of the Lords of the Manor, the Borough and the Rector with his Parsonage. Each dealt with their own districts on behalf of the King. The Leet or local government for the whole parish was exercised in Tourns twice a year at which the Bishop's steward presided. When the manor was leased the Lord Farmer's steward was in charge. By the 18th Century the name had changed from a Hundred Tourn to a Court Leet. Their function was to collect dues and deal with offences whether civil or criminal. Taverners and moral offenders and, later, Recusants [Roman Catholics who refused to go the parish church] and Dissenters were dealt with.

From the early 17th Century a Constable or Hundred Constable for the whole parish was elected annually. He was assisted as a peace officer by the tithingmen who were also elected annually. In due course the tithingman or alderman for the Borough became the Mayor. There were other officers such as the searcher, the sealer and the registrar of leather. Most of these posts and the tourn ceased to have any other than ceremonial functions by 1842 when paid Parish Constables were introduced. Many administrative functions, such as road maintenance, went to an increasingly centralised local government based in Salisbury.

Church affairs and much else in Downton were subject to the Churchwardens and Vestry. It was this body which, through its supplementary body the Select Vestry, was eventually to evolve in to the Parish Council. The Vestry itself is now the Parochial Church Council.

The Mayor, with his mace, given by the town's MPs in 1714, remained in office for an obstinate 20 years more after the 1842 Act stripped him of any powers. So little of his powers remained in the early 1780s that there was a story current that if he saw three pigs wallowing in the mud on the Borough he had the right to whip up the middle one and lie in its place.

Authority for law and order vested in Justices of the Peace and in Coroners. Few of their records have survived. Those that have give a picture of rural life with rural hazards in Downton in the 1750s and 60s. 'Mary Chalk: fell in to a pond and was drowned'; 'John Miles, carter: killed by overturning a waggon loaded with wheat.' 'John Blake: fell under the wheel of a mill that was going and was immediately crushed to death.' 'John Cooper: killed by falling off a ladder' are typical.

Slightly more unusual are: 'Roger Snelgrove: dropped down dead suddenly while putting on his clothes in a field where he had been at work' and, last but not least, 'Mary Littlecot: had drunk too freely at the New Inn [in recent times 'The Wooden Spoon' ] and soon after was found dead' possibly on her way home up the hill to Redlynch. Sadly, every so often the Coroner would record, as he did on 17 April 1778: 'George Weston: drowned himself; lunacy' All suicides were put down to lunacy.

Most of the crimes were trivial with the occasional arraignment of women for infanticide although none from Downton were convicted. Quite a long and elaborate story of missing picks and shovels, accusations and denials, ended a couple of years later in 1736 with John Jennings being found with the tools stolen from William Jennings and Thomas Newman.

Sixty years later another Newman (there were plenty in the district) and George Quinton were executed in Salisbury for burglary after conviction at the Assizes. They seem to have mixed with a bad lot and confessed to receiving goods which could only have been stolen. They particularly regretted mixing with John Quinton who had led them in to stealing goods from a Mr Worral because John Quinton turned King's Evidence on them in order to escape the rope. After they had been hanged in Salisbury their friends conveyed their bodies to Downton for burial.

A much less drawn out affair comes straight off the page as alive as when it was written. Joan, wife of Joseph Davis, Downton tanner, reports to the Justices that 'this present day her said husband assaulted, beat and very much abused her in such manner that she is very much afraid he will take this opportunity to take away her life or do her some further bodily harm or mishiefe' She evidently wasn't going to miss the opportunity given by the presence of the JPs.

'BOROUGH ENGLISH'

Over the centuries the Manor Courts had become ever more involved in the conveyance of holdings and settling disputes between neighbours, tenants and subtenants in addition to their revenue collecting and penal functions. By 1843, following all the changes in local government of the previous year, it could be said that the only practically useful business connected with any of the Courts at Downton was the conveyancing of copyholds of inheritance. This was serious business as the Borough tenancies and some others were 'Borough English' which meant that the youngest son inherited unless some special reason or limitation could be shown. Courts for these transactions continued to be held in Court House until early in the 20th Century but their successors the Parish Council and the Parochial Church Council were very different both in character and in their powers.

POOR LAWS

Although there were problems from dispossessed vagrants setting up squatter villages on the marginal land in the parish –the hamlet of No Mans Land survives today as a reminder of them - there would have been few beggars and almost no actual starvation. England was way ahead of the rest of Europe with its Poor Law brought in by the Tudor kings.

In Downton the Poor Law would have been administered by the Overseers elected each year in the parish and it operated in two ways. Outside the close knit hierarchy of tenants and serfs and their families centred on the two manors who were looked after by their manor, the Poor Law provided shelter, food and clothing for the destitute and old and put to work those that were not part of the well ordered but tightly controlled system of the great estates. Drunkards were put in the stocks, vagrants and layabouts were sent to the House of Correction which evolved into the Workhouse. In 1723 ultimate responsibility was given to the Churchwardens and Vestry and then in 1819 a body specifically charged with administering the new much more detailed Poor Laws was created. It was called the Select Vestry, of which more later on.

Our Workhouse, built towards the end of the 16th Century, still survives but as a block of well-appointed flats at the top end of the Borough. It was next to the Smallpox House and incorporated the gaol.

#  CHAPTER 8 TEACHING DOWNTON

SCHOOLS

In the early years of Winchester College the sons of parishioners of Downton were given preference - it is said that 10 of the original 70 places were reserved for Downton. This was a reasonable provision as so much of the College's revenue came from Downton, its first endowment by Bishop William of Wykeham.

In 1679, Sir Joseph Ashe and Gyles Eyre of Brickworth, another wealthy local landlord, established the Free School for twelve boys in Borough or Court House in South Lane which had been built four years earlier. The boys should be sons of Borough freeholders but, otherwise, just living in the village. None could stay in the school for more than three years. Eyre, who, like Ashe was an MP for Downton, got permission from the King to start two Fairs (23rd April and 21st September) in Downton to fund the new school - once the debts incurred by them in setting up the fair and the school had been cleared.

The school was inadequately endowed with only £100 and the profits of the two fairs each year for which Gyles Eyre had got a royal licence. The first schoolmaster we hear of is John Sanger, the Baptist Minister, in 1645 and it is likely he was the master of the new school. The Eyres were at the very least sympathetic to Dissenters at this time.

Much of the inspiration for Grammar Schools came from the attitudes which the Protestant revolution had fostered. In fact the school in Downton was notionally non-sectarian in choice of pupils although its particular initiation came from within the Established Church where there was a very creditable if today rather paternalist concern about 'The Poor' and how they were to be given a chance in life. It was a period in which fewer and fewer had their own plot of land and fewer were employed on farms as inclosures continued.

The Free Grammar School survived in a poor way, never having enough income, until it was closed in 1890 despite having been enlarged by the vicar in 1833 and revived a little by a bequest in 1871. In 1801 it still only had 12 pupils.

EXPANSION OF DOWNTON SCHOOLING

In 1784 Emma Noyes left £200 to be divided between paying for a schoolmistress in Charlton to teach 6 to 8 girls and the grammar school in East Downton. The latter was the only school in the village until the beginning of the 19th Century when there was a remarkable expansion in schooling. Some of these 'schools', and there were 30 of them by 1820, were probably little more than sweatshops with between five and ten children being taught lace making but others would have given a smattering of genuine education. The population was rising - from 2,450 in 1801 to 3,600 in 1831 - but employment was not. In 1801 John Britton, in 'Beauties of Wiltshire', wrote 'the poor of this town [Downton] are principally employed in making lace'. Inclosures, mechanisation and changes in crops and livestock management cut many youngsters off from their expected life as farm hands.

The evangelical, mainly nonconformist, churches were competing with the established pattern of Free or Grammar schooling managed or at least supervised by the Church of England. Evidently the Established Church did not feel that the multiplicity of small schools was adequate and in 1834 there is a report of a 'spacious schoolroom lately built by the present Incumbent Archdeacon Clarke near the church'. Today this is the Church Hall. It is indeed spacious and one suspects was very cold and drafty when originally built.

In 1840 the British School was erected on land leased by Lord Radnor. It was built by the British and Foreign School Society to promote education with no affiliation to any particular denomination. It was for boys and was later converted in to the Public Hall and then the Memorial Hall when the school moved out. It is used as the Election Polling Station when needed. In 1846 a similar school for girls was started in an old nonconformist chapel at the Headlands; today it is the Headlands Garage.

These were followed in 1847 by the National School in Barford Lane which was probably an enlargement of the spacious schoolroom built by Rev.Clarke.

National schools were so called because they were set up by the National Society to 'educate the poor in the principles of the National Church'.

British Schools were founded by the British and Foreign Bible Society a non-denominational but highly evangelical and mission-oriented group.

Board Schools were established after the passing of the 1870 Education Act to be secular and independent of any religious orientation. Each community could form its own Board and then create a non-sectarian school for which it would get some Government finance. They were strongly opposed by both the Church of England and Non-Conformists. One of the first boys in Downton to go to the new Board school had only to pay 1 penny a week.

CHURCH AND SCHOOL

There was a continuing wrangle in England between the Church of England and the Non-Conformists over control of education.

In 1795 we find the trustees of the Free School in Downton telling the parents of its pupils that their children must be presented to the Minister from time to time to be tested on their catechism. If they don't come up to standard then they will be expelled. So much for its original ecumenical intentions.

In 1823 the parish decided to withdraw its 40 boys (some evolution from the original 12) and their £20 per annum allowance. Finally in 1840 the school was put under the Diocesan Board of Education. Doubtless this was the trigger for the British and Foreign School Society's decision to provide an alternative British School in the same year.

The rivalry continued and in 1849 a National School was built in Barford Lane. No longer a school (except for dancing and art) it is used as the Church Hall - an example of how the life of the church and the life of the village are interwoven still.

In 1895 a Board School was built in Gravel Close. This was a secular school, much disliked by the Church, established to meet the requirements of the Board set up by the 1870 Educational Act and partly funded from London. Today, following the opening of the Secondary Modern School in the 1960s, it is the Church of England Primary School, moved from Barford Lane and under the same charitable foundation as in 1847.

EARL NELSON INTERVENES

It seems that the educational strife in Downton was particularly sharp. At the end of the 19th Century Lord Nelson wrote two long articles in the Parish Magazine justifying the educational arrangements that were so resented by the Non-Conformists. It is somewhat contradictory to modern eyes but he both supported the dominance of schools by the Established Church and yet tried to persuade that the system was not unfair to Non-Conformists. He was certainly trying to bridge the divide.

In 1904 as one of the first Bills of the new reforming Balfour Liberal government there was yet another Education Act but to judge from the protest march through the Borough in 1906 it still did not satisfy the free churches.

The first Sunday School in Downton was started on the Borough in a cottage just west of Mould's Bridge between 1789 and 1796, 200 years and more ago. It soon had to move up to the Church. By 1855 it had hundreds of children attending.

SCHOOL LOG ENTRIES

Jan 30 1891. Parents no longer pay a weekly amount for each child. During the severe weather boys from a distance (Redlynch, Charlton and Charford) have been allowed until 9.15 a.m. owing to the difficulty in walking.

June 20th 1891. Martin Witt has been removed by death and his name taken off the register. The attendance this week has been very poor owing to the number of boys at work.

June 30th. Four boys away at work. George Elliott being employed under-age

July 4th. George Elliot still at work.

November 28th. The attendance this morning is very good considering the weather and the distance the boys had to come. [Some children walked five miles every day. One remembered, as a small boy, running home for lunch and running back, the distance being nearly two miles each way]

This afternoon, whilst at play, Annie Smith thought she spied a phantom beneath the roof of the porch. Her screams frightened many of the younger girls who began to imagine that they, too, were able to see spirit shapes. Their screams alerted me but it was not for a whole hour that the school was calm.

Dr Whiteley called at school this afternoon to complain of the children playing on the Barford Lane in the dinner hour. He had narrowly escaped running over Alice Lee; as it was she was quite under the horses. She cannot be blamed as she was returning to school. Dr Whiteley is driving a fast trap with rubber tires and NO bells. He turns corners with with a great lack of care so that, should an accident occur, it should surprise no one.

Dr Whiteley came in to school this morning to complain that a boy had thrown a stone at his horse when he passed by yesterday. George Elliott was adjudged as the guilty boy and he was afterwards caned. [Dr Whiteley's house and surgery were almost opposite the school in Hamilton House]

# 

# CHAPTER 9 DOWNTON IN DIFFICULTY

A VILLAGE IN THE DOLDRUMS

Over the three centuries from the arrival of William and Mary in 1688 to the present Downton has known little of prosperity and little of strife. Never a backwater it was never again an important place.

DOWNTON TRADESMEN IN 1831

Bakers 7, Basket makers 11, Blacksmiths 19, Bricklayers 16, Brickmakers 16, Broom makers 2, Butchers 4, Carriers 2, Carpenters 25, Cattle dealers 1, Coopers 4, Corn dealers 1, Fishmongers 1, Glaziers5, Glovers 4,Harness makers 2, Iron founders 1, Ironmongers 1, Lime burners 2, Maltsters 4, Millers 1, Papermakers 5, Painters 1, Publicans 10, Sawyers 2, Shoemakers 21, Tailors 18, Tanners 3, Turners 2, Wheelwrights 9

This snapshot of Downton parish in 1831, already suffering from the loss of many cottage industries like spinning and weaving in face of industrial competition, gives a feel of a varied and thriving rural community but little of change to its gradual relative decline in an age when Britain grew to great wealth.

It was often a pioneering place, nevertheless. In 1740 a paper mill was built opposite the tannery and this stayed in production until after the 1914-18 war. It specialised in handmade writing-paper. A second paper mill had a shorter life and later became the Downton Electric Light Company which remained in service generating electricity with water power until the mid-1970s.

There had been a tannery in Downton in the 14th Century but it did not survive. However it had certainly been revived by 1843, probably earlier, (there were 3 tanners here in 1831) and a new tannery was built on the old site in 1919. It made high quality harness and saddle leather until 1998 when it finally closed.

Lace making was a cottage industry here until well in to the 20th Century. It had come over with the Huguenots and was a cottage industry. Children from the age of five would go to lace and reading schools. There is little doubt that this was exploitation of the worst, 'Water Babies', kind. Lace making has survived, just, in Downton and Diana, Princess of Wales wore a garter of Downton lace at her wedding. This may have been the carrying on of a royal tradition going back hundreds of years.

DOWNTON LACE

'The principal occupation of the poor in Downton is Lace making' So speaks a Trade Directory at the end of the 19th Century but in fact it was already declining fast.

Lace making had come to the south of England in 1550, brought by refugees from religious persecution in Europe. There are mentions of lace making in Salisbury in 1635 and in 1698 there were 336 making lace in Downton, many of them children, so it is likely that Downton had had the industry for some time then. In 1752 Downton parish paid for two lace apprenticeships. These were long - eight to nine years - and demanding.

Lace making became so important a part of helping the poor that England banned lace imports from Europe, much to the annoyance of the French who banned imports of English woven wool!

In the early part of the 19th Century there was a sudden upsurge in lace making schools; Downton briefly had over 30. Notionally the girls were taught to read, write and do sums but in fact these were just sweatshops .

Fashions changed, cheap lace could be made on machines. In 1851 there were 57 adult lace makers, in 1861 only 19 and, by the end of the century, very few indeed. Mrs Plumptre, the new Vicar's wife, was alarmed by the poverty of so many women in the village. In 1909, together with Mrs Robinson, she had collected over 500 patterns of Downton lace and they started The Downton Lace Industry in what had been the Workhouse. Sadly today there are only a few talented amateurs, no doubt earning a few bob from time to time, who keep this peculiarly Downton skill alive. Providing suitable lace for royal occasions was originally one of Mrs Plumptre's and Mrs Robinson's publicity stunts but it has become a Downton tradition much honoured in its observance.

Maltsters producing the raw materials for beer making reached their peak at the end of the 18th Century when four were producing 2000 quarters [close to 500 tons]. In 1810 malting was 'carried on to a very considerable extent' and we can still find 4 maltsters listed in 1831. By the end of the 19th Century it had died out.

Basket making by the Eastman and Rhodes families continued over nearly 200 years as did broom-making. One of the descendants of an early Eastman migrant to America founded the Eastman Kodak company.

ROYAL MAIL BRINGS A POST OFFICE

The first mention of a Post Office is in 1855 but there were ways of sending mail much earlier than this usually using the stagecoach. Indeed the first Postmaster General (by another name) was in 1555 and the men who had the right to supply horses for those staging through had a duty to keep two horses available for carriers posting through with the mail.

It is likely that The Bull would have been, in effect, the Post Office before the Royal Mail was formally created early in Queen Victoria's reign in 1840. However there is no mention of a Postmaster in Downton in 1842. Later the railway was to be the fast link with the outside world and for an extra charge a letter could be sent from any railway station to any other.

By 1870 the telegraph and telegrams were an even faster way of communicating and these, too, were operated by the Post Office until well after the 1939-45 war.

FARMING REMAINS IMPORTANT

Of course farming was still by far the biggest employer even though the 1831 table above does not directly show it.

Downton had been early in its use of water meadows. Inclosures had helped improve the quality of farming although many lost their livelihood as a result. This was especially hard after the end of the Napoleonic War in 1815 when there was an agricultural slump that was to last almost till the 1914-18 war driving many to seek emigration or a move to the towns. This slump was despite the Corn Laws which imposed tariffs on imports and paid bounties on exports when prices were low at home. In effect England was running its own Common Agricultural Policy and it didn't work any better than the CAP of today.

The growing towns required more and more food so the big farmers survived. Then the industrialists realised that if the import tariffs were abolished their workers would not be able to demand higher wages and Britain could demand that the tariffs imposed by other countries on imports of British manufactures be abolished. By 1849 almost all import duties on food had been abolished and cheap Canadian, American and Australian grain flooded in. Grain prices more than halved.

NEW BREEDS, BETTER TRANSPORT, MECHANISATION

There were three main technical developments in agriculture during the 19th Century. The first was new strains of cattle, sheep and pigs to supply the greatly increased and prosperous population with meat.

The second was the improvement in transport. Roads and then railways enabled produce to be carried quickly, easily and cheaply. Downton did not get a railway until 1864 but it got the benefit of better communications long before then.

The third was mechanisation of farming. Drills, harrows, wheeled iron ploughs and later steam driven harvesting and threshing machines allowed English farming to compete to some extent although eventually the granaries of Australia and Canada and the USA would prove too much for many. Downton had its own inventor, Moses Boorn of Barford who invented a corn drill in 1789. Moses was also 'of Romsey' and was an Inclosure Commissioner for Charlton.

Another major help to farmers was the improvement of roads which allowed them to move their produce cheaply and quickly.

Farmers and their workers would come to the Church on Sundays, often twice. This was the place where much social activity took place. All were in their Sunday best. Gossip was exchanged, business done and romances started. Gentry and ordinary folk met if not as equals then very much as part of the same society. The Church for all its faults was the reason that England did not need a police force: Christian values and especially those of freedom of thought and of justice were the natural way for all.

INCLOSURES

Commons and Great Fields were a vital part of the cooperative farming brought by the Saxons. Commons usually were where the villagers grazed their cattle, sheep and horses and many have survived to this day. Inclosure is the process by which such land held and worked collectively is divided in to separate parcels. Owners give up their share of the collective rights in exchange for exclusive rights over their own plot. This carving up of common land had begun by the 13th Century although Downton, as one huge manorial estate dating back almost to Roman times, did not feel its effects in the same way as less tightly and centrally controlled areas.

In the early 16th Century the Crown became alarmed that inclosure by the major landowners would depopulate the countryside. Initially the impetus was to convert arable land in to sheep runs and we have seen how this was managed in the Avon valley by dividing the land in to tithings that ran at right angles to the river up on to the hill top pasture. The land here still remained in the ownership of the Bishops of Winchester although the form of leasehold they used meant that the tenants were seen in most ways to be the owners.

Between 1606 and 1801 there were a succession of private Inclosure Acts of Parliament. This was both to regulate inclosure and to give those who wanted inclosure the opportunity to constrain a minority of opponents. It was a slow and costly procedure which evolved in to a fairly standard pattern. Commissioners were appointed who made awards which were subsequently confirmed by a Court.

The 1801 Inclosure (Consolidation) Act codified the procedures for the future. To prevent corruption, or at least reduce it, Commissioners had to come from outside the area and were not allowed to buy land within it for five years. Maps were to be drawn showing boundaries and roads and responsibilities for consequential fencing of the awards - and, of course, fencing of land was the crucial point of the process. The maps can still be seen in Public Record Offices.

DOWNTON INCLOSURES

Inclosure of common land for private ownership changed the economy of the village dramatically. In Downton much that was not perhaps strictly inclosure because Common rights were not given up had already happened as the Avon valley was given over to water-meadows. Three awards were made after the new procedure came in 1801, partly to confirm what had already happened.

In 1807 something over 10% of the land from Bodenham to New Court was apportioned with the biggest allotments going to the Earl of Radnor and his family, Henry Dawkins at Standlynch, and the Duncombes. 21 people shared another 150 acres - very small holdings even in those days. Indeed, in 1993 when the Inclosures were mentioned to a descendant of one of the 21 his fury at the injustice of what had been done to his family nearly 200 years earlier boiled over. Such memories may partly explain the village's reaction to proposals for development by some of those who benefited from the Commissioners' awards.

In 1822 another 2150 acres were allotted in East Downton and Hamptworth Manor. In Downton there were 94 allotments so it was a complicated division but the Pleydell-Bouveries had something over 900 acres, the Duncombes (or, rather, Bobby Shafto) perhaps 700 acres and the Eyres of Newhouse also were awarded a sizeable acreage. In 1847 came the last of these Inclosures, in Wick tithing, in which 959 acres were inclosed in 8 allotments. The Earl of Radnor received more than 500 acres, George and Harriet Matcham were allocated over 200 acres. George was Admiral Nelson's nephew and she was the Eyres of Newhouse's heiress.

Other names which have figured in one or both of the earlier Inclosure Allotments and which recur here are Baily, Moody, Taunton and Whitchurch. The Bailys were farmers at Wick but seem to have had extensive if small holdings elsewhere. The Tauntons farmed in Redlynch and they and the Whitchurch family were Baptists.

It was the tragedy of the inclosures that the independence and freedom of the generality of country people could not survive once their casual labour was no longer needed and their common land had been taken. In 1831 the Minutes of the Select Vestry [Parish Council today] talk of 100 men 'out of employ' in the winter months and from 30 to 40 at other times.

POOR AND UNEMPLOYED

Looking after the poor had been a continuing part of the parishioners duty to their less favoured fellows. Parliament was very aware of the dangers of a dispossessed mob and there was a steady flow of measures to make sure parishes looked after all their people. We have seen how the Overseers of the Workhouse were elected. Downton was a member of the Alderbury Union: groups of parishes sharing the burden of looking after their poor, sick and old.

In 1723 the Vestry (Parochial Church Council today) was given oversight of Churchwardens and Overseers in their provision of housing and employment of the poor. In 1819 this was strengthened by the so-called Select Vestry of 'substantial householders and occupiers of land.' Downton immediately formed one and it reads like a Who's Who of the village. Headed by the parson it included Earl Radnor, Earl Nelson, Bobby Shafto's son and near a dozen others. .

Its Minute Book makes interesting reading. Vaccination against smallpox, closing noisy pubs on Sunday evenings, a form of community service to get back for the village in work some of the cost of housing and feeding the unemployed, organising lighting and a watch for the village, measures to combat cholera and so on.

Some of the decisions were about personal supplies to inmates: 'Harriet King applies for a bed blanket and coverlid (she being very ill) - granted.' 'James Armney was committed to the House of Corpaction for 3 months hard labour, as a rogue and vagabond for leaving his wife and family chargeable to this parish - the sum paid to his wife was £7, none of which he repaid'.

There were arrangements to borrow money to pay the expenses of any who wished to emigrate to Canada and meetings to explain to would-be emigrants what would happen. This was local government at its best, responding to central government advice to meet the actual needs of the village.

The reason why emigration seemed such a good idea was that Downton had been through a particularly bad patch. Harvests had been poor for the three years from 1828 to 1830. The mechanisation of threshing had led to riots in many parishes and the government reacted harshly. 153 were tried and deported to Australia. At least thirteen men were from Downton. A bad situation became disastrous with breadwinners unemployed and the village unable to maintain its poor.

THE 3rd EARL RADNOR, THE BATTLE OF PYT HOUSE AND DOWNTON EMIGRATION

While the first and second Earls of Radnor seem to have been primarily concerned with acquiring and holding the great estate which is still held by the family today the third Earl had much wider interests. As Viscount Folkestone, before he inherited the Earldom, he was a Radical Whig MP sometimes for Downton but mainly for Sarum[Salisbury] for over 20 years.

Not long after he had become the Earl he was involved as the Chairman of the Bench of Magistrates in dealing with the Pyt House riots. These were known as the Captain Swing riots and spread across the whole of southern England in the last quarter of 1830. Bad harvests, low wages, unfair game laws and, the final straw, the use of threshing machines which deprived men of their winter work caused resentment to boil over in a wave of destruction of machinery and property. The Battle at Pyt House was at Tisbury, north west of Salisbury, at the home of an MP called John Bennett and it was the most serious of the whole series.

One man was shot and killed when 40 mounted and armed men of the local militia confronted a mob of several hundred men. 29 men were arrested and taken to Fisherton Gaol in Salisbury. They were examined by magistrates and employers and others spoke out for many of them. A number were released, discharged with a caution. Lord Radnor as Chairman of the Bench told them they should, in future, bring their grievances to the notice of magistrates in a proper manner when they could be redressed. 17 of the men went forward to trial at a Special Commission of Assize. 16 were convicted and 14 were condemned to either 7 or 14 years transportation to Australia. One went to New South Wales and the rest to Hobart in Tasmania. None returned but one who somehow evaded arrest lived fairly openly at home, hiding when anyone in authority passed by.

Agricultural wages in Wiltshire were the lowest in England There were troubles, too, in Downton. Agricultural machinery was damaged in Gravel Close.

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CHOLERA MORBUS THREATENS DOWNTON

Then the threat of cholera came to Downton. In February 1832 the Special Vestry called a general meeting of all the inhabitants to brief the population on coping with cholera.

Provision was made for a temporary hospital in the Borough (possibly supplementing one already in existence at the junction of Lode Hill and Slab Lane).

Help with food, fuel clothing and bedding was organised.

The cottages in the Borough were to be whitewashed.

Gravel was to be supplied to fill the 'useless drains and other holes in which water and mud have been left to stagnate'.

Inhabitants were to 'remove from their dwellings filth of every description, particularly dung and ashes; to cleanse their drains and privies and to burn all decayed articles of rubbish such as rags, papers and old clothes.' If it was not done then a team of men was to do it anyway.

There follows a Memorandum listing 'articles recommended as particularly useful at this time'.

Comfortable straw or chaff beds with extra blankets;

Bags to hold hot bran, sand, ashes, corn, or salt.

Flannel shirts with large loose sleeves and large flannel night caps to be worn by the sick.

In case of death, the corpse not to be washed nor carried at burial into the church.

The coffin to be carefully pitched in the inside [and whitewashed on the outside]

200 EMIGRATE TO CANADA

It was to remedy Downton's acute and persistent poverty that the Special Vestry, like many other places, sponsored the emigration of 25 paupers from Downton to the Talbot Settlement in Ontario and they took ship from Portsmouth in May 1835. Later 200 more shipped out.

TALBOT'S MIGRATION

Colonel Talbot had returned from his job as secretary to the Governor of British North America, Simcoe, to fight in France. In 1803 he sold his commission and emigrated to Canada. There he contracted with the government 'that 200 acres be allotted to him for every family he shall establish thereon. 50 acres to be theirs for perpetuity and the remaining 150 acres of each lot to become his property, for the expense and trouble of collecting and locating them'. This land was reserved for him along the shores of Lake Erie and he is said to have settled 40,000 under this scheme. His scheme would have been going for upwards of 30 years by the time the Downton parties arrived.

 In 1836 we find the following in the Select Vestry Minutes dated 27th February: It was ordered that a notice be given in the church tomorrow for all fathers of families and all single persons that wish to emigrate to Canada are to attend a meeting of the Vestry on Monday next at three o'clock in the

afternoon in order to have their names entered for the purpose of securing their sea passage and other necessary arrangements.

Although there are no further references in that book, Alderbury Union records note that a Mr Hammings as Guardian of the Parish of Downton applied for 25 pairs of mens shoes, to lace; 100 girls and boys shoes from 3 years old to fifteen; and 25 pair of women's shoes for the use of the Poor about to Emigrate from Downton Parish. The clerk was to order them from London. So that makes at least 200 men, women and children who had been shipped out of Downton in two years, many of them in a ship chartered for £1,300 by the Special Vestry.

Lord Radnor undertook to pay the interest on the loan of this money. He like other major landowners would have been a major contributor to the Poor Relief which would now no longer be required for those who left the village. This was a sizeable proportion of the total population, perhaps as much as 10%, and probably most of those permanently unemployed who were fit enough to go.

Similar schemes were in place to get people to a new life in Australia and, eventually, to New Zealand. The modern city of Adelaide in South Australia has at its heart the settlement created by rather more altruistic men than Talbot but most of them did not even trouble to visit the place they were sending thousands to pioneer! We may never know how many left Downton - currently we know of around 220 - during those difficult years but occasionally their descendants call by.

That Lord Radnor should be directly involved in the emigration from Downton to Canada by both guaranteeing the government loan of £500 and paying the interest may well partly stem from this experience of how desperate very moderate worthy men could become when their families starved. But it should also be remembered that he was one of the landowners who paid these very low wages.....

In 1830 he was insisting that the two men he nominated as MP's for Downton should support the new Whig Governments plan for constitutional reforms which were, in 1832, to disenfranchise Downton: too little is known of this liberal and open-minded man; of his time, yes, but forward looking.

PUBLIC SERVICES

The Special Vestry involved itself in every aspect of village life as we saw from extracts from their Minutes. Many services we now take for granted started in a small way with their intervention. Some of them are picked out below. The Special Vestry was replaced by the Parish Council in 1895.

STREET LIGHTING

In 1831 street lighting was provided. These were oil lamps using oil supplied, latterly, by Dunmore the chemist. There was, of course, a lamplighter. Before the 1914-18 war he was John Godwin and he was paid one shilling and sixpence per night. In 1913 the Parish Council was considering acetylene for street lighting but it is not until 1921 that they dispose of their lamp oil tank and the year before they had applied for a grant of £650 from the County Council 'to provide an electric cable in order to light street lamps' As with the change to gas this may not have gone through because in 1928 we find the Rural District Council and Viscount Folkestone agreeing to the Tanning Company, who owned the hydroelectric plant, running a temporary cable from there to the Headlands for a number of street lights.

Today there are many more and they are the responsibility of the Council.

REFUSE

Some attempt was made during the 1832 cholera epidemic to improve refuse disposal but it was not until 1928 that a weekly collection by Mr W Barrow was started. One man, one horse, one cart cost the Parish eleven shillings a week with another five shillings and sixpence if an extra man was needed. Today's collections, spread over several days although still weekly for householders, show yet another part of the revolution in our way of living in this century.

WATER AND DRAINAGE

Cholera in the 19th Century made the British very water and drainage conscious but in Downton, except during the epidemic, little changed. Most houses had their own well although some only had use of a communal one. Down on the river flood-plain water was easy to find. Houses only needed a 'crook and bucket' to draw water but many had a hand or, later, an electric pump.

In 1952 the West Hants Water Co. laid freshwater mains through the village but before that the Tannery owned a well on Lode Hill which gave a limited supply. Water was pumped by hand by workers from the Tannery and piped to taps on the Borough Green. When this was insufficient for local demand the supply was discontinued and this may have triggered the arrival of a proper water supply.

Earth closets at the end of the garden were usual although anyone close to running water - the river, carrier, bunny or drain - was apt to use this with the facilities hanging over the water. A canoeist coming down the Avon in 1939 remembered the breezy arrangements at one welcoming riverside cottage.

In 1884 the Vestry memorialised the Highways Board [County Council] to the effect that most of the owners of property in Downton High Street would be willing to cooperate in laying pipes and laying drains because the drain on the South side of High Street was a continual source of danger to passers-by who were likely to fall into it and was also a nuisance from the sanitary point of view. The work was done and 'many of the houses in High Street were connected to a drain which ran down to the river'.......!

Main drainage was not completed in Downton for another 75 years and outlying houses are still dependent on the cesspit and its successors.

GAS AND ELECTRICITY

Various attempts to supply petrol and acetylene gas failed but today there is a mains supply through most of the village. Electricity was supplied by the hydroelectric plant from 1935 to 1972. Today the whole village is supplied from the National Grid.

LIBRARY

'November 10th, 1926. Mr Scott, schoolmaster, informed the Parish Council that it was intended to open a branch of the County Library in the Council School, Gravel Close.'

This operated for many years but the Wilts County Library having been housed in a wooden shed next to the Church Rooms in Snail Creep now has its own purpose-built building as part of the development of the old tannery site. The Downton Museum and Archive Committee have four or five exhibitions there in a year and there is a Reference Library and Internet access for would-be local history or family historians.

# CHAPTER 10 WORSHIP CHANGES

METHODISTS AND OTHERS

John Wesley's astonishing lifetime ministry, riding from meeting to meeting on horseback across the country almost into his nineties, is thought by some to have saved England from bloody revolution. Records for Downton's Methodists are scanty but in 1814 a new chapel was built and in 1815 the Sunday School opened. This coincides with the end of the Napoleonic War and it could be that returning soldiers, converted while in the Army, as so many were, formed the first Wesleyan Methodist Congregation here.

Whether there was an earlier congregation we do not know but in 1827 Sarah Nicholas joined a Methodist Society in Downton having been in the Wesleyan Sunday School. This may imply that there were already two Methodist meetings in the village and we know that they were well attended although a figure of 29 members in 1823 gives an interesting measure of the comment that Downton was then 'one of the most flourishing Methodist societies.'

In 1849 there was a breakaway of part of the congregation to form the Downton Reform Church. The original chapel fell in to decline and was closed in 1919. There had also been Methodist meetings in what was earlier the Cottage Hospital and later the butcher's shop [on the corner of Slab Lane and Lode Hill] and that congregation may also have moved to the Reform Church.

To begin with the new group met in a small thatched cottage but numbers grew rapidly and the headmaster of the British School let them use two cottages he owned in High Street. This was where the present chapel was eventually built for them in 1884. That became possible after he died and the land had been made over to them. They changed their name to United Free Methodists and linked up with a like-minded church in Milford Street, Salisbury. It is they alone, with a small and largely elderly congregation, valiantly struggling to maintain the traditions, who survive today in Downton but that new chapel was so well attended when first opened that the elders had to pack people in to the pews. Even that was not enough and, ten years later, a further sixty seats were created by building a new rear wall and extension towards the High Street which is what we now see.

In 1865 the non-conformist churches were listed as: Baptist New Church, South Lane, Rehoboth(Baptist), Lode Hill, Wesleyan(Conference) near the Tannery, Methodist(United Free) and Wesleyan(Reformed), High Street

REHEBOTH BAPTISTS

We saw earlier how the Baptists had difficulty in remaining united and in 1842 there was a new rift which resulted in a small congregation gathering on Lode Hill. Their founder was a fiery orator called Tiptaft but known locally as the Thunderer. On one occasion he was conducting a full immersion baptism in the river watched by a jeering, hostile crowd. A stone was thrown. The Thunderer turned on the crowd and in a great bellow quoted the biblical verse: "Be not deceived, God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." They had a pastor called Janes. After he died in 1858 the congregation seems to have ebbed away and he was not replaced. Today the chapel is a garage but it remained in use until 1927.

ROMAN CATHOLICISM RETURNS

After the terrible years under Queen Mary(1553-1558) when many brave Protestant Englishman were martyred for holding to their beliefs the English were slow to accept Catholics back in to public life and, at times, Catholics were actively persecuted. In the 19th Century the external political threat from Catholic kings had disappeared, Non-Conformists were ever more restive under the constraints on their freedom still insisted on by the Established Church and they were getting ever more powerful politically as many of the great entrepreneurs of the Victorian period belonged to various of the Free Churches.

Gradually, gradually more and more concessions were made and at last in 1871 there was no barrier to public office for Catholic or Dissenter alike. This happened to coincide with a defiantly assertive and aggressive revival of Catholicism world wide.

DOWNTON'S CATHOLICS

Through 300 years Catholics had gathered more or less secretly at Odstock Manor and later at Arundell House in the Close in Salisbury. Those who would not acknowledge or attend the Church of England were known as Recusants and in 1783 the resident curate in Downton reported to his Bishop that there were only a few poor and old Recusants in his Parish although since 1778 it had no longer been illegal to practice the Catholic religion.

An important Catholic convert in Downton was Countess Nelson although her husband, the third Earl, remained loyal to the Church of England. She died in 1904 but it was not until the Earl died in 1913 that her family were free to return the Standlynch chapel in their grounds to Catholic usages. They continued to support Catholicism in Downton and in 1939 the Catholics built a house for a Catholic priest on land given by the Nelsons. This was along Barford Lane between the chapel and the village and was known as The Bungalow. Its single attic room was said to have been the priest's private chapel.

At some stage during or immediately after World War 2 the priest left and the house was let. It was only in 1978 that the Catholic hierarchy finally gave up the idea that they would return and the house was sold in to private hands.

When the Nelsons knew they were to be allowed to sell and leave their Trafalgar estate and that the chapel would belong to new, probably non-Catholic owners, they gave a plot of land on the northern edge of the village. There, in 1950, the Bishop consecrated a chapel of ease dedicated to 'The Good Shepherd and Our Blessed Lady Queen of Angels'. The large icon in it came from the Standlynch chapel. This chapel is in active use as the Millennium ends, served by the Salisbury parish priests and with upwards of fifty attending.

It is a measure of how far things have changed that the Churches Together in Downton can include the chapel as a venue for ecumenical services - most recently to mark Ash Wednesday in February 1999 - as joint acts of Christian worship.

ST LAURENCE TOWER LOWERED

In 1860 St Laurence's had a major uplift, if such a term can be used about the depredations of T H Wyatt and D Brandon, occasioned particularly by the need to save the tower from collapse by removing the extra layer built in 1791. This had been causing problems by 1810 when a previous phase of remedial work was carried through. It is just possible that the final straw was the addition in 1856 of two more bells to the four already there; equally it may be that it was the decision to add the bells which precipitated the restoration or it may all have been one operation.

Happily the stone Georgian pinnacles and battlements which had topped the extra stage were kept for the reduced tower. T H Wyatt was a nephew of the Wyatt who devastated Salisbury Cathedral in the previous century. He was quite a competent as well as a popular architect but was imbued with contemporary views of what churches should be like.

Sadly Wyatt did not deign to leave a record of what he found and then destroyed. We know that there was a partition between the chancel and the eastern end of the crossing which is believed to have had a doorway in it leading through to what may first have been the Bishop's private chapel and much later the Duncombe mausoleum and, perhaps, their chapel, too. He removed it.

The interior was stripped of ceilings, panelling (the chancel was oak panelled), and most of the furnishings. Some of the chancel panelling survives at Newhouse. The sounding board for the old pulpit is now used as a table in the vestry. The Ten Commandments painted at the top of the nave probably date from the time of Wyatt's work. The organ was made in Bath by Sweetland in 1870. It is a two manual instrument with 8 Great and 7 Swell stops and the 'usual pedals and couples'. It is in need of a major refurbishment.

Little has changed in the appearance of the church since. We have been left with a simple and elegant and evocative structure. It speaks to us in dozens of little ways of the continuing faith of our ancestors expressed differently in each generation.

Outside in the churchyard the 13th Century stone cross is probably now our only visible link with those early parishioners buried outside who in earliest times worshipped inside. The weathered stone grave memorials are a more immediate link with the past. The War Memorial in the North aisle, showing the awful cost of war, reminds us that this is the village church for all its people

BELLS

In the church tower there is a peal of 6 bells and a sanctus bell. Oddly, the sanctus, the most recently hung, in 1998, is also the oldest, probably cast around 1400. This bell is static, hanging from a frame. When it is rung during the high moments of the Communion service the clapper is pulled sharply against the bell.

For the peal of bells the arrangement for ringing them is almost unique to Britain and almost never found in Europe. Each bell in its rest position is upside down. The bell rope goes round the outside of a large wheel and the bell ringer frees the bell to swing down and then with a great heave gets his or her bell to swing through almost 360 degrees up to the top again where it is held till next wanted. The clapper strikes the swinging bell in its orbit with far more force and freedom than if just pulled against the bell. This is what gives English bell-ringing its distinctive sound.

INSCRIPTIONS ON BELLS

No 1:1939-1945 TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THE MEN WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES. M.& S. LONDON 1946

No 2: 1939-1945 SOUND OUT THE BELLS, IN GOD REJOICE. M. & S. LONDON 1946

No 3: C&G MEARS FOUNDERS LONDON 1856

No 4: SAMUELL KNIGHT OF READING MADE MEE 1692

No 5: [CA.1450] + O SANCTE IHOHANNES

No 6: PRAYSE YE THE LORD I W 1604

No 7: C&G MEARS FOUNDERS 1856

No 8: [Originally 1713] CLEMENT TOSIER CAST ME IN THE 12 YER OF QUIN ANN RAIN 1731. WT WS RECAST 1932 MEARS AND STAINBANK, WHITECHAPEL FOUNDRY, LONDON [12th year of Queen Anne was 1713 – so bellfounders, too, make typos!]

RECTORS, VICARS AND PASTORS

On the whole Downton has been very fortunate in its clergy and many of them served around fifty years in office so they must have liked the village. While still a Rectory it was wealthy and many distinguished men held the office. They included one Cardinal, John de Columpna, of St. Angelo, who was one of several non-resident aliens holding income-bearing posts in the English church in the 13th and 14th Centuries.

In the Cardinal's case it seems to have been a way of paying him off for loans made during the Hundred Years War for in 1346 the King, Edward III, took back 'all fruits, provends and emoluments of the Church of Downton' - he was winning the war so could snub the Cardinal! Another absentee Rector went on to be Bishop of Hereford and custos of Ireland.

As we saw earlier, Bishop Wykeham of Winchester made Downton a Vicarage in 1383. Early vicars of Downton complained that the income without the Rector's Great Tithes was too little to cover their costs. They had to provide a number of curates to cover a very large Parish.

Winchester College gradually conceded more income to their Vicars and by the 18th Century Downton was relatively well endowed \- well enough to attract a number of notable incumbents. Curiously, the little chapel at Standlynch remained a constant bone of contention with the Lord of Standlynch demanding that the Vicar of Downton give him a proper service, if you will forgive the pun.

COMMUNICANT NUMBERS VARY LITTLE

The congregation taking Communion varied in the 18th and 19th Centuries between 120 and 150 - rather less than today. At first sight this seems to contradict the reports that communicants were so many that the Sacrament was administered not only at the four great festivals of the Church but also at the two Sundays following them. It also must be remembered that church attendance was obligatory although confirmation was not.

Holy Communion was a relatively infrequent form of service at least from the Commonwealth until the last thirty or forty years of the 20th Century. This may surprise modern Church of England members used to the Eucharist almost every Sunday but for many centuries Communion was regarded with suspicion, smacking of the Catholic Mass and all sorts of doctrinal horrors, and certainly a Sacrament to be taken very seriously on the few occasions each year when it was given and taken.

We have looked earlier at William Wilkes, installed in Elizabeth's time and still in office in 1637. In the Interregnum between Charles I and Charles II Samuel Cox was Vicar. He was an active preacher and evidently in sympathy with the some of the Commonwealth's ideas because he signed up to the Concurrent Testimony of 1648. Probably too much in sympathy as we find a new Vicar a year after the Restoration called William Gale.

Gale lasted from 1661 to 1715, 54 years, although he did not always live in Downton. Eight years before he retired the parishioners petitioned Winchester College to name one of the curates, George Gifford, to replace him when the time came for Gale to retire. This was because Gifford was so popular (and, doubtless, doing all the work already). In 1715 the College duly presented him to the Parish.

Nicholas Webb was Vicar from 1721 to 1775, as long as William Wilkes. He also held prebends [drew salaries from] Lincoln, St Paul's and Salisbury cathedrals. Thomas Lear followed him but at first he lived away and the parish was served again by a curate. Lear resigned the living at one point but was reappointed in 1799 and died in Downton in 1828. Of Lear it was written, admittedly on his memorial plaque, 'A more worthy, pious and excellent parish priest .... it would be difficult to describe. He looked after 'poor and ignorant' parishioners and was not discouraged by 'profligacy, inattention and ingratitude'. Clearly a man of his time.

Lear did a lot of building work to his Vicarage and the present appearance of Chalkhill House is largely due to him. He was married to Ethelinda Shuckburgh Hewett which suggests that his interest in coming to Downton may have come from his wife's family connection with Downton and Moot House.

Liscombe Clarke succeeded Lear and from 1827 to 1836 was Archdeacon of Salisbury as well, employing two curates to look after Downton. It was he who had had built a 'spacious school room' near the church in 1834 and his widow left money for the school.

# CHAPTER 11 ROAD AND RAIL

RAILWAY AND TURNPIKE

Part of the result of inclosure was that responsibilities for roads changed. The main Salisbury-Fordingbridge road was never turnpiked [turned in to a toll road] but the road from Downton through Redlynch to Cadnam was, in 1832, ten years after the major awards of inclosures in the area. This makes sense as relatively few people lived along it and inclosure removed communal responsibility for many of the roads and lanes. Good roads were needed to link up with the ever-expanding rail network which then came no closer to Downton than Alderbury Junction.

ROAD MAINTENANCE

From 1555 each parish became responsible for its own roads and the inhabitants each had to give 6 days labour every year to their upkeep. Richer people had to provide a horse and cart as well. There was not a lot of wheeled traffic even at the end of the 17th Century but as trade increased so did the ruts. The Industrial Revolution might have been stillborn except that the government made the building and running of turnpike [toll] roads easy and attractive for private enterprise.

Eventually there were 1,100 turnpike trusts but parishes remained responsible for all the side roads and the 6 days Statute labour was inadequate. Very often the paupers on Poor Law relief were coerced in to working on them. Towns were still cut off in winter and had to lay in salted stores to see them through. It was not until the Scottish road engineer Macadam began the use of tar or bitumen to bind the top surface that roads could cope with the huge increase in traffic. In Downton that did not begin until 1930 when, on the Salisbury-Fordingbridge road, to use the jargon of the time, 'the Trinidad came through'- a huge bitumen lake in Trinidad was the main source of tar.

The London and South Western Railway and some landowners opposed the Salisbury area farmers and tradesmen who wanted to avoid a long detour through Southampton when travelling to Wimborne, Poole and South Devon. The Salisbury and Dorset Junction Railway were not successful in getting an Act passed until 1861. This authorised the building of a single line 19 miles long from Alderbury Junction to West Moors. This saved 20-25 miles.

The construction began three years later on 3 February 1864 when "a cheery crowd saw Countess Nelson from nearby Trafalgar House at Downton, cut the first sod". And she opened Downton Station on the arrival of the first train on 20 December 1866. It is said that the bells of Salisbury Cathedral pealed joyfully but L&SWR continued to make life difficult even although they were running the trains on it and taking 45% of the receipts. Their obstructive ways paid off, for them, and in 1883 they were able to buy the line cheaply.

HIGH JINKS IN THE MOOT

Fetes and bazaars and concerts and plays and fireworks became a frequent feature of Downton at the turn of the 19th Century. Held in the Moot gardens by permission of their owner, E P Squarey, they were usually well attended with the railway running special excursions for visitors from as far afield as Poole, Wimborne and Salisbury. Some events lasted over three days. Most were for fund raising. The Public Hall, the Church and the village Nurse and Dispensary were all beneficiaries.

A regular feature were Shakespeare plays performed by Mr Greet's company of Pastoral Players. They came in 1898, 1902, and in 1908. In 1908 a Miss Sybil Thorndike in "The Comedy of Errors, was mentioned as playing Adriana 'with a sympathetic sense of its strong dramatic qualities. The part suited her admirably and her characterisation was full of spirit.' Nice to hear that the redoubtable first Dame of English theatre was doing so well so young. She needed to as there had been heavy rain until mid-afternoon and even then 'at times it was difficult to hear the speeches of the players, but this was due more to the sighing of the wind in the trees than to any defect in their playing'.

These events were organised by strong committees, sometimes of men, more usually of women. In 1898 Lady Goff of Hale House opened the Fete. Thereafter it seems more often to have been Countess Radnor who would start proceedings and there are remarks on how much the Earl has helped, 'with his usual kindness'.

What stands out, as so often in Downton history, is how many Downton people were involved and giving of their talent. Choirs and bands and dancers; side show operators and stall holders; above all there were lots of children taking part even if their patriotic programme may seem a little

"You may call it a small bit of bunting,

You may say it's an old coloured rag,

But freedom has made it majestic,

And time has ennobled the flag."

they sang as they raised the Union Jack.

This followed Rule Britannia, Here's a Health unto His Majesty and One King, One Flag One Fleet and, of course, God Save the King!

DOWNTON'S RAILWAY DISASTER

On 3rd June 1884 the 4.50 train from Downton to Fordingbridge was one mile south of the station 'being driven like Jehu'* On an S-bend, with Pile Bridge at its centre, the middle coach was derailed just beyond the bridge. Seven carriages or vans ended in the meadow and two in a ditch with four feet of water. The three carriages in the centre were completely smashed. Five people were killed, two by drowning. Forty more were injured, several of them seriously. Professor Wrightson and forty of his students at the nearby Downton Agricultural College came to rescue the passengers. The Rev Bunbury was in the second carriage and his next sermon gave 'Thanks' to God for his deliverance. Queen Victoria wrote sending her condolences. This was the worst train disaster up till this time.

*Jehu's driving was his hall mark. A lookout recognised him 'driving like a madman' as he came to carry out a coup against Jehoram, King of Israel and Ahaziah, King of Judah on the instructions of the prophet Elisha.

The accident drew attention to the unregenerate attitude of the L&SWR towards rolling stock and track maintenance on its branch lines. The daughter of the Vicar of Downton, Constance Hill, reported that many of the keys had fallen out of the chairs, freeing the rails they were supposed to hold.

The crash was, however, attributed to the poor state of the track which was, no doubt, L&SWR's way of saying it was the fault of the previous company rather than their time-keeping demands on their drivers. To keep to schedule they were used to approaching hills as fast as possible in order to get up them with the under-powered locomotives allocated by a grudging company to a line they did not like. Colonel Rich, the Board of Trade inspector, blamed the L&SWR..

L&SWR continued to treat the line with disdain although it had a good excursion trade to Bournemouth and on several occasions brought in upwards of 3,000 people to enjoy festivals centred on the Moot to which people like Sybil Thorndike (later a Dame) came to perform. The winter timetable was as inconvenient as possible although the newspaper train down from London allowed late night revelry in Town. There were six trains each way every day.

The summer timetable in June 1901 was marginally better with 7 trains each way. It went through to Wimborne, Poole and Bournemouth taking an hour carry anything up to 400 live eels taken from the Avon under the mills to be sold at Billingsgate early next morning.

WEEK-LONG EXCURSIONS

Paid holiday was a new idea - for a Council employee in 1936 one week a year was new and precious. He bought a ten shilling Runabout ticket for himself and for his son and each day for a week they would bicycle over the meadows from Gravel Close, across the waterfalls by Wild Weir, up in to Barford Park and then up past the Doctor's surgery to the station. The train would take them to a different place each day - Poole, Swanage, Lulworth - and then back at night, all on the one ticket.

We hear little more of the Downton line until its closure on 4 May 1964 when 100 children from Downton took the last 'down' train, got off at Breamore and caught, almost at once because that was where 'up' and 'down' trains crossed, the 'up' train back to Downton. Government had brought in Dr Beeching, a former head of ICI, to try to make business sense of the woefully inefficient nationalised successor to the Southern Railway [which had taken over L&SWR], British Rail's Southern Region. He completed what L&SWR had long desired.

There is one nice story from the later stages of World War II. Dr Whitehead, whose surgery was just below the station, was told by one of his patients that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were coming to Downton by train. War time secrecy was very tight so how was it known so certainly? The Waiting Room floor was being scrubbed, apparently for the first time since it had been laid!

As so often, a countryman's wit and observation had outsmarted authority. Word got round and a sizeable crowd were there to greet Their Majesties on that stage of a tour of Southern Command as the troops were training for D Day and the invasion of Normandy. The King was visiting the war-time military hospital at Breamore House - possibly the first monarch to do so since James I had each come to admire the new house. Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, as girls, were staying onboard the train and were seen by some.

DOWNTONIAN HONESTY

The Salisbury firm of Clark and Lush used Downton sidings as a coal depot for much of the 98 years that the line operated. Twenty varieties of coal and coke from South Wales and the Midlands were stored there. Clark and Lush applauded the villagers for their restraint - compared with the scale of coal thefts in Salisbury, Downton was honesty personified!

THE ROADS IMPROVE

From at least the 1720's there was a steady improvement to the Salisbury to Fordingbridge road which had been re-routed through the Headlands. It had gone past Newcourt, down Gravel Close, past the White Horse and on down South Lane probably ever since the Borough was built in 1209.

The Bull Inn served the passing trade as soon as a regular stagecoach service was started but felt some pressure as the railways gradually usurped the stagecoach passengers. Resourcefully, the Bull attracted a new kind of custom as it became possible for fisherman to come much more easily on the train from further afield. The 'Bull' of Bull Inn came to refer to the bull trout - the larger, male trout - and the sign outside was of a handsome fish, not the leader of the herd. It was famous as a fishing inn till well after the Second World War.

In February 1898 the Parish Magazine had complained that Mill Bridge had been marked 'Unsafe' for far too long: We have every right to complain that....such an all-powerful body as the County Council, to whom we entrust the care of our highways, should feel obliged to hesitate so long before doing anything.' It goes on to explain that part of the trouble is the history of ownership of the bridge. 'When the Manor Mill was removed from the weirs above Catherine Mead and erected in Downton, the bridge over the mill stream would, of course, have been provided by those who gained advantage from the mill. ....when the bridge was last rebuilt, the Bishop of Winchester, as the then Lord of the Manor, contributed the timber from The Earldom's Woods, and others shared in the expense.'

Apparently the four eastern arches were the responsibility of the freeholders of Wick, the four centre arches belonged to the owners of the mills and the three western ones were attached to leasehold property then forming part of the paper mill.

Why should the freeholders of Wick pay for the bridge? This may date from before the Borough was created in 1209. In those days Downton was wholly east of the river. The best roads started from Downton whether to Salisbury, London or Southampton. Those who lived west of the river could well think it worth their while to build bridges and perhaps the Bishop required it of them once he had provided the timber. Even in 1600 a map showed there was no proper road south to Fordingbridge from Wick although it may be inferred that there was a track south from the Borough Cross.

The coming of the car and omnibus led to a steady improvement to roads, especially after the First World War. 'The Trinidad came through on the Salisbury-Ringwood Road in 1930' was how the man who looked after that road through Downton described the first making up of a road to Downton. Tarmac was gradually used on all roads so that by 1939 it was unusual to find an 'adopted' road that had not been made up.

Connell's yellow bus and Buddens' Skylark (still running today) were among the first bus services and between the wars there was a regular bus service from Salisbury. Excursions were as often by coach as by train. After the Second World War road traffic of all sorts doubled and redoubled. Within a century Downton had gone from quiet farming community with a few small industries manned almost entirely by villagers to a busy commuter settlement with most using car or bus to get to work away from Downton.

# CHAPTER 12 WAR, PEACE AND DOWNTON

QUEEN VICTORIA'S 80TH BIRTHDAY

FROM DOWNTON PARISH MAGAZINE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

'On the 80th birthday of our Gracious Queen the loyalty of some of us could not be restrained and we paraded the village, waving our flags and singing ourselves hoarse to the strains of the National Anthem....we then retired to the vicarage lawn, made speeches, indulged in confections, and like true Britishers, wound up with "Hip, hip, hurrah". June 1899, Parish Magazine.

In August the Magazine reported a dramatic rescue:

'Harold Alford (6) was rescued from drowning by Sidney Jones (12 ½) who heard a splashing in the water and jumped in to the river at the bottom of Mr Eastman's garden [probably Creel Cottage] and fought his way to him through the reeds in water out of his depth' 'It is certain that in a moment or two more Harold Alford must have been drowned. He had sunk for the third time.'

Three months later in front of all his classmates at the National School and to the accompaniment of suitably improving strictures from Mr Squarey, the owner of the Moot and very much a top village citizen of his time, Sidney Jones was awarded the Royal Humane Society's Medal and Certificate.

THE BOER WAR

Mrs Squarey's brother was General Tucker who had just been appointed to a command in South Africa. The Boer War was by this time a major public concern. It started at the end of 1899 and was not going well. Mafeking and Ladysmith were under siege. The Boer commandos' families had been pulled in from the outlying farms in to camps - concentration camps - so that they could no longer support their men in their guerrilla campaign. 26,000 died in those camps, mainly of disease and, in particular, measles. We from Britain lost 100,000 men.

It must have seemed to the people of the time rather like Vietnam did to Americans: a distant land in which the moral rightness of military action was sometimes hard to be sure about. It is interesting that the reaction was a resurgence of patriotic fervour, very evident in the programmes of fetes in the Moot. However, with such grim news from the front, it is hardly surprising that Downton, with many young men away fighting, did little to mark the turn of the century on 1 January 1900.

Two from the area around Downton who died in action were Colonel Goff of Hale House and Major Hulse of Breamore. A Downton couple, Mr and Mrs Noyce, and a Mrs Harrison each received a special Bounty of £2 [late 1990's value perhaps £200] sent personally by Queen Victoria because they had four sons each serving in the Army in South Africa. This was at a time when the war was beginning to be won - Kimberley was relieved in February and Mafeking in June, to widespread rejoicing.

BUT LIFE WENT ON...

The same issue of the Parish Magazine condemned the 'thoughtless and foolish practice of stone throwing and to the dangers to the public which it causes.' 'A stone is very easily thrown by a lad e.g. at a train from a railway bridge but very serious injury may be caused by it'. So vandalism is not new.

In October 1900 there was a General Election and the Magazine chose to comment: 'It is hardly necessary in these days to say that beyond all else at Election-times such things as needless disturbances of the peace or drunkenness are to be deprecated in every way. Such times as these are apt to cause such offences if people give way to temptations which, indeed, are always present, but are so especially during Election seasons.' It would seem that Downton's old election traditions died hard.

DOWNTON'S MARTYR

Emily Whitchurch, one of the Whitchurch family who were great benefactors of the South Lane Baptist Church, went out to China in 1884 with the China Inland Mission. She was an active missionary and took great satisfaction from the destruction of idols. This was in sharp contrast to the earliest Jesuit missionary to China, Matteo Ricci, 300 years earlier, who blended in to the existing Chinese culture with extraordinary skill and effectiveness.

It was alien intrusions like hers which led to a series of anti-foreigner uprisings culminating in the Boxer rebellion of 1899. In July 1900 Miss Whitchurch was martyred. She and her companion missionary were clubbed to death. In 1901 Earl Nelson proposed the installation of a commemorative window in the west window of St Laurence Church but it does not seem to have happened.

THE 3rd EARL NELSON

The third Earl was a great character. He was a regular attender in the House of Lords and was also much involved locally in Downton. He married Mary Jane Diana Agar, a daughter of Lord Normanton of Somerley. Somerley is a fine house just north of Ringwood with views across the Avon to match those from Trafalgar House.

Later in life Lady Mary became a Roman Catholic and it would seem her son followed her but her husband definitely didn't and remained an active Church of England member until his death in 1913. Lady Mary died in 1904 but it was only after the third Earl's death that Standlynch chapel below the big house was 'blessed, restored to Catholic worship and rededicated to Mary, Queen of Angels, St Michael and All the Angels' on June 20th 1914

The third Earl was evidently keen to show his interest in the village and its domestic arrangements. On one occasion he quizzed one of his fellow parishioners : "How long do you wear your shirt, my man?"

A puzzled pause was followed by: "Three inches below mi'arse, Milord." Deference to the last.

QUEEN VICTORIA DIES

In January 1901 Queen Victoria died, our oldest and longest reigning monarch. 'Even in this little village everyone tried to show their affection and reverence for the great Mother Queen, so suddenly taken from us.' Most of the congregation were dressed in black and the church was draped for mourning. 'The lessons at Morning Service were read (as is usually the case) by the Earl Nelson, the only surviving Peer who held his title when Her Majesty came to the throne.'

CORONATION OF KIND EDWARD VII

King Edward and Queen Alexandra who followed the old Queen were to have been crowned on 26 June 1902 and Downton made great preparations. Then the Coronation had to be postponed when the King had appendicitis. This left the village and the country in a quandary. Downton's solution was to go ahead as planned, modifying the opening church service to pray for the King's recovery rather than to celebrate his crowning. Lord Nelson allowed the use of Barford Park for a day long programme of celebrations on 27 June.

NO CORONATION BUT CELEBRATIONS JUST THE SAME

The first Coronation in 65 years was another excuse for a party in Downton. The preparations for it were almost complete when the King went sick. He survived and it didn't take the village long to decide to have the party even if there was no Coronation!

The procession formed at the Borough Cross with nine organisations taking part and two bands and although the streets were partially decorated much had not been completed before hearing of the King's illness.

From 2 o'clock there were Old Fashioned Athletic Sports which had items like the Egg and Spoon Race and Climbing the Greasy Pole. Just to keep the jollity at its peak there was also a Ladies, 100 yards, Flat Race - the men were restricted to Throwing the Cricket Ball and, no doubt, the Three-Legged Race.

4 p.m. to 6 p.m. — Tea,consisting of Beef, Mutton, Ham, Cake, Bread, Butter, Tea etc;

6 p.m. — Comic Football Match "Clowns versus Niggers" (arranged by Downton Boys' Football Club.)

7 p.m. till 9.15 p.m. — Dancing

It was decided not to go through with the final part of the programme:

9.15 p.m. — Torchlight Procession to Barford Down

10.00 p.m. — Bonfire on Barford Down Finale: "GOD SAVE THE KING". However on 30 June the King was so recovered that the torchlight procession and bonfire were hastily put together again and went ahead. 40 stood round in a circle with their torches aloft, singing God Save the King and other patriotic airs.

On 9 August the King was well enough to be crowned and so there were further celebrations, this time in the Moot. The procession had Decorated Cars and went down to the Headlands before turning round to go to the Moot. Each child was given a Coronation bun and then there was a concert. Fireworks did not go well - damp squibs? - but torch bearers and Maypole dancers did various manoeuvres round the fish pond and no one was going to let the evening go sour. The evening ended by processing back through the village to the Square [by the King's Arms and Chemist] singing and having a happy time.

FIRST WORLD WAR 1914 - 1918

For those who want to understand the cost of the First World War, which ended a period of twelve years of peace under King Edward and then King George V, a visit to the Memorial Hall is a salutary reminder of human folly and frailty. Look not only at the twenty-four names of those who died, displayed outside, but also at the Memorial Board inside listing those 240 young men from a village of 1,750 - virtually every able bodied man - who left family and job to fight in the War to End All Wars. Their four long years in the mud and horror of Flanders or at sea in the first war in which death from torpedo or mine was a constant threat is a terrible condemnation of a national leadership without vision. One in ten did not come home.

WAR AND PEACE - FATE STEPS IN

Most who survived the horror of Flanders mud never forgot and seldom spoke.

Frank Bundy, however, had a strange tale to tell. He was lying, severely wounded, in No Man's Land between the German and British trenches in France, when a German army patrol came upon him. He thought he had bought it and didn't much care. To his amazement the German Sergeant began speaking to him in English. "Is that the Wiltshire Regiment you belong to?" he said, pointing at the badge on Bundy's shoulder. "Do you happen to know a village called Downton near Salisbury?" Frank couldn't believe his ears and even less so when the Sergeant suddenly exclaimed:"Gott in Himmel. Frank...is that you ?"

The Sergeant was none other than the pre-war butler from Trafalgar House whom Frank knew well. Astonishingly, he was the only German Frank Bundy had ever met.

Frank was rescued, survived and lived to old age back in Downton. In later years he was gardener to Dr Whitehead at Hamilton House and delighted the doctor's grandchildren with his Soldiers' French.

The widows and orphans of those killed were not well looked after by the State although the British Legion, started then to look after them and the thousands of disabled and shell-shocked survivors, has continued its valiant work ever since. It was little compensation that, in grudging acknowledgement of their wartime efforts, women - over 30 years old - were given the vote in 1918.

One war-damaged soldier was returned to Downton and his family. From time to time his condition worsened and he would be unable to work for months at a time. A grateful nation did nothing for him. He belonged to the 'Downers Club' which was a mutual society for village workers to cover sickness and unemployment [Possibly the local nickname for the 1788 Downton Society which survived in to the 1920's?]. This paid out four shillings per week when he was unable to work. Fortunately the British Legion paid a further ten shillings a week or else, as his son put it, 'We would have died of starvation'

It is hard to provide a valid comparison with today but when the Government of the day imposed a one shilling a day reduction in pay for all ranks of the armed forces they apparently did not realise the consequences for the lowest ranks who were only getting four shillings a day at the outset. Many of them had taken out hire purchase agreements which the reduction would mean they could no longer honour. Faced with repossession of their furniture and cooker it was too much for them. The result was the Invergordon mutiny.

Other mutual societies such as the Downton Society, started in 1788, and the subscription list for the Cottage Hospital in the 19th Century made life just tolerable for the poor. The Cottage Hospital provided both hospital care and employed two Nurses, who lived in the large brick house on what is now the corner of Moot Lane.

DISILLUSION AND DEPRESSION

All too quickly people realised that the War had cured nothing. There were difficult times not helped by inept government attitudes such as Winston Churchill's decision to return to the Gold Standard. [Every note in issue had to be backed by its face value in bullion.] Then in 1926, a year later, a miners' strike escalated in to the General Strike organised by the TUC. It did not last long but the poor economic conditions persisted. Unemployment insurance and pay started, Old Age Pensions were improved, agricultural wages were subject to decision by local Boards but some farmers responded by sacking workers. It was not a happy time. Then came the 1930 Stock Market crash followed by years of economic depression and high unemployment.

Hitler and Mussolini threatened and it was with some relief that the nation celebrated the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary. In Downton there were street parties and a procession with floats. Flags and bunting decorated houses and streets. Whether the newly converted mills were generating hydroelectric power in time is not clear but they were to supply Downton with electricity until their closure in 1972.

KING GEORGE V REVIEWS HIS FLEET

Many from Downton took the train excursions to Portsmouth, forty miles to the east, to see the Review of the Fleet. The Solent was crammed with hundreds of warships anchored in line after line. On the day the King steamed by their serried ranks in his Royal Yacht "Victoria and Albert"

the ships were dressed with bunting stretched from stem to stern and sailors lining the side, cheering their monarch. In the evening there was a searchlight display, fireworks and then, at a signal, every ship switched on rows of lights which outlined their hulls.

In Downton those that listened to their wireless sets for the live description by the BBC heard Tommy Woodroffe, the commentator and a former naval officer rather over-entertained by his former shipmates, say the immortal words: 'The Fleetsh all lit up... we're all lit up' to be followed by silence as the BBC pulled the plug. Poor Tommy. A good party.

Sadly, the old King was dying of smoking-induced lung cancer so Downton was soon to mourn. Within a year there followed the unsettling abdication of the new King Edward VIII and ever nastier news from Germany and still far too high unemployment. There was another happy time with the Coronation in 1937 of King George VI and his beloved Queen Elizabeth. This was followed by another Review of the Fleet, not quite such a large gathering as in 1935 and, ominously, with a very impressive brand new German pocket-battleship representing the military threat of Hitler and his Nazis.

Chamberlain, Munich, the invasion of Poland, evacuation of children from the great towns and another war followed one another with bewildering speed.

SECOND WORLD WAR 1939 - 1945

Future generations may find it hard to imagine how the first war to bring ordinary people in to the front line felt to those ordinary people. Downton had been supplying regular soldiers and sailors and, more recently, airmen for many generations. For the depressed agricultural areas of the south the armed forces were a logical outlet for young men who had grown up with country values of service, duty and patriotism.

To start with it was another case of 'It'll all be over by Christmas.' Then came the cruel reality of Blitzkrieg and Dunkirk in 1940 and a frantic throwing up of defences against Hitler's imminent invasion. The River Avon was one of a series of lines of defence against what was expected to be the German plan of attack. It was thought they would land in the centre of the southern coast, build up a bridgehead and then drive north to capture the industrial midlands and outflank London.

PILLBOXES AND BLOCKHOUSES

Few of the wartime defences remain but an interesting example can be seen at the Mill on the Woodgreen-Breamore road, on the River Avon south of Downton. Gun embrasures in one of the buildings show how a wide angle could be covered. By using an existing building some camouflage was given. There were many round Downton but almost all were removed or restored. An unusual stand-alone fortlet, part of that defence screen, still stands near the school.

Bridges were mined, pillboxes were built and the area was garrisoned with troops. One of those men was an artillery man stationed in Downton in August 1940. His unit was the Flash-spotting Battery of the 5th Survey Regiment of Royal Artillery. It was part of 5 Corps commanded by a little known Major-General called Montgomery. He was billeted with a retired Judge and his wife, opposite The Bull. Many were billeted in other local houses. One 70-year old man had six soldiers in his home.

The artillery man remembers the Dad's Army quality of their tactical thinking. They cut branches and laid them beside the Fordingbridge Road. If German tanks were expected the branches would be dragged across the road, the tanks would stop to clear the road and while the hatch was open a brave Englishman would lob a hand-grenade in to the tank.

Dad's Army itself, the Local Defence Volunteers(LDV) who were later renamed the Home Guard, took on most of the patrolling and guarding duties while the mauled remains of the British Expeditionary Force(BEF) regrouped, re-equipped and trained. They were soon joined by Canadian divisions although these tended to be stationed east of the Downton area for much of their time here.

LIFE IN WARTIME

Someone writing from the area in 1944, not long before the invasion of Normandy, may catch a little of the flavour. Her letters were written to cousins in Canada to keep in touch and thank them for food and clothing sent to ease the pain of rationing. Her husband was away at sea in the Royal Navy.

'I am writing this in bed to save doing the blackout downstairs and it is now very late because I was interrupted by an Air Raid Warning and some gunfire. I don't usually bother to look out these days, but tonight I felt I must, just to see from which direction the gunfire was coming - and so I got a magnificent front seat view of the end of an enemy.

There he was, the little silver victim, at the apex of a great triangle of light and round him the dull red flashes of the bursting shells. The searchlights were concentrated on him from all directions and his attempts to escape seemed pathetically futile - and yet the shells seemed to be bursting far short of him. But he staggered - dropped and rose again and seemed to hesitate. I was not conscious of the sound of his engines and even the gun fire was vague and distant across the valley but in the garden the nightingale tried a few exploratory notes

The silver enemy became a globe of flame - way behind it a small white speck sank slowly earthwards held in the light of two or three searchlights. The others shut off with a suddenness that hurt but they were no longer needed as the globe of flame became a streak of earthbound light. It rushed behind the hill and a great blaze lighted the sky. Minutes afterwards, it seemed, I heard the scream of a diving aircraft and a shattering explosion. But the nightingale was undisturbed and was by now in very good voice.'

She goes on later

'Night and day the roar of planes is almost continuous. The Battle of Britain and the subsequent bombing of Plymouth and Liverpool which we experienced, horrible though they were, were a mere shadow of what is now being handed out to the Germans. .....when I consider that the planes we hear going out are probably only a small portion of the attack and I think back to compare the volume of sound with what I remember from the days when we were the target I pity the Germans.'

On 20th May 1944, a fortnight before the invasion, she resumes the letter

'I suppose you are just as tensely waiting for the first news of the new invasion as we are [It was to be on 6th June] ... some evenings when the air attack has been heavy all day and the lull between waves of aircraft is filled with the sound of heavy traffic I think "They are starting now".... since before Easter we have been in a restricted area and people outside it cannot come in to see us. We are often asked for our identity cards and illegitimate travellers are quite ruthlessly sent back.'

In a later letter in July, after the invasion, she talks of the problem of kitting out a son for school.

'It will require 75 coupons and our normal allowance is 24 for five months, I think! Children get 10 extra, normally, and large children get an extra 20 so he should have 50 altogether and I shall go naked! Boys shoes take 7 coupons and, if he has to take man's sizes, 9 coupons.'

She describes a journey to London and the problems of overcrowding and delays. It was at the time that flying bombs had started.

'One of the "Doodle-bugs" flew over sounding like a flying tank - the engine went suddenly silent and then came the explosion just as the newspapers had described it. What interested me was the calmness of the lunchers whose lives undoubtedly were in very great danger. It actually fell about a mile away so we felt nothing.'

She had talked to a London friend who helped in the rescue work and said they had had 10 "incidents" in 5 days but was constantly amazed by the quiet courage of the women in her Women's Volunteer Service and the skill of the National Fire Service and Heavy Rescue people. On the way home: 'We waved to many train loads of troops at the big stations and passed several huge hospital trains - American mostly - but fortunately empty.'

This was truly a war that touched all.

LAND MINES ON THE WATERMEADOWS

Whether as a direct attack or more likely simply a German bomber unloading as he escaped back home, two landmines fell in the water meadows between the church and Newcourt. These were great canisters of explosive dropped with a restraining parachute attached and designed to explode on the surface to create as much blast damage as possible. They shattered glass and blew out doors over a large area and damaged the church. A study of the hairline cracks it caused showed that they were caused by suction, not compression as might be imagined. This was however a common form of bomb damage. It toppled the Borough Cross which was not properly repaired until 1952.

An aircraft crash landed up Barford Lane. A small boy rushed up to see whether he could help but the aircraft caught fire. He could do nothing and the pilot was unable to get out. Many went to see a German Junkers 88 bomber that crashed a few miles south-east of Downton in the New Forest. A stick of bombs was jettisoned on Wick Down and another bomb blast blocked Slab Lane making life difficult for returning revellers.

A flight of Focke-Wulf 190 fighter-bombers flew low and fast up the Fordingbridge-Salisbury road on their way to bomb the rail sidings at Salisbury. To distract night attacks from the cities there was a dummy 'city' built on the western face of Clearbury Down, to the north west of the village, with two RAF men waiting there to ignite it so that German bombers would be fooled in to bombing open fields instead of their real target.

THE AMERICANS

Downton was in the heart of the preparation area for D Day and there was a large American camp where the Industrial Estate is now built. It was known as Windmill Camp after the wind pump in its midst and later was known as Tin Town after the corrugated-iron roofs, shaped in a half circle, of the Nissen huts in which the troops lived.

The lorries and jeeps and tanks being gathered for the invasion of Normandy were dispersed over every available bit of waste land, scrub and moor land. They were spread out so that only one or at most two would be caught by a single bomb

The place was alive with jeeps and G.I.s. They found England quaint and primitive and cute. The lad who delivered the milk used the time-honoured system of generations: a medium sized churn was taken round to customers and the milk served in to jugs with a gill measure. [This was a closed off copper tube perhaps 15 cms long and 5 cms across with a long handle to reach down in to the churn.] The Yanks were soon demanding to try this milk and the boy carried a glass to serve them for perhaps a rather higher price than he could charge the villagers.

The girls have especial memories of that time. HiFi Henry used to set up dances several nights a week in the Memorial Hall. He achieved miracles with old 78 rpm bakelite dance band records. A great time was had by all. What went on in the Memorial Gardens next door when the music ended was highly educational to the young and innocent.

# CHAPTER 13 DOWNTON'S LATEST MILLENIUM BEGINS

TRADES AND INDUSTRIES IN THE 2OTH CENTURY

Downton suffered in the years that followed both wars. Farming was still depressed with cheap imports from Australia, New Zealand and Canada and too little new employment came to the village.

There had been a tanner in Downton at least since 1606 and tanning leather was a significant industry through the 18th and 19th Centuries supporting shoe, glove and harness makers. John Gibbs, father and son, George Hooper and, in 1903, Nobes and Hunt, were all tanners. Then in 1919 the Southern Tanning Company was formed and they built the large tannery building we now see.

Around 1930 in the Great Depression that company failed and was succeeded by the Downton Tanning Company Ltd who, under new ownership, survived and at times even prospered until 1998. They produced high quality leather mainly for saddles and harness. As the millennium ends the Tannery is in the hands of developers hoping to find a mix of housing to build there acceptable to the Planners.

Paper was made at the Downton mill at least from 1714 to 1914 and specialised in hand-made writing-paper.

BOOKERS BEGINNINGS IN DOWNTON

Bacon curing was already in Downton by 1923 and in 1929 the old workhouse, built in 1730, was converted to increase production to 100 pigs a week. I. Beer took it over in 1934 and increased production again, to 500 pigs a week. Yet again, this time as part of Fitch Lovell, the factory was enlarged and by 1956 the staff of around 100 were handling 1,600 pigs a week. Until the factory closed in 1968 it was producing bacon, sausages, hams and cooked meats.

The company, known as Bookers (now, 3663) moved to new warehouses in Salisbury Road and switched then from bacon production to provisions wholesaling which is still their business today. Their laden lorries leave early in the morning to disperse across the south.

Many if not most of the large number of inns, alehouses, tipplers and other purveyors of alcoholic drink in Downton brewed their own beer. There were several maltsters and one can still make out the house on High Street where one of them operated. In that long tradition of brewing enterprise, Hopback Brewery chose Downton, in 1992, as a good place for distribution to its many wholesale and Free House customers, to the six pubs it owns, because it has room here for expansion and because Downton has good water.

In 1986, not long after John Gilbert had taken over the Wyndham Arms in Salisbury, he started making beer there. His first beer, called G.F.B. (Gilbert's First Brew!) sold well, won several awards and so he decided to expand increasing output and the number of brands brewed.

Now there a five Hopback brands which have won over 60 awards. A very small staff - 3 brewers and 12 others - are hectically busy but have managed to keep a family atmosphere. They hardly ever have to 'cold sell' their beers, letting their reputation and their beer do the work for them.

Hopback: A brewer's vessel with a false perforated bottom which receives from the copper the unfermented infusion of malt and hops and strains out the hops. So there...!

Mitchell's Timber and Builders' Merchants had their depot on Lode Hill and the brickmaking kilns along Moot Lane. Today the depot is Tucker Engineering and the brickworks have re-opened with new owners. The local red clay makes handsome bricks but they are extremely porous.

The Eastmans had taken over the manufacture of wicker chairs, tables, sofas, couches, flower stands etc. at the Iron Bridge Basket Works \- today a private house called Creel Cottage. The Eastmans originally lived further up the Avon valley. They were still trading in the 1920s but stopped at the beginning of the Second World War in 1939.

Downton Engineering at Mesh Pond started in 1934 as a motor garage. During the war it made brass shell cases and fuses. After the war, under Daniel Richmond and his brother, it became famous for tuning high performance cars and became world famous for its 'Cooper' version of the Mini. Mini-Coopers are much prized even today.

On the Industrial Estate there are a number of technically advanced small industries with ColourCare International, the film processing firm, having grown from just the two Kent-Adams brothers. [Taken over by Eastman Kodak but then closed down.]

DUNMORE, MAN OF MANY PARTS

ColourCare had a fascinating antecedent in Downton. From 1850 to 1900 Mr Dunmore was the village chemist. He was known to go up to London every Friday by train and there were dark rumours about who he might be seeing there..... In fact he was one of the very first professional photographers and his studio was in London. A further kink to the story is that he also exported his Sunset Dip to sheep farmers all over the world and today in Downton BBW Cropcare exports agro-chemicals to farmers world-wide.

THE CUCKOO FAIR

The Borough was created in 1209 as a centre for trade. Tradesmen of all sorts bought up the plots laid out either side of the Green where fairs were held. A Thursday market ran for many years and annual Fairs seem to date back to the Borough's early days. Peddlers set up their stalls and cattle were sold at the Fair in April; sheep and horses were traded at the Fair in September or October. The Fairs also became 'Hiring Fairs' for men seeking work. The Spring Fairs were often called Cuckoo Fairs and, as ever in Downton, became an excuse for a party. They were held on or near April 23rd.

DOWNTON AND CUCKOOS

Why cuckoo ? There are many stories and any of them could be true. Here is one. In the 1930's a youth from Downton was apprenticed to a builder in Odstock. Knowing he was from Downton they would tease him, saying: 'Have they let the cuckoo out yet?' The boy's father told him this went back to the old sheep fairs. When two shepherds were mocking a third for stupid behaviour they would call out: 'He's letting the cuckoo out!'

'He's cuckoo' or 'He's gone cuckoo' to mean being daft, barmy or even crazy has survived in the language but whether this is the connection or just the date of the Fair coinciding with the arrival of the cuckoo we will never know.

The Downton Fairs stopped in 1914 at the start of the Great War and although briefly restarted after that War the village does not seem to had the heart for it and they stopped. In 1980, whilst looking for ways to raise money for charities and clubs, the idea of reviving Cuckoo Fairs was raised. That touched a pleasure spot in Downton with its ever-present urge to have a party.

Now held every year on the Saturday nearest May Day there are over 200 stalls with many thousands coming from all over the south of England. May pole and Morris Dancers, clowns and conjurors, bands and combos entertain the milling throng. In fact the fun stretches over several days and is growing year by year. Dances and concerts, car boot sales and clay pigeon shoots keep everyone busy from Friday to the end of Bank Holiday Monday.

DOWNTON GROWS

The population over the centuries has fluctuated between 1,000 and nearly 4,000 (in 1851) but the rapid increase in the second half of the 20th Century was unprecedented and partly due to the motor car. In 1931 there were 1,350 people living in the village; by 1961 the population had increased to 1,800 in 550 households but by 1991 there were 2,800 living in 1,141 homes. A doubling in 30 years. Some of that increase came because homeless people, many of them coming back from the 1939-45 war, occupied the empty tin huts left by the American army. The huts were not designed for permanent use and so there was an urgent need to re-house the people, some of them squatters, living in very primitive conditions.

To take all these extra households Downton had to expand. The main growth was at the two ends of the village, between the Headlands and Mesh Ponds and down Moot Lane between the river and the old railway line, leaving the Borough and High Street, the old village in the middle, to absorb just a few of the new buildings.

That expansion was made possible by very practical changes - the running of both fresh water mains and sewage drains. In 1931 a man wanting to build his own house would choose low lying Charlton where fresh water could be had by digging only a short well rather than Moot Lane where a deep well would have been needed. With new drains and water-mains in the 1950's estate building could go ahead.

For most of its long story, if you lived in Downton you worked there or close by. Indeed hamlets like Standlynch, Witherington and Charlton may well have been developed by the Bishops so that their workers could live closer to their work and did not need to travel from Downton. As the Millennium ends, 95% of those who live in Downton, and have work, travel away to do it.

With the growth in numbers there came a need for bigger schools. The newly built Secondary Modern school off the Breamore Road opened in the '60s. That allowed the Church of England Primary School to move down from Barford Lane in to the Gravel Close school buildings. The Primary School has over 200 children, aged 5 - 11, and 9 teachers. The Secondary School, 11 - 16 years, has nearly 300 pupils and 25 teachers. Post 16, most students go in to Salisbury. All this is a far cry from the 12 poor boys who studied in South Lane and the few who went to College in Winchester.

Downton has absorbed its extra people. The benefits of good schools, doctors, dentists, and a wide range of shops and services outweigh the crowded roads and the need to work away from the village. Interestingly a bid by Lord Radnor's estate to build another 400 houses in Downton west of the main north-south road, with the strong likelihood that that number would grow eventually to 1,000 - another doubling of population - ran in to strong opposition from a wide cross-section of those living in Downton.

It will be for historians to disentangle how and why this change in mood, this 'thus far and no further' resistance by previously passive or accepting villagers, came about. The long drawn out battle over ten years through Planning refusal, Appeals, Inspector's Report and Appeal to the House of Lords ended in victory, at least for the time being, for those who thought change had gone far enough.

Some of the opposition undoubtedly came from people who had come to live in Downton because it was a comfortable village to live in and it seemed under threat. That may explain the incomers' reaction but history may look for a deeper, older, sadder explanation for the resistance of those who had and have long ties with the area. Memories are long in country places. When events of 170 years earlier can produce an explosive outburst from a villager it is evident that time in Downton is a slow healer. A suitable subject for someone's PhD, perhaps.

As we move from one ever-changing century to the next it is good to gauge just how different things have become in Downton. Television, mobile 'phones, the Internet, the airliner and the car ensure that Downton can never ever again be a sleepy hollow cut off from the outside world. Homeworking is more widespread in the village than many realise and perhaps this will be the trend for villages like Downton.

This is end-of-century Downton: ordinary people made continuously aware of the outside world whether it be in requiring to vote for a Member of the European Parliament, ponder the virtues of the Euro or be confronted with conflict in Eastern Europe or the wider world.

At first sight St Laurence Church is the most unchanging part of Downton. It is here that villagers have gathered over the centuries. It is here that nearly fifty Vicars and many priests before them have led us in prayer, in thanksgiving and in mourning. It has seen High Church and Low, class distinction and none, devout and worldly and it has survived to lift our spirits every time we enter.

However, it too has changed and is having to adapt to a community with very different values where one in three marriages end in divorce, sexual unorthodoxy is no longer socially unacceptable and women have rightly claimed an equality with men that the old hierarchy did not foresee. Gone is the hostility to Non-Conformists and Roman Catholics with all worshipping together occasionally and most particularly when Downton remembers its dead.

By becoming a church that, no longer lording it over others, reaches out to serve all the community, the Church of England in Downton seeks still to offer a calm uniting centre. This new teamwork with fellow Christians is as worth keeping as is our ancient, lovely village and church.

END OF A MILLENNIUM, START OF A NEW ONE

Our journey through time has told us much of what it has been like to be English. Downton has been fortunate. It has survived and more than survived. It has changed with the times and yet kept its sense of community and stability. Its pattern of life today would be hardly intelligible to those first, skin-clad huntsmen and they would marvel at our comforts. At the heart of those early pioneering men was the spirit of enterprise and adventure we have inherited. We can but hope they would see that spirit in us still as we go on in to our 8th Millennium. At least they would be happy that Downton still loves a big party.

THE END

ANNEX

220 EMIGRANTS FROM DOWNTON TO ONTARIO, CANADA

The surnames of the families that emigrated from Downton to Canada in 1835 and 1836 are given below.

Alexander, Allen, Bampton, Barrow, Barter, Biddlecomb, Bishop, Chas. and E.Bundy 1835, Bundy, Jas. Chalk 1835, Chalk, Champ, Compton, Dale, Deere, Dredge, Eastman, Edmonds, Foe, Forder, Frampton, Friar, Futcher, Gauntlett, Gilbert, Goulding, Harris, Henry Higgs 1835, Higgs, Hudson, Jellyman, Jennings, Jas. King 1835, King, Latty, Light, Moody, Mussel, Noyse, Jas. Perry 1835, Poore, J. Pracey 1835, Pressy, Pretty, Prince, Shergold, Small, Swayne, Thorn, Webb, Weeks, Westcomb.

These names have been provided by Ken Light who is himself descended from the 1836 emigrant group. He has a considerable file on the group and is always interested in further information. His email address is ken_light@yahoo.com or look on his web site http://www.thedowntonstory.com which contains more detail and background information.

