Wanderings in Wessex: An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to OtterHolmes, Edric
History
Wanderings in Wessex: An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter
Holmes, Edric
England -- Description and travel
At Tytherington there is another church, very small and old and once a
prebend of Heytesbury. In the early days of the last century service
was only performed here four times a year, and a legend was once
related to the writer of a dog that had been accidentally shut up in
this church at one service and found alive and released at the next,
ten weeks later! A mile farther is Sutton Veny, where there are two
churches, a fine new one, and an old ruined building of which the
chancel is kept in repair as a mortuary chapel. The manor house is
picturesque and rambling, as is the village itself, straggling along
the road to Warminster. At the upper end of the street a cross road on
the right leads to Morton Bavant and to the main route on the north
side of the stream. The partly rebuilt church is of little interest,
excepting perhaps the arch of chalk that supports the fourteenth-century
tower, but the village deserves the adjective "sweet." The stream,
although now of small size, and the surrounding hills that rise close
by into Scratchbury Camp, make a lovely setting for the mellow old
cottages and bright gardens that one may hope are as good to live in as
they are to look at. Close by the village certain Roman pavements were
found in 1786, but the site is now uncertain and the mosaics have been
lost. At the cross roads just referred to, the left-hand road climbs
the hill to the Deverills--Longridge, Hill, Buxton, Monkton and
Kingston, pleasant hamlets all, of which the first has the most to
show. Here is a fine church partly built of chalk and containing the
tomb of the Sir John Thynne who made Longleat. The old almshouses were
founded by his descendant, Sir James, in 1665. In Hill Deverill Church
is a monumental record of the Ludlows. To this family General Ludlow,
of the Army of the Parliament, belonged. Beyond the last of the
Deverills is Maiden Bradley, alone with its guardian hills, which ring
it round with summits well over 800 feet above the sea. Long Knoll is
the monarch of this miniature range and well repays the explorer who
climbs to its summit with a most delightful view. In Maiden Bradley
Church is the tomb of Sir Edward Seymour, Speaker of the House in the
reign of Charles II, and a fine Norman font of Purbeck marble.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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