| Easterton | |
St. Barnabas' parish church |
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Easterton
Easterton shown within Wiltshire |
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| Population | 583 (2001 census)[1] |
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| OS grid reference | SU0255 |
| Parish | Easterton |
| Unitary authority | Wiltshire |
| Ceremonial county | Wiltshire |
| Region | South West |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Devizes |
| Postcode district | SN10 |
| Dialling code | 01380 |
| Police | Wiltshire |
| Fire | Wiltshire |
| Ambulance | Great Western |
| EU Parliament | South West England |
| List of places: UK • England • Wiltshire | |
Easterton is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. The parish also includes the smaller settlement of Eastcott.
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Easterton lies at the northern edge of Salisbury Plain.
The parish includes gault and greensand north-west of the road, and lower, middle and upper chalk zones ascending the slope south-eastwards on to the high plain. Across the parish run The Ridgeway along the scarp, the railway north of the greensand ridge, and the former turnpike road in between. This forms the village street, where it is bordered on the west side by a small brook. Villagers cherish the brook, and have bridges across it to their cottages, and who have portrayed it on their village signs as a major river. The street is in a hollow, so that gardens on the east side rise very steeply and have been terraced up the slope. Paths and lanes lead off the street to ‘the Clays’[2] on the east and ‘the Sands’ on the west. The main streets in the village are Oak Lane, Haywards Place, High Street, White Street, the Clay, Kings Road and Vicarage Lane.
Easterton's toponym is derived from the Old English for "the more easterly farm". The modern parish was formerly part of Market Lavington and would have been named from a farm that was to the east of the main settlement. In 1348 the name is recorded as Easton juxta Stepellavynton. Steeple Lavington was the early name for Market Lavington and the easterly farm was next to it.
Easterton lies between the parishes of Urchfont and Market Lavington. The village has three concentrations of buildings: around Easterton Manor House and the Royal Oak[3] (locally known simply as the Oak and said to be haunted by a miserable old ghost called the body warmer); near the Church of England parish church, and at Eastcott along a secondary road (B3098) and interspersed with modern housing. Some older houses were lost as a result of road widening after the Second World War and subsequently.
Easterton's parish boundaries were established in 1934. It is made up of the tithing of Easterton (comprising two manors), formerly part of Market Lavington, and the tithing of Eastcott, which was formerly in Urchfont. A map of 1773 suggests that there were then more buildings at Eastcott and between Eastcott and Easterton than at present, and therefore that the settlements have declined. The survival of timber-framed houses in separate groups in an area where from the 18th century brick buildings have predominated is consistent with such a decline. The origin of the name Eastcott, ‘the eastern cottage(s),’ which lay at the extreme western edge of Urchfont parish, cannot be easily explained.
Market gardening and fruit growing by smallholders on the fertile soils of the greensand became important as the traditional sheep and corn husbandry on the chalk (‘the Clays’) declined following enclosures before 1800. Samuel Moore’s jam factory was a legacy of the fruit fields. It began in a small way early in thetwentieth century after an earlier venture had closed, and became a major employer in the area, with 100 staff in 1972. An extension was opened in 1985, but the whole enterprise closed during the 1990s, and visitors to the village are no longer greeted by the all-pervading aroma of warm strawberry jam. There used to be two small convenience stores, MacBeth's and Sainsbury's, but these have now closed. The nearest primary school is in the neighbouring parish of Market Lavington.[4]
The rich soils may have been exploited many centuries before the surviving evidence of settlement, but Easterton, unusually among plain-edge villages, is the site of a Roman villa estate, known from stray archaeological finds in the area of Kestrels in Oak Lane, west of the village. This may be linked with a mid 4th century Roman coin hoard, discovered in an urn during the Victorian era and dispersed, although some coins passed to Devizes Museum. Another possible Roman site, deduced from place-name evidence, may lie at Wickham Green on the boundary with Urchfont some 2 km north of Kestrels.
Easterton was made an ecclesiastical parish in 1874, and its small brick-built church was opened shortly afterwards. Other Victorian arrivals in the village were a Methodist chapel, built in 1868 and converted to a private house in 1985; and a school – this was opened in 1867, replaced in 1875, closed in 1971 and demolished in 1973.
Two lost buildings are of note. Eastcott had a chapel-of-ease from before 1309 until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1548. Its exact site is unknown, but a field north of the road was known as Chapel Field in the 19th century. Wroughton’s Folly was a mansion built near Crookwood, close to the Urchfont and Potterne parish boundaries, and was known variously as Folly House, Castle House and Maggot Castle (here, as elsewhere, the unflattering name is probably a corruption of ‘Margaret’). It was built and enlarged by two members of the Wroughton family, Francis and Seymour, between about 1730 and 1780. After Seymour’s accidental death in 1789 the house was left unoccupied and became a ruin. Its foundations, visible in the 19th century, have now entirely disappeared. Seymour’s ghost remains (according to local legend) recreating along his vanished driveway the furious carriage ride which ended in his death.
These are the census results for Easterton and Wiltshire:
| No. | Year | Easterton | Wiltshire |
| 1 | 1801 | 320 | 185,107 |
| 2 | 1811 | 364 | 193,828 |
| 3 | 1821 | 377 | 222,157 |
| 4 | 1831 | 417 | 240,156 |
| 5 | 1841 | 495 | 258,733 |
| 6 | 1851 | 532 | 254,221 |
| 7 | 1861 | 481 | 249,311 |
| 8 | 1871 | 470 | 257,177 |
| 9 | 1881 | 384 | 258,965 |
| 10 | 1891 | 363 | 264,997 |
| 11 | 1901 | 370 | 271,394 |
| 12 | 1911 | 323 | 286,822 |
| 13 | 1921 | 315 | 292,208 |
| 14 | 1931 | 301 | 303,373 |
| 15 | 1951 | 427 | 386,692 |
| 16 | 1961 | 472 | 422,950 |
| 17 | 1971 | 472 | 486,747 |
| 18 | 1981 | 537 | 518,545 |
| 19 | 1991 | 591 | 564,471 |
| 20 | 2001 | 583 | 613,024 |
Easterton is a civil parish with an elected parish council. It is in the area of Wiltshire Council unitary authority, which is responsible for almost all significant local government functions.
Position: grid reference SU021550