Tisbury, Wiltshire

Tisbury
The Square, looking up at High Street
Tisbury  Tisbury shown within Wiltshire
Population	2,056 (2001)
OS grid reference	ST944291
District	Salisbury
Shire county	Wiltshire
Region	South West
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Salisbury
Postcode district	SP3
Dialling code	01747
Police	Wiltshire
Fire	Wiltshire
Ambulance	Great Western
EU Parliament	South West England
UK Parliament	Salisbury
List of places UK England Wiltshire

Tisbury is a large village approximately 13 miles (21 km) west of Salisbury in the English county of Wiltshire, is one of the oldest human inhabited sites in Europe, and has connections with what is believed to be one of the World's oldest artworks.

With a population at the 2001 census of 2,056^[1] it is an important local centre for communities around the upper River Nadder and Vale of Wardour. It is the largest settlement within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (larger nearby settlements such as Salisbury and Shaftesbury are just outside it).

Transport

Tisbury railway station is on the West of England Main Line, placing its residents within commuting distance of London. The village is 2.5 miles (4.0 km) from the A303 trunk road linking Andover with the West Country.

History

The thatched Tithe Barn

The village has some paleoanthropological significance. Evidence of early human activity in the Tisbury area comes from the Middle Gravel at Swanscombe a 400,000 year old stratum ^[2] in which skull framents of a young woman was found, the so called Swanscombe Man. Along with the remains was found several fragments of Pseudodiplocoenia oblonga (also known as Isastraea oblonga), one of four Upper Jurassic species of coral unique to the Upper Portlandian of Tisbury.^[3] This indicates that either the group of which Swanscomb Man belonged to traveled to the Tisbury area or were part of a trade network linked to the locality. The coral-bearing chert found at Swanscombe has been interpreted as being intentionally carved to represent the profile of a hominid head, making Tisbury the source of materiel used in what is possibly one of the World's oldest pieces of art.^[4] As in much of the Wiltshire downs, there is also evidence of Bronze Age settlement and traces of a probable henge monument with some evidence of settlement 3–4000 years ago. To the southeast of the village there is a quite large hill fort. Now known as Castle Ditches ^[5] this was referred to as Willburge in the charter of 984 A.D. At that time the village was known as Tisseburi. ^[6] A stone circle once stood in one of three adjacent fields, one which was known as Lost Stone Field, located near the junction of the Chicksgrove and Chilmark roads. These fields have been joined to form the present Cemetery Field. The last three remaining standing stones, removed in the latter part of the 18th Century now form part of the grotto at Old Wardour.^[7]

Gate and postern of the gatehouse, Abbey Grange Place

The Saxon settlement came into the possession of Shaftesbury Abbey across the county border in Dorset. The administration centre was the monastic grange, still called Abbey Grange Place Farm. Its 15th-century thatched tithe barn, a Grade I listed building,^[8] bears the largest thatched roof in England. The old Wardour Castle lies approximately 2.5 miles (4.0 km) to the southwest of Tisbury.

The village's 13th-century prosperity came from the quarries that produced stone for the building of Salisbury Cathedral, and from the wool that supported a local cloth industry. The village suffered a serious setback with the Black Death in the mid-14th century but slowly recovered. To the South-west of the village center is the remains of the village of Wyck, abandoned at some time in the Middle Ages.^[9]

Thomas Mayhew (31 March 1593 – 25 March 1682) who in 1642 established the first English settlement at Martha's Vineyard in North America, was born in Tisbury.

On John Speed's map of Wiltshire of 1611, the village's name is recorded as Tilburye: the cartographer or the engraver clearly having mistaken a long s for an l.

Sir Matthew Arundell of Wardour Castle, a great landowner and a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, was entombed in the Tisbury parish church, St John's, in 1598. The churchyard also holds the graves of Rudyard Kipling's parents, John Lockwood Kipling and Alice Kipling (née MacDonald), and contains the second oldest tree in Great Britain, a large yew tree which is believed to be around 4,000 years old.^[10]

According to one source, "After a long and distinguished artistic career in India, the Kiplings moved to a residence along Hindon Lane which they renamed 'The Gables'. Their famous son visited them here and, whilst working on his novel Kim, his father (his illustrator) used the drawings of one of the pupils from Tisbury Boys' School as the model for the main character."^[11] As of early 2013, The Gables, with five bedrooms and an adjoining cricket pitch, was for sale at a price of £950,000.

Some scenes in the 2009 film Morris: A Life with Bells On were filmed in Tisbury, including at the Tisbury Sports Centre^[12] and other scenes were filmed at the nearby Compasses Inn at Lower Chicksgrove.

Tisbury has recently become home to The Ashley Wood Festival of the Acoustic Arts which is hosted at Ashley Wood Farm.

References

Further reading

• Jackson, Ralph (Autumn 1983). "The Lockwood Kiplings at Tisbury, Wiltshire". The Hatcher Review 2: 278–284. 

External links

• Victoria County History information on Tisbury parish
• Photos of Tisbury and surrounding area on geograph