Wootton Rivers

Wootton Rivers is a small village located between Pewsey and Marlborough in Wiltshire.

The church

St Andrew's church

The church is built on what was originally the site of a Saxon manor house. At the start of the 14th century it came into the hands of the de la Riviere family, after whom it is now named. The church is dedicated to St Andrew and has an attractive wooden steeple into which was built an unusual clock made out of scrap iron, brass weights, gun metal and brass pipes. The clock has three faces using the letters GLORY.BE.TO.GOD instead of numerals. Its chiming mechanism is like that of a musical box and plays six distinct tunes.[1] It stands at the south end of the village with the rectory house, and the demesne farmstead, now called Manor Farmhouse.

Kennet and Avon Canal

The Kennet and Avon Canal was built across one end of the village about 1807 and was opened fully in 1810. The Wootton Rivers Lock had a keeper's house and an associated wharf. The canal was restored in the 1970s and the locks were reopened in 1973. The Mid-Wilts railway, now lifted, was built parallel to and immediately south of the canal in 1862. A passenger halt was opened at the south end of the village in 1928 and closed in 1966. A gazeteer of 1872 mentioned that there was also a post-office, an iron foundry and an agricultural implement factory and that the church ran a national school.[2] It still retains a 16th-century pub, The Royal Oak, which is thatched like much of the rest of the village. In the 19th century there was a population of over 400 people which has since shrunk to half that size. Most of the village was designated a conservation area in 1975 and contains some 25 buildings dating from before 1800.[3] It has been managed by the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust since 1951.

The River

Wootton Rivers was the filming site for comedy The River in 1988.

References

  1. ↑ Further details are in: Lovelock, Yann, "Clock Watching with the Family", Lovelock Lines #7, October 2008, pp.9-11
  2. ↑ History of Wootton Rivers visionofbritain.org.uk
  3. ↑ Further details are online, drawn from A History of the County of Wiltshire, Volume 16: Kinwardstone Hundred (1999), pp. 229-236

External links

Media related to Wootton Rivers at Wikimedia Commons

Coordinates: 51°22′04″N 1°43′09″W / 51.3677°N 1.7192°W