Down Ampney

All Saints Church, Down Ampney

Down Ampney is a medium-sized village located in Cotswold district in Gloucestershire, in England. The population taken at the 2011 census was 644.[1]

It is off the A417 which runs between Cirencester and Faringdon (in Oxfordshire) on the A420, and about 5 km north of Cricklade, which is on the A419 which runs from Cirencester to Swindon, Wiltshire.

Down Ampney was notable in medieval times as one of the principal seats of the powerful Hungerford family (their principal seat was at Farleigh Hungerford, Somerset) and a number of elaborate family monuments survive in the village church.

The Down Ampney estate, comprising almost all of the farm land in the parish, is now owned by the Co-operative Group.[2]

The Old Vicarage in Down Ampney was the birthplace of Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1872. A tune he composed, used for the hymn "Come Down, O Love Divine", is titled "Down Ampney" in its honour.

During the Second World War, the RAF Down Ampney airfield was a base for planes seeing active service in the war. The church has a stained glass window in commemoration of the planes that flew from the airfield for the Battle of Arnhem, 1944.

Aside from the airfield, a school older than 150 years, a multi-use games area for younger residents, a tennis club, a village hall, a small village shop, and the church mentioned above, which evidently dates back to before the bubonic plague, are also present in the current arrangement of the village.

References

  1. ↑ "Parish population 2011.Retrieved 24 March 2015".
  2. ↑ Statutory Declaration of D. N. Humphreys

Coordinates: 51°40′N 1°51′W / 51.667°N 1.850°W / 51.667; -1.850


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