Fugglestone St Peter was a small village, manor, and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, lying between the town of Wilton and the city of Salisbury. As a civil parish it came to an end in 1894, when it was divided between the adjoining parishes, but it still exists as a small settlement within the boundaries of Wilton, the street names being Minster Street, Salisbury Road, Maple Crescent, and Fugglestone.
History
The ancient parish of Fugglestone contained 1,778 acres and three rivers, the Nadder and two arms of the Wylye, so that some of the parish were under water. Fugglestone included the tithing of Quidhampton, the chapelry of Bemerton, and part of the hamlet of Burdens Ball. According to John Leland, King Ethelbert of Wessex was buried at Fugglestone, suggesting an early monastic institution there. Apart from the medieval parish church of St Peter, which dates from the 12th century but may have pre-Norman origins, little remains of the ancient village of Fugglestone, which stood at the western end of the parish near Wilton Abbey, which owned the manor, so that Fugglestone village effectively became a suburb of the borough of Wilton. Bemerton was at the other end of the parish, next to Fisherton Anger, and is recorded in the 11th century. St Andrew's chapel was built at Bemerton in the 14th century. In 1236, the settlement was recorded as Fughelistone, meaning Fugol's Farm. In the 17th century, the name of the parish had several different forms, including Fouggleston, Foulston and Fulston. The Church of England's record of the institution of Uriah Bankes as rector in 1660 refers to it as "Fouggleston als Foulston". Fugglestone was part of a hundred called Branch and Dole. The astrologerSimon Forman was born at Quidhampton in the parish in 1552. In the Middle Ages there was a leper hospital at Fugglestone, called the Hospital of St Giles, which stood on a spot now enclosed within the park of Wilton House. This was founded in about 1135 by Adelicia of Louvain, the queen of King Henry I, and the hospital claimed that Adelicia was entombed in its chapel. In 1645, the Mayor of Wilton petitioned the WiltshireQuarter Sessions to provide relief for inmates of the hospital suffering from the Bubonic plague. Of some forty poor people who had been admitted to the Hospital of St Giles, ten had died of the plague by 13 July 1645. The hospital was still in existence in 1814, when it supported a prior and four almspeople, but by then only the chapel was still standing, converted into lodgings for the poor. In 1851 these almshouses were replaced by a new row of cottages on the north side of the Warminster Road, the site of the hamlet of Burdens Ball, which are now known as 'St Giles's Hospital'. They were sited near the new almshouses of the former Hospital of St Mary Magdalene at Wilton, which had been founded before 1271, demolished in 1831, and its almspeople moved in 1832 to Fugglestone. In 1801 and in 1851 the population of Fugglestone was just over 500, but this had risen to 1,060 by 1894. In the same year, with effect from 30 September, the civil parish was dissolved, being divided between the town of Wilton and the new parish of Bemerton. At the time of this division, sixteen houses and forty-six parishioners were transferred to Wilton, the rest going to Bemerton. A farm called 'Fugglestone Farm' still covered some in the 1920s, but its buildings were demolished to make way for the Army's Erskine Barracks. Parish registers for Fugglestone survive in the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, dating from 1568 for christenings and burials, 1608 for marriages. A 15th-century shoe found near Minster Street, Fugglestone, is in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. In 1949, Fugglestone Farmhouse, a square building of stone north of the A36 and dating from the late 19th century, was acquired by the War Office as the headquarters of the British Army's Southern Command, together with a large area of land where the Army has since built barracks, stores, married quarters, and other buildings. As a result, the remaining fields of Fugglestone Farm were thereafter managed from a farm called Fugglestone Red Buildings, in the middle of what had been an open field. Until 1972 there was still an ecclesiastical parish with the name 'Fugglestone with Bemerton' or 'Bemerton with Fugglestone', but in that year the parish was renamed 'Bemerton' only.
Present day
St Peter's Church now stands on Salisbury Road, Wilton, and the remainder of Fugglestone centres on Minster Street, Maple Crescent and a street named Fugglestone. The church has a two-bay nave, a chancel with lancet windows, a south aisle, a brick porch, a 19th-century gallery, and a small 15th-century bell turret. The chancel mainly dates from the 13th century. The bell tower has a ring of three bells. Two by John Danton dating from 1628 have the inscriptions "Love God" and "Praise God". An Ordnance Surveybenchmark on a railway bridge still has the designation 'Flush Bracket 63: Fugglestone St Peter'. Fugglestone also has the designated post code SP2.
Fugglestone Red
By the early 21st century, an area of Bemerton had gained the name of 'Fugglestone Red', having been developed on the farm of that name which replaced the Fugglestone Farm acquired by the Army in 1949. Fugglestone Red is seen as a northern suburb of Salisbury, and Wiltshire Council has proposed a major new development there as part of its 'Core Strategy' published in 2009.
