Purton


Purton is a large village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, about northwest of the centre of Swindon. The parish includes the village of Purton Stoke and the hamlets of Bentham, Hayes Knoll, Purton Common, Restrop, the Fox and Widham. The River Key, a tributary of the Thames, crosses the parish near Purton Stoke.
The village is a linear settlement along the old road between the historic market towns of Cricklade to the north and Royal Wootton Bassett to the south. Purton is on a minor road from the B4553 and from junction 16 of the M4 motorway. The village is on the brow of a hill, with views across to Cricklade and the Thames floodplain. Nearby, Bradon Forest stretches out to Minety in the west.
Village amenities include several shops, a sub-post office, a library, public houses and restaurants, a GP's practice, dentist and veterinary surgery. The village has grown such that its retailers are not all concentrated in one centre. A few shops are on the main road at the junction with Pavenhill, and a few are around the bend in the road near the village hall.
The Church of England parish church of Saint Mary the Virgin is unusual in having a tower at each end, one of which has a spire. It is one of only three parish churches in England with both a spire and another tower. The other two are at nearby Wanborough, Wiltshire, and Ormskirk, Lancashire.

History

The toponym Purton is derived from the Old English pirige for "pear" and tun for "enclosure" or "homestead".

Early history

has evidence of settlement during the Neolithic period but is considered to be an Iron Age hill fort dating from about 50 BC. There is a suggestion that the remains of a Roman villa lie under the soil at Pavenhill, on the Braydon side of Purton. At the Fox on the east side of the village, grave goods and bodies from a pagan Saxon cemetery have been excavated.
The earliest known written record of Purton dates from AD 796 when the Saxon King Ecgfrith of Mercia gave 35 hides from Purton to the Benedictine Malmesbury Abbey. The Abbot of Malmesbury continued to be the chief landlord of Purton throughout Saxon and Norman times, suggesting that an earlier church stood at Purton.
The ancient royal hunting forest of Bradon stretches out to Minety in the west. In ancient times it encompassed about 30,000 acres.

Civil War

It is thought a battle took place during the English Civil War in the Restrop area. A cannonball was discovered in the area and several place names refer to a battle, including the alternative name of Restrop Road, Red Street and Battlewell. A mile away are Battle Lake in Braydon Wood, and Battlelake Farm.

Railway

The Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway through the parish was opened in 1841 and was absorbed by the Great Western Railway in 1843. Purton railway station opened in 1841 to the north of the village, in the hamlet of Widham. The station closed in 1963 but the line remains open.

Second World War

There are a number of concrete pillboxes in the parish, which were part of the defences of Southern England during the Second World War. They form part of the GHQ Line Red, along which an anti-tank trench also ran, between Ballards Ash near Royal Wootton Bassett and the River Ray near Blunsdon railway station.
RAF Blakehill Farm, north of Purton Stoke, was a RAF Transport Command station that operated from 1944 until 1946. United States troops were stationed in Braydon Wood, and attended dances at the Angel Hotel. Anti-tank devices were installed on the parish boundary across Tadpole Bridge that spans the River Ray. The Cenotaph on Purton High Street is a memorial to those who died in both world wars.

Local studies

A study of the interconnections of people within the parish, based on the registers and other historical evidence, since the earliest recorded period, is being prepared under the working title, The Plenteous Pear Tree: Pedigrees and Progress of Purton's People Past and Present, a parish prosopography of Purton, Wiltshire, with ramifications elsewhere in North Wilts. and beyond, under the auspices of Richard Carruthers-Żurowski, a Canadian-based, Oxford-trained historian and genealogist.
Volume 18 of the Wiltshire Victoria County History, published in 2011, covers Purton.

Religious sites

The Church of England parish church of St Mary the Virgin appears at one time to have been dedicated to Saint Nicholas. The building is from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries and was restored by William Butterfield in 1872. In 1955 it was designated as Grade I listed.
There was a Friends' meeting house at Purton Stoke during the late 17th century and early 18th century.
There was a Congregational chapel, licensed in 1829, where the Scout Hut is now in Purton High Street. Congregational use ceased in the 1920s and it was demolished in 1969.
There were two Methodist chapels in Purton village. The Primitive Methodist chapel was built at Upper Square in 1856 and enlarged in 1893; the Wesleyan Methodist chapel at Play Close was built in 1882, replacing a smaller chapel from the 1870s. By 1969, after declines in numbers, the two congregations united. The Play Close chapel was renovated and reopened in 1973 as Purton Methodist Church, then the Upper Square chapel was sold for residential use.
There was a Methodist church opposite Dairy Farm in 1832 at Purton Stoke. It was demolished in 1868 and rebuilt in Pond Lane. This building was sold in 2011 and converted for residential use.

Governance

An electoral ward in the same name exists, covering the parishes of Purton and Braydon. The population of the ward taken at the 2011 census was 4,271.

Education

There are two schools in Purton:
Until 1978, Purton Stoke had its own primary school, on the Purton to Cricklade road. It opened in 1894 and at its peak had 100 pupils. However, numbers dropped continually from the 1930s when older pupils were educated in Purton, until there were only around 30 pupils left in the 1970s. The school closed in 1978. The building is now used for the Jubilee Gardens Project, a charity which provides education and training for adults with learning difficulties.

Nature reserves

There are four Wiltshire Wildlife Trust nature reserves in the parish:
  1. Brockhurst Meadow is at the end of Brockhurst Lane, just below Ringsbury Camp. A rushy hay meadow with signs of ridge and furrow farming. Wildlife includes many wildflowers of wet meadows: ragged robin, sneezewort, meadowsweet, marsh thistle, common spotted orchid, heath spotted orchid, adder's-tongue fern, sedge species and the insects which feed on them such as the marbled white butterfly..
  2. Blakehill Farm, partly in Purton parish, is the former RAF Blakehill Farm airfield from the Second World War. Its grasslands are habitat for mammals including roe deer and brown hare, birds including kestrel, skylark, wheatear, whinchat and stonechat and butterflies include small copper and brown hairstreak. The trust bought the site from the Ministry of Defence to form a large meadow of about, and opened it to the public in 2005. It rears a small quantity of organic grade beef, usually rare breeds such as longhorn cattle. These cattle ensure grasses and other common plants do not begin to dominate over the other rarer plants..
  3. Stoke Common Meadows are at the end of Stoke Common Lane in Purton Stoke. A small wood and grasslands, with ancient hedgerows and ditches. The meadows are habitat for many wildflowers including pepper saxifrage, sweet vernal-grass, heath spotted orchid, adder's-tongue fern, bugle, ox-eye daisy and common knapweed. Some of the fields are a Site of Special Scientific Interest..
  4. Red Lodge Pond is at the beginning of Red Drive in Braydon Wood, just off the B4042 road between Braydon Crossroads and Minety Crossroads. The reserve includes a large pond and a small meadow with a concrete platform in the middle: the remains of an old sawmill. Wildlife includes plants such as water horsetail, common spotted orchid; and woodland butterflies including Eurasian white admiral and silver-washed fritillary..
Restrop Farm and Brockhurst Wood is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is at the end of Mud Lane, or at the end of Brockhurst Lane, but is mainly private land. Brockhurst Meadow is part of the farm.

Public houses

There are three pubs in the parish:
There are two members' clubs: the Red House Club on Church Street, and the working men's club, now Purton Club, on Station Road.
Several former pubs in Purton have closed:
Purton has a Non-League football team Purton F.C. who play at the Red House.
Purton Youth Football Club has teams ranging from under sevens to under eighteens. The club has gained FA Charter Club Standard and is affiliated to Wiltshire Football Association.
Purton has a tennis club, based in the centre of the village. The cricket club, founded in 1820, claims to be the oldest in Wiltshire.

Notable people

People connected with Purton include:

Maskelyne

In the Tudor period the Maskelyne family were significant landlords and landowners in Purton, having inherited rights granted by the last Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey to the Pulley or Pulleyne family, from whom they descended on the distaff side. The Reverend Dr Nevil Maskelyne was appointed Astronomer Royal in 1765. The Maskelynes were involved in Purton life for more than four centuries from the 16th century. Nevil Maskelyne was born in London, lived at Down Farm and is buried in Purton churchyard. A Miss Maskelyne who lived in the village died in the 1960s aged over 100.

Hyde and Ashley-Cooper

The Royalist statesman and author Edward Hyde, who served as MP for the nearby Wootton Bassett constituency in the 1630s, lived at College Farm in the centre of Purton. It is likely that his daughter Anne Hyde, first wife of James II also lived here for a time. After serving Charles II during his years of exile under the Commonwealth and Republic, Hyde later became Lord Chancellor of England, was ennobled as Earl of Clarendon, and appointed Chancellor of the University of Oxford.
Hyde's Whig arch-rival, Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, also had property in Purton parish. The Ashley-Cooper family also held the advowson of St. Mary's parish church.

Sadler

By the late 19th century and into the early part of the 20th century, other local families had risen to the gentry level after becoming significant landowners in the parish. Among these was James Henry Sadler, Esq., D.L., J.P., who, though a Purton native, lived in nearby Lydiard House in the neighbouring parish of Lydiard Millicent until his death. A strict but generous benefactor, Sadler gave the cricket ground and Working Men's Institute to the village. Described as the last unofficial Squire of Purton, his father was Dr Samuel Champernowne Sadler, F.R.C.S., of Purton. In 1859 or 1860 Dr Sadler had the Pump House built at Salt's Hole, a natural mineral water spring near Purton Stoke, used for medicinal purposes since the Middle Ages and possibly earlier. Under Dr Sadler and subsequent owners, attempts were made to develop this natural attraction as Purton Spa, and to market the spring waters for their healing qualities.