West Lavington, Wiltshire


West Lavington is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, on the north edge of Salisbury Plain, on the A360 road between Devizes and Salisbury, about south of Devizes. The parish includes the hamlet of Littleton Panell.
The parish was formerly known as Bishops' Lavington, the land having been granted to Roger, Bishop of Salisbury in 1136, and remaining in the hands of the bishopric throughout the Middle Ages.

Religious sites

The Anglican All Saints' Church is Grade I listed. It is from the 12th century or earlier, with many later alterations and additions. It has a 1910 painting entitled Virgin and Child by Louis Davis.
Ebenezer Baptist Church was built at Littleton Panell in 1848 and is affiliated to the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches.
Also at Littleton Panell, a Wesleyan Methodist chapel was built in 1900. It closed in 1967, was bought by the Catholic Church, and reopened as St Joseph's in 1971.

Amenities

, an independent day and boarding school, is in the village. The nearest state secondary school is Lavington School in Market Lavington.
A primary school, Dauntsey Academy Primary School, was built in 1999 at a new site to replace a 19th-century building on the High Street.
The village has a pub, the Churchill Arms. There is a village hall, a shop with a post office, and a doctor's surgery.
The Stert and Westbury Railway was built through the parish by the Great Western Railway Company in 1900, providing routes from London to Weymouth and Taunton. At the same time, Lavington Station was built north of Littleton Panell where the line crosses the A360; it was closed in 1967. No local railway stations remain; the nearest are Pewsey and Westbury.

Littleton Panell

Littleton Panell is a contiguous hamlet in the parish of West Lavington. Its extent is disputed but its centre is north of the A360/B3098 crossroads and south of the old railway station for the Great Western Railway. The former manor house is now offices and its grounds were, for many years, a fruit farm. More recently, they were planted as a vineyard and an orchard.

Notable people

, architect and pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, was born at West Lavington in 1650.
David Saunders, whose life inspired Hannah More's tract The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, was born at Littleton Pannell in 1717 and buried in West Lavington churchyard in 1796.
Richard Godolphin Long was baptised at West Lavington in 1761. He became High Sheriff of Wiltshire and a Member of Parliament, and built Rood Ashton House near West Ashton.
Nigel Balchin was an author and screenwriter. Son of the village baker, he was educated at Dauntsey's School and Cambridge University, and initially worked as an industrial psychologist. After a distinguished war record, he was thought to be one of Britain's most promising novelists of the 1940s. He wrote The Small Back Room and several other novels. His best-known film is The Man Who Never Was, for which he received a BAFTA in 1956.
Actor George Baker, best known for playing Inspector Wexford on television, lived close to Periwinkle Pond in the village prior to his death in 2011.