WATER  MEADOWS  ON  SALISBURY  PLAIN,  WILTSHIRE    IN  CHITTERNE,  ORCHESTON,  SHREWTON  AND  TILSHEAD  

What follows is just a quick canter through the subject of water meadows in four villages in Wiltshire, England.

Of the four villages two definitely had meadows: Chitterne’s were large enough for 14 freeholders to farm them while Orcheston’s ‘Long Grass Meads’ produced grass that was from 10 to 25 feet long. Local histories state that Shrewton had its own meadows, probably in the south-east corner of the parish, in the valley of the Till south of Rollestone St Andrew’s church. An enclosure map of 1800 for Shrewton also shows three water meadows of the parish as being ‘detached parts’, actually situated in the neighbouring parish of Winterbourne Stoke. The evidence from Tilshead suggests that it had none, largely because the valley of the Till there has narrowed so much that there is insufficient flat ground beside the winterbourne to have warranted the expensive engineering works of sluices, hatches and dykes needed for such meadows.

Chitterne: Water meadows are mentioned on the Chitterne village website (www.chitterne.com) which says: ‘At the junction with the road to Codford the Chitterne Brook passes under the road and, until recently, followed the course of that road toward an area of old water meadows. Nowadays it has been diverted across the middle of the field that was formerly known as the ‘picnic field’, opposite the King’s Head pub.’

Chitterne’s old water meadows, or Picnic Field, shown flooded in 1910

Sue Robinson, who maintains the website, has written: ‘The water meadows in Chitterne ran alongside the Codford road, now part of Glebe Farm. They were shared by all the Chitterne farmers at the time, each had his own area, known by the farmer’s name plus ‘meadow’, e.g. ‘Smith’s meadow’, Jones’s meadow etc. The only name that remains in the local memory is ‘Dean’s Meadow’. All these areas have since been re-amalgamated and belong to Glebe Farm. No sign remains of the hatches, or the dykes

or the hedges that once

divided the areas. They were still in operation late in

the 1800’s when, once the hatches were lowered, the dykes

took a week to fill from the Chitterne Brook.’

Sue provided the 1822 estate map shown above; the original is in the Wiltshire Record Office at Trowbridge. She

commented ‘Nowadays the brook follows a different “path”; it no longer flows alongside the road to Codford as it does on the map, but now takes a route through the middle of the field indicated with an asterisk*. However, there is still a short length of the original in front of the buildings to the south of the road.’

‘In 1747 there were 14 freeholders and you can just about count 14 pieces of land in the meadow area. By the 1881 census there were only eight farmers, now there are only three. The pond in the bottom left corner of the map still exists and is known as Spot’s Pool. It may have had some connection with the dyke system.’

Orcheston and Elston: There are three three water meadows in Orcheston: the first two being the 1½ acres in Orcheston St Mary, north of the Elston Lane bridge over the Till, and the one acre in Orcheston St George, south of the bridge. These were the ‘Long Grass Meads’ for which the village had been famous from as early as 1600, visited by many natural historians (nowadays they would be scientists or environmentalists), who wrote of them in numerous diaries and books, including the learned journal of the Linnaean Society (Volume 5, Transactions, 1798).

1822 estate map (modified) showing Chitterne’s water

meadows alongside the Codford road,

WSRO 135/28

*

They are not ‘water meadows’ in the usual sense, being a natural phenomenon of water flooding a flat-bottomed valley, rather than an expensive and highly engineered man-made scheme of hatches, conduits and ditches – the sluice shown on the detailed map overleaf was probably introduced later.

Aubrey, who travelled around Wiltshire from 1659 to 1670, wrote in his Natural History of Wiltshire, ‘At Orston St Maries is a

meadowe which beares a sort of very long grasse. Of this grasse there was presented to King James the First some that were 17 feet long: here is only one acre and a half of it. In common yeares it is 12 or 13 feet long. It is a sort of knot grasse and the pigges eate it.’

Arthur Young wrote in 1797, ‘I took the road to Orcheston to view that celebrated meadow, which for 200 years has been described as very much exceeding all others in the kingdom.’

The crop was very valuable, with the length

of grass variously reported at 10, 14, 16, 22

and even 25 feet long; the grass that was 22 feet long piece was said to have been ‘marked to that length on the wall of an alehouse in the vicinity’, (thought to be the old Crown Inn). Writing about the enormous value per acre of these two small meadows he noted that: ‘Mr

Gibbs informed me that for one of the meadows containing 1½ acre he was repeatedly offered 500 guineas, £350 an acre. This is very great, and exceeds anything I ever met in England, and approaches the very finest vineyards in France. The Clos de Veaujeau, in Burgundy, was sold for about £400 an acre.’

‘I found the site to be a level space divided by a post and rail, and bounded on one side by a hedge, the very shallow ditch of which is the channel of the winter stream, with several breaches in the bank, by which the water must enter the meadow. The herbage hangs together, as wool: “Hard work to mow it, Sir. Five feet high, 14 feet long.”’

Orcheston’s third meadow is to the south of the Orcheston St George meadow, around the bend of the Till in Elston. This was created much later, and maps from the mid-19th century show a complex system of a sluice (often known as a ‘hatch’), drains and what is shown on a map of 1881 as an aqueduct and on one in the 1970’s as ‘Collects’. The meadow that lies between The Cleeve hill and the racing stables still shows the distinct ridges and furrows associated with developed water meadow systems.

Based on the Ordnance Survey map of 1887

Detail of the Orcheston St

Mary meadow

Detail of the Elston water meadow

on the 1881 map by the Ordnance Survey

Ridges and furrows

Shrewton: Shrewton (or, more specifically, Maddington) had a number of water meadows, including those in an enclosure map in

the Record Office (WSRO 451/366), dated 1800. But they lie in the Till valley south of the parish boundary, actually in Winterbourne

Stoke. On the map from the 1900’s (left), Shrewton’s own meadows would

be limited to the shaded area between St Andrew’s church, Rollestone and the ‘fords’.

From the ‘fords’ down to the A303 lies the extensive system belonging to the parish of

Winterbourne, amongst which, in the 18th century, were intermingled Shrewton’s

three ‘external’ meadows.

Tilshead: Bill Perry, who lives in Tilshead and has researched its history, believes it never had its own water meadows: ‘The main source I am familiar with on water meadows is Joe Bettey’s recent book for the Wiltshire

Record Society, 2005, Wiltshire Farming in the 17th Century. He trawled through the county record office and his chapter on water meadows does not mention

Tilshead. Nor is there any mention in the Victoria County History.’

‘There was probably insufficient water this far up the Till to guarantee a supply reliable enough to

justify the considerable expense and labour of constructing water meadows, nor a landowner with the interest or

enthusiasm to undertake the project.’

‘There is probably only one place in the parish where the ground alongside the Till was flat and level enough for construction, the horse paddocks alongside the A360 by the West Down camp access road, an area subject to flooding. Before 1814 it was part of the arable common field of South Manor and could not have been enclosed and converted to pasture without agreements that would be documented. Also the Enclosure Award would certainly have identified any areas of water meadow as they would have had a much higher value than arable or ordinary pasture. In 1814 that area became part of Richard Norris’s South Farm and there is no record of any water meadows being constructed by him (they would be listed in the later sale particulars).’

‘Also, of course, one can usually still see evidence of water meadows (i.e. ridges on the ground surface) where they existed. There are no such signs there or anywhere else around Tilshead.’ Bill Perry concludes: ‘So, all in all, I think the lack of evidence is conclusive.’

Richard Essberger