Steeple Langford

Name

There is little doubt that the element 'Langford' refers to a ford over the River Wylye, around which the village grew up. The name 'Steeple Langford' has generally predominated over the alternative of 'Great Langford', and it has long been presumed (for instance, by William Cobbett) that the first element of this name refers to an architectural steeple. However, early forms of the name include 'Stapel', 'Steppul', and 'Staple' Langford, and one writer on the origin of the place-name has suggested that

"the prefix Staple sometimes indicates that to a town was granted the privilege of holding a market. Probably a stapol or pole may have been set up to show this to all who passed through. Or the ford may have been protected by stakes".

Church

The Church of England parish church of All Saints is a Grade I listed building. The font is Norman, but the church also contains some pre-Conquest stonework and sculpture.

A carved medieval roof boss in the north aisle of the church represents a dog, its body coiled and surrounded by foliage.

In 1857, when the chancel of the church was demolished, a slab of Purbeck marble was found, about 26 inches by 14, bearing an incised portrait of a man wearing a long robe, his hands raised to hold a plain shield or receptacle, with a horn hanging on a strap from his left shoulder. This was tentatively identified as Waleran Venator (Waleran the Huntsman), who held land in the parish and was patron of the living in the 11th century, which was the approximate date of the chancel. However, from the costume being of a later date, Alan de Langford, Verderer of Grovely Wood at the end of the 13th century, has also been suggested.

John Murray noted in 1859 that the church "contains a rich altar-tomb to one of the family of Mompesson, but it has long lost the steeple which formerly distinguished it".

The parish registers now held in the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre cover the years 1674–1924 (christenings), 1674–1980 (marriages), and 1674–1873 (burials).

History

Steeple Langford has a rich archaeological history. Neolithic finds in the parish include flint tools, a polished axehead and pottery, as well as a bowl barrow and the remains of a round barrow; from the Bronze Age axeheads, a palstave and a chisel; from the Iron Age pottery, a rotary quern fragment and a circular enclosure; from the Romano-British period coins, a polished and painted pebble, and a needle; from the Saxon period a spearhead and a silver brooch; medieval strip lynchets; and field systems and earthworks of various dates. At Hanging Langford Camp, a Mesolithic flint axe and Romano-British brooches have been found.

The Domesday Book records that:

Waleran himself holds Langford. Osulf held it in the time of King Edward, and it paid geld for 10 hides. The land is 5 carucates. Of this there are 5 hides in demesne, and there are 2 carucates and 5 serfs; and there are 8 villans, and 4 bordars with 3 carucates. There is a mill paying 15 shillings, and 30 acress of meadow. The pasture is half a mile long and 2 furlongs broad. It was, and is, worth £10.

Sir Lawrence St Martin, a descendant of Waleran, died c 1320 in possession of 'Stupel Langford'.

In the time of King Edward III, John de Steeves held Steeple Langford in return for a knight's service.

As result of the Penruddock uprising of 1655, three men of the parish, Nicholas Mussell, yeoman, and Henry Collyer and Joseph Collier, gentlemen, were found guilty of high treason against Oliver Cromwell.

Arthur Collier, a metaphysician, a native of the parish and rector from 1704 to 1732, is notable for his Clavis Universalis (1713).

As a child of about ten in the 1770s, William Cobbett spent a whole summer in the village, and his happy memories of his stay led him to take one of his 'Rural Rides' into Wiltshire some fifty years later. However, he wrote in 1826 that

I remembered, very well, that the Women at Steeple Langford used to card and spin dyed wool... I have, I dare say, a thousand times talked about this Steeple Langford, and about the beautiful farms and meadows along this valley... When I got to Steeple Langford, I found no public-house, and I found it a much more miserable place than I had remembered it. The Steeple, to which it owed its distinctive appellation, was gone; and the place altogether seemed to me to be very much altered for the worse.

In June 1795, it was reported that some 120 sheep had been killed at Steeple Langford by a freak hailstorm.

The population of the parish was 501 in 2001, much the same as in 1801, having peaked at 628 in 1861.

A detailed history of the parish is contained in Volume XV: Amesbury hundred and Branch and Dole hundred (1995) of A History of the County of Wiltshire.

School

Children of Steeple Langford attend the primary school at Codford (Wylye Valley Church of England Voluntary Aided Primary School) and secondary schools further afield.

A National School was built in 1861 and continued as a Church of England Aided school from 1954. Due to falling numbers, in 2005 the school merged with the Codford school, with teaching at both sites; the Steeple Langford site closed in 2010.

Bathampton

The settlement at Bathampton (or Batham) survives as Bathampton House which is Grade II* listed.

Railway

The Salisbury to Westbury branch line was built across the parish, bisecting Little Langford and passing close to Hanging Langford. Langford station was opened at the same time as the line, in June 1856, but closed in October 1857.

Langford Lakes

Three lakes created by gravel workings alongside the River Wylye have been turned into a wildlife reserve called the Langford Lakes Nature Reserve, under the ownership of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. The reserve has an area of fifty acres, and species include mallard, gadwall, tufted duck, common pochard, northern shoveller, Eurasian wigeon, kingfisher, great crested grebe, common tern, osprey, brown trout, greyling, otters, and water voles.

Notable people