Huish

The modern civil parish of Wilcot, Huish and Oare is situated in the north east of the county, five miles from Marlborough. It was created as recently as 2021, prior to which Huish was a parish in its own right. This article is only concerned with the ancient parish.

Huish parish was roughly square in shape, with Huish Hill in the north rising to over 850 feet. The land is on Upper Greensand and Chalk. The soil is clay; subsoil, chalky. The chief crops were wheat, barley & oats. The steep slopes of the Hill are unsuitable for ploughing, but there is arable land below it and meadow land in the south of the parish. Huish was part of Savernake Forest until 1330; by the 19^th century the 22-acre Gopher Wood on Draycott Hill was all that remained.

In 1803, the date of the Oare enclosure award, the northern parish boundary followed the courses of three dry valleys, but the southern boundaries were not marked by geographical features or well-used roads. They enclosed some 671 acres. In that year, when the common fields of Oare were enclosed, the land in Oare belonging to the lords of Huish was regarded as part of Huish parish. It comprised several small plots of land in and around Oare village, and the westernmost allotments of the previously commonable land. Huish thus increased in area to 754 acres and its eastern boundary took its modern line much closer to Oare village.

The detached areas of Huish in Oare became part of Wilcot parish in 1885 when Huish was reduced to 738 acres.

The first settlements in the parish were on higher ground. A burial site near Draycott Hill is close to an upland village or hamlet called Hillwork. Other settlements were at Heath Cottages on the north-eastern parish border, at Hill Barn and on Huish Hill. The Huish Hill hamlet was near the site of a Romano-British settlement in Ore. Work on the church in 1965 yielded some decorated tiles which prompted a lengthy investigation the following year. The original foundations of the church and an earlier chapel were discovered.

Prior to the 16^th century, the manor of Huish changed hands many times, partly owing to a number of disputes regarding ownership. The details of its early history can be found in the Victoria County History article relating to Huish. The manor passed in 1536 to Sir John Seymour’s son Edward, created Duke of Somerset in 1547, and subsequently descended with the Somerset and Hertford titles until the death of Sarah, duchess of Somerset, in 1692. She left the manor to the trustees of the Froxfield Hospital, who held it until 1921. They sold it to H.H. Dew who immediately sold to W.B. Strong. It remained in the Strong family until 1987, when it was sold following the death of Mr. J.B. Strong.

The church of St Nicholas dates back to the 13^th century.

It is built of stone and consists of a chancel, nave, south porch and north vestry. In 1688 the spire was taken down and a frame for the bells erected at the west end of the church. The church was said to be in danger of collapse in 1784 and the following year a new church was built. By the 1870s it was again in need of repair and it was extensively restored in 1879 when the vestry was added.

There is no evidence of nonconformity in the parish before 1863 when a Primitive Methodist chapel on Huish Hill was first registered. This tiny chapel had room for 50 people. It was abandoned in the 1920s and demolished c. 1940.

There is a cluster of interesting houses near the church. Yew Tree Cottages no longer have a yew tree, it was removed when the cottages had bathroom extensions at the rear. The cottages are built of brick with a thatched roof and date from the mid 19^th century. Porch Cottage is next door and is also brick with a thatched roof. It was built as a pair of cottages in the late 18^th-early 19^th century and has since been made into one house. Next is Giddings Cottage and Zeberdee Cottage, built of brick, chalkstone and flint, with a thatched roof. Giddings is the oldest in the village, dating from 1651. It has been the home of the Giddings family since 1921.

Zeberdee was a later addition, named for the gentleman who lived there, a Mr Freddie Zeberdee.

 Although thatched, Barn Cottage is one of the more recent additions to the main village.  A map dated 1770 shows that this area housed the blacksmiths and bakery with associated storage buildings. The cottage does not appear on the 1841 tithe map and is believed to date from 1860. It still shows as the smithy on the 1920 sale map. Next door to the cottage was the Reading Room, previously the village school. In 1987 it was integrated into the house.

Close to the south-eastern parish boundary is Cold Blow. This was built in 1921-22 by Clough Williams-Ellis for Captain Rollo. This two-storey house, in the shape of a T, is built of pink painted brick with a thatched roof.

The Old Rectory was built in 1812 by the rector, Charles Mayo. It is built of brick; in the 20^th century the thatched roof was replaced with tiles. All the above-mentioned buildings are Grade II listed. Huish also has a telephone kiosk that was listed in 1990. It was designed in 1935 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

Farming was the main source of employment in the 19^th century. In 1851 there were 27 households on the census; 20 heads of household were agricultural labourers. George Young employed 35 labourers to help run his 560-acre Manor Farm.

The remaining householders were the rector, a master carpenter, a cattle dealer, a blacksmith, a shoemaker and a baker.

Three generations of the Young family managed Manor Farm from 1828-1921. In August 1869 there was a terrible fire at the farm, which was reported at length in the Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette. The farmhouse, which had only been rebuilt in 1864, was thankfully saved, but almost all the farm buildings and the corn and hay crops were destroyed. The manor of Huish was sold in 1921 to the Strong family, who ran Manor Farm until 1987.

There was a grocer and baker at Huish Hill. From approximately 1899 it was run by John Cooper, followed by his son William. There are no entries in the Kelly’s trade directory for a baker in Huish after 1911, suggesting that William served in WWI. The only commercial entry in the directories post 1914 was Manor Farm.

The population of Huish at the time of Domesday was approximately 50. The first official figure in 1801 was 82, when there were 19 houses occupied by 25 families. It peaked at 133 between 1841 and 1861, after which there was a slow decline to just 30 people in 1971. In 2011 there were 43 residents. On 1 April 2021 Huish merged with the larger neighbouring parish of Wilcot to form the parish of Wilcot, Huish and Oare.

At the time of the merger Huish had 37 electors.

Huish is surrounded on three sides by Wilcot and it was either here or Oare that the Huish residents would have visited for the services they needed and some leisure activities. The 1939 Kelly’s Directory shows that Oare had a blacksmith, a boot maker, a garage, a baker, a grocer and post office, a carpenter and a refreshment room. A daily carrier service would take you to Salisbury or Marlborough. The town of Pewsey was south of Wilcot, and being much bigger, could offer all the shops and services that residents needed.

There was a Reading Room at Oare provided in 1893 by Francis Rogers of Rainscombe. It was built of wood and iron. Membership was open to all males over 15 living in Oare and its neighbourhood with a quarterly subscription of 1s. There were newspapers and a small lending library. In 1899 it had 25 members. As the 20^th century progressed, a variety of games were offered, such as whist and dominoes. Competitions were organized in areas and Oare was in a group with Pewsey, Hilcott, Milton and Woodborough.

The men who enjoyed the traditional outdoor sports of football and cricket joined teams in Wilcot. For the ladies, there was a Women’s Institute.

Today, the Oare and district village website talks of ‘a wonderful village school and a village hall at the heart of the community’.

Dances, meetings, art exhibitions and a gardening club all happen in the hall. The Huish residents are very much a part of this community. The pictures taken for a book published in 2000 show many happy families who have lived in Huish for years. To quote one resident: ‘we think we’ve died and gone to heaven’.