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Question

My ancestor was born in Clack, Wiltshire, according to the Census, but I can't find Clack on any modern map. Where was it, please?

Question asked on

04 July 2011

Answer

The name Clack refers to a large mound west of the village of Bradenstoke which lies within the parish of Lyneham. First occurring in 1310, the name was applied to the settlement on the road to Bradenstoke Priory until the late nineteenth century. An old rhyme refers to four north Wiltshire villages as follows: “White Cleeve, Pepper Cleeve, Cleeve, and Cleveancy,/Lyneham and lousy Clack, Cus Mavord and Dantsey”[i.e. Clyffe Pypard, Lyneham, Christian Malford and Dauntsey]. 'Lousy' is derived from the Teutonic 'lleow', a hill.

The first edition of the 1 inch to 1 mile Ordnance Survey map (the 'Old Series'), Sheet XXXIV, surveyed in the 1810s and revised continuously until the early 1890s, shows that hamlet as Clack. On the 'New Series' 1-inch map, published in 1892 and based on the 25-inch survey of the county in the 1870s and 1880s, the village is referred to as Bradenstoke cum Clack, and continues to be so marked on maps as late as the 1950s. Only with the advent of the Seventh Series of the 1-inch map, published in 1968, is the village named simply as 'Bradenstoke'. The name Clack is preserved in the feature 'Clack Mount', marked on the Ordnance Survey maps from 1892 to the present; i.e. when the village's original name of Bradenstoke comes to be used again.

In Kelly's Directories, Clack is simply referred to as a hamlet within Lyneham, until 1867, when there is reference to Clack as a “new district, formed in 1866 for ecclesiastical purposes” from parts of the parishes of Christian Malford and Lyneham, and given the formal name of Bradenstoke cum Clack. The village is entered under that name in the directories from 1880 to 1920, and, from 1923 onwards simply as Bradenstoke, with reference to it being “formerly called Bradenstoke cum Clack”

Bibliography

Ordnance Survey Old Series 1” map, Sheet 34, edition of 1828 (revised ed., 1893)
Ordnance Survey New Series 1” map, Sheet 266: Marlborough, 1892 (revised 1898)
Ordnance Survey New Series 1” map, 6th edition: Sheet 157: Swindon, 1947 (1956 reprint)
Ordnance Survey Seventh Series 1” map, Sheet 157: Swindon, 1968

Kelly’s Directories of Wiltshire, 1848, 1867, 1875, 1880, 1920, 1923, 1939.
Victoria History of Wiltshire vol. 9, pp. 90-91
Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine, vol. 44 (1927-29), p. 143