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The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner wrote, “Corsham
has no match in Wiltshire for wealth of good houses” - praise
indeed bearing in mind the county is already architecturally richly
endowed. Yet passers-by driving on the A4 between Chippenham and
Bath can gain only a brief impression of this visual wealth and
a visit to the town centre will be richly repaid. Here they will
find streets lined with proud houses of Bath Stone a short distance
from the Elizabethan stately home of Corsham Court in its extensive
grounds which brings the countryside right into the heart of this
Cotswold town.
Location Corsham sits
on the south-eastern fringe of the Cotswold Hills, a location which
enabled it to build its prosperity on the once thriving industries
of cloth manufacture and stone quarrying. The Cotswold Hills are
a part of a belt of oolitic limestone stretching from Dorset to
Yorkshire formed when this part of England was covered by prehistoric
seas. Uplands associated with this belt are evident along most of
its length, but perhaps the most distinctive part is that stretching
from Bath in Somerset to Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire which
we call the Cotswolds. Here the land was tilted up from the north-west
creating an escarpment on that side. In the Ice Age, the peaks of
soft limestone thus formed were rounded into an area of hills around
45 miles long from north-east to south-west and some 20 miles at
its widest in the north-east.
The name ‘Cotswold’ is Anglo Saxon in origin and refers
to the ‘cots’ where these people kept their sheep on
the ‘Wolds’ or uplands. This area had already been heavily
criss-crossed by earlier peoples: the ancient Britons used the higher
land of the Cotswolds for their thoroughfares whilst the Romans
built a road from Bath to Silchester along what is now the southern
boundary of Corsham parish. (Remains of Roman villas have been discovered
at the villages of Box just north of the road and Atworth to the
south.)
A great ditch called the Wansdyke was dug, probably following the
Roman withdrawal from Britain, from south of Bath to south of Marlborough
passing along the path of the Roman road south of Corsham. Its purpose
remains a mystery, although it may have marked the boundary between
two competing British fiefdoms with their respective centres at
Cirencester to the north and Winchester to the south.
Corsham itself is thought to be an Anglo-Saxon settlement, as suggested
by its name which in earlier forms would seem to signify the ‘home
or village’ of someone called “Cossa”. This settlement
would have passed through centuries of insecurities as an outpost
of the Kingdom of Wessex which was extending ever westward against
the Britons whilst contesting its northern border with Mercia (another
Saxon Kingdom whose southern boundary followed approximately that
of Gloucestershire). From the late 8th century, there began the
further complication of Danish invasions.
The Manor As the Saxons
of England united under the hegemony of Wessex, Corsham took on
a prominent role as a royal manor being near the convergence of
two great Saxon forests with extensive deer parks, favourite hunting
grounds for kings. From Saxon times a royal lodge existed on, or
close to, the present site of Corsham Court. William of Malmesbury
called it “Ethelred’s Palace” and the Court Roll
of Ethelred the Unready (978-1017) mentions the King staying at
his Manor House at Corsham when hunting in Melksham Forest. In reflection
of this, Corsham’s full (though rarely used) name is “Corsham
Regis”.
After the Norman conquest, William the Conqueror split off the church
and its lands from Corsham Manor and awarded them to Caen Abbey
near his home in Normandy. In the 13th century there was a small
cell of monks from Marmoutier based in Corsham, probably at a site
in the grounds of what is now Heywood Preparatory School. The secular
part of the manor was leased by the monarch to a succession of nobles
although ownership was in royal hands for centuries and was part
of the dowry of the queens of England. In 1242, Henry III granted
it to his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who decided to break
it up into a number of smaller tenancies, each with limited manorial
rights. Ultimate ownership of the manor however remained in royal
hands until the time of Queen Elizabeth I, who sold the entire manorial
rights to her Lord Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton for £15,000.
His financial problems later forced him to sell the manor at a loss.
Among the later owners of the Lordship was Sir Edward Hungerford,
a prominent Parliamentarian at the time of the Civil War. His widow
built the Corsham Almshouses.
In 1745, the manor of Corsham which had, over the centuries, become
divided geographically, was bought by Paul Methuen. Even though
manorial rights are these days little more than in name, the Methuen
family still lives in the official Manor House, Corsham Court.
Wool The Anglo Saxons
farmed sheep on the Cotswolds, but it was not until the 13th and
14th centuries that sheep farming became a major source of wealth,
with wool being exported to Flanders and Lombardy where there was
less available land and a thriving spinning and weaving industry
had been established.
Anxious to get his hands on downstream production, Edward III stopped
wool exports from England in 1337 at the same time as banning the
import of woven goods and wearing of garments made of foreign wool.
He lured Flemish weavers to England, and many settled in the Cotswolds
area where they had direct access to plentiful supplies of wool.
Here they established a flourishing “cottage” textile
industry and were joined by more of their compatriots in the 17th
century fleeing religious persecution.
Boasting no substantial river, unlike Bradford-on-Avon, Corsham
avoided the messy, heavy side of the industry such as dyeing and
fulling yet kept its fair share of spinning and weaving. The fine
row of 17th century houses on Corsham’s High Street known
as “Flemish Cottages” was built for weavers, and buildings
round the corner in Church Street were also inhabited by weavers
who continued to work in this area of the town until the beginning
of the 19th century by which time the wool industry in the south
was finally being usurped by the north of England.
Stone The ready availability
of limestone in the Cotswolds had made it a convenient building
material since at least Roman times. Corsham sits on the Greater
Oolitic Seam which, since it extends in about 20 miles radius of
Bath, has been termed “Bath Stone”. This stone differs
from the Cotswold seams further north by having a lower ironstone
content and therefore being lighter in colour. It is also less friable
and so suitable for producing the dressed blocks of Corsham and
Bath Stone.
Until the 19th century, the Corsham area had been quarried chiefly
for local use. The construction of the Box Hill railway tunnel by
the great engineer Brunel, however, brought the means of transporting
stone easily further afield at the same time, coincidentally, as
uncovering huge new deposits. So much stone was shipped from Corsham
now that Bath Stone was sometimes also known as “Corsham Stone”.
After the First World War, the expense of extracting stone and the
development of other cheaper building materials almost brought quarrying
for Bath Stone to an end. With the renewed interest in conservation
and building design sympathetic to its context, high quality limestone
is again much in demand and quarries are being worked again, not
only in the Corsham area, but also at Limpley Stoke near Bath. It
is understood that stone is currently being extracted regularly
from up to three different quarries in Corsham.
During the First and Second World Wars, abandoned underground stone
quarries under Box Hill were used to store ammunition, In the 1950s
part of the 35-acre Spring Quarry was developed as a central Government
War Headquarters site to which the government could retreat in the
event of a nuclear strike. Code-named “Burlington”,
the radiation-proof bunker 100 feet underground consists of a street
with Whitehall ministries on each side and even included a pub called
The Rose and Crown. The facility was decommissioned in the early
1990s. It was declassified at the end of 2004.
Another legacy of the age of stone quarrying is a network of footpaths
still criss-crossing the town, which trace the paths of workers
on their daily journeys from surrounding villages to the various
quarries in and around Corsham.
Technology Corsham
has been fortunate throughout its existence that as one source of
wealth and employment has faded another has taken its place. Until
the first half of the 20th century it was merely a village surrounded
by a number of hamlets, such as Pickwick, which fused together as
the population rapidly expanded. As the stone industry faded, a
number of light industrial parks rose up to provide a diversified
employment base for this population, and retailing facilities multiplied
in the centre of Corsham to cater for most needs.
Technology plays an increasingly important role in Corsham today
with the development of the Basil Hill site for the Ministry of
Defence. This renewed commitment to Corsham will host major military
communications projects.
The Future To reflect
Corsham’s size and status, the Parish Council, which had been
in existence since 1895, was made a Town Council in 2000. The population
has been on the increase again with the development of 644 new homes
at Katherine Park in the south west of the town, presenting the
town both with new challenges and fresh opportunities.
Corsham People Corsham
has been home to, and seen the passage of, many famous and interesting
characters throughout its history. Turn to page 12 to find out more.
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