Heytesbury in 1843
Heytesbury is in the hundred of Heytesbury, 96 miles from the General Post-Office, London, by the South-Western Railway to Basingstoke, and from thence by Amesbury ; and 17 miles from Salisbury on the road to Warminster. Heytesbury had for its Saxon name Hegtredesbiryg, softened in Domesday into Haseberie. No historical interest attaches to it. It sent members to parliament from the time of Henry VI, and was disfranchised by the Reform Act. The parish has an area of 3,380 acres, and contained, in 1831, 280 houses, namely, 268 inhabited, 11 uninhabited, and 1 building ; with a population of 289 families or 1,412 persons, from one-fourth to one-third agricultural. The town is in a pleasant valley on the north bank of the Wily, and consists of some streets irregularly laid out, and neither paved nor lighted. The manufacture of woollen cloth employed about 35 men in 1831. There is no market, and but one small yearly fair for cattle and sheep. The church is a large cross church, with a square tower at the intersection of the nave and transept. It was anciently collegiate. There is an hospital or almshouse, founded and endowed in the fifteenth century by Walter, Lord Hungerford. The living of Heytesbury is a perpetual curacy, united with the perpetual curacy of Knook, of the joint clear yearly value of £131, in the rural deanery of Wylie, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Salisbury. There were in the parish, in 1833, six day-schools, with 132 scholars ; giving about one in ten or eleven of the population under daily instruction ; and four Sunday-schools, with 202 scholars ; giving one in seven of the population under instruction on Sundays. All the Sunday-schools and five of the day-schools were supported by contributions. |