page_title: Hindon, Wiltshire
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hindon, Wiltshire / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Coaching Inn Formerly The Grosvenor, now The Angel.
context_page_description: Hindon is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, about 16 miles west of Salisbury and 9.6 miles south of Warminster. It is in the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Hindon was a market town but is now a village.
context_section_description: Hindon is a planned settlement, unlike most English villages which have evolved piecemeal over the millennia.  If previous settlement in the area was present, no evidence within the village itself has yet been discovered.  There are prehistoric field systems and Bronze Age round barrows on the downs nearby.
  According to the Estates' Account Rolls of the Bishop of Winchester, Bishop Peter des Roches of Winchester planned the borough as a centre for markets and fairs in 1218; at that time the land was part of East Knoyle parish. The main period of building was between 1218 and 1220 and even today, the medieval settlement pattern can be seen: the main tenements flanked either side of the High Street, with narrow burgage plots running behind the buildings.  By c.1250 there were some 150 houses in the village.  There were 77 poll-tax payers in 1377.  Hindon became a parliamentary borough (see Hindon constituency) in the later Middle Ages, and continued to return two members until it was disenfranchised in 1832; it was reckoned to be an exceptionally corrupt borough even by the standards of the time. Its central position in south-west Wiltshire made it a centre of local government: between 1530 and 1660 it was sometimes a venue for quarter sessions and in 1786 was made the centre of a petty sessional division.
  Hindon's prosperity was due to its markets and fairs, and its position on and near main roads.  Almost immediately after the foundation of the village in 1218 a weekly market was held and this continued for centuries: Hindon was noted for its market in the mid and late 16th century.  As a corn market it was rated by John Aubrey as second only to Warminster in c.1650, and in c.1707 it was coupled with Chippenham as a great Wiltshire market.  In the 19th century the sale of pigs and sheep comprised a sizeable share of the market business, but by the later 19th century the market declined rapidly, and finally ceased in the early 1880s.
  Coaching was probably the major industry in the village in the 18th century and early 19th century.  The main London-Exeter road ran across the downs, and in 1754 there were fourteen inns and public houses in the village, with associated stabling for the horses. Such was the vitality of Hindon that it quickly recovered after the disastrous fire of 1754.  In 1801 the population was 793. In 1830 London coaches from Exeter left daily from the Swan and from Barnstaple nightly from the Lamb Inn, and there were corresponding services westwards.  Stabling can still be seen at the Grosvenor Arms (also known at various times in its history as the Angel Inn): the exterior of the stable block facing Angel Lane bears a text which reads: GROSVENORS ARMS GOOD STALL STABLEING [sic] AND LOCK-UP COACH HOUSES. The population of the village reached a peak of 921 in 1831 when there were some 190 houses.
  Other trades undertaken in the village over the centuries include weaving, linen and tick-weaving, silk twist manufacture, inn-keeping, baking, brewing, clock-making, gunpowder manufacture, and wood, metal and leather working.
  A school was built on the east side of the village in the 1850s, at the expense of Lady Octavia Shaw-Stewart. Children of all ages attended until 1961, when those aged 11 transferred elsewhere.
  Several reasons for Hindon's decline have been put forward: its disenfranchisement in 1832; the railway connection of London to Taunton and Exeter in the 1840s which reduced coach traffic significantly (coupled with the opening of the station at Tisbury, 2 miles (3.2 km) southeast of Hindon, in 1859); and a general decrease in road traffic. By 1875 all but two of Hindon's inns were closed down.
  The High Street was lined with trees in 1863.  These still remain, mostly lime but with a few oak trees.  The trees are pollarded annually, giving the wide straight village street an almost French look.
  Hindon is mentioned in A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs by W. H. Hudson, published in 1910. Hudson stayed in the Lamb Inn in the spring and summer of 1909.  Chapter 16 of the book con
caption: Stabling at the Grosvenor Arms (once the Angel Inn), an old coaching inn in Hindon
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