The Vale (region)

The Vale, near Wadhay

The Yarncombes (Stoke Yarncombe and Yarncombe Mitton)

Sponsored by the Beechbourne *Herald & Courier,* with the assistance and by courtesy of the Great Vale Dig Project and of the *VCH,* which have provided content under licence.

**The Vale of Sennell,** in which are sited the settlements of Semelford, Wadhay, Sparverham, Yarncombe Mitton, Stoke Yarncombe, Wick S Aldhelm (‘Wick Almstey’), Stinchy Common and Senfield Mallett, and Shallwell Mallet, is, as a district, located in South West Wiltshire, near to the County border with Dorset, South and West of The Woolfonts and the Downlands.

As a natural region and an AONB and Special Area of Conservation, it parallels the Blackmoor Vale and Vale of Wardour region and the Vales of Blackmore and of Wardour as a geographic unity, and makes up Natural England’s National Character Area 233, or 133A in the former numbering; and as a natural region, it extends from Dorset, near to Shaftesbury and Gillingham, Eastwards into Wilts. The AONB in part adjoins the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs AONB.

It is named for and is centred upon the River Sennell (sometimes ‘Sennel’), which, with its ancestral river, runs through it from West to East and has largely shaped it.

In the West, its bounds begin near to the Dorset settlements of Sheerford Mallet and Akeford Edlington in Wilts; the nearby Wiltshire settlements of ‘Fizzy’, ‘Fizzern’: Akeford Fitzwarne: and of Eddlingford, which straddles the County boundary; and Winterbourne Woolton in the one county, and Winterbourne Yarnfield in the other. The Westernmost settlements which are wholly within the region include Stapleton Abbas in Dorset and Stapleton Mallet in Wilts; Horsingford Constable; Yenstock S Aldhelm; Yenstock Melly; Yenstock Parva; and Beechbury Mallet, all in Wilts; and, at the South Western extremity of the region, Blackmore Mallet and Blackmore Constable, both of which extend across the County boundary.

Its Easternmost bounds terminate just North of Pencotmore, at Tenterton Belbourne, Winstock Mally, Almstone Bishops, and Stapleton Abbas and Stapleton Mallet, upon either side of the boundary, where the River Sennell joins the River Nadder upstream from the Nadder’s confluence with the River Wolfbourne.

Within Wilts, the Vale as a region comprehends the civil parishes of Semelford Malet with Wadhay and The Yarncombes (Stoke Yarncombe and Yarncombe Mitton). Tenter Down, Coytmoor Wood, and Honey Coombe are to its North East.

The Vale is a current focus of considerable scholarly attention.

## **Geography, geology, and natural history**

The Sennell Vale, unlike such larger counterparts as the Blackmore Vale, is in large part, and particularly in its Eastern and Central portions, within Wilts, marked by a very sharp and very high Northern escarpment to the Downlands, which is largely cliff-like throughout most of its length.

The scarps support well-draining rendzinas and hanging woods; from these scarps and slopes, and particularly from the incised ‘bottoms’ each with its seasonal bourne, steady seep and run-off of water, base – alkaline – from the chalk, is added to the spring-line water sources of the Upper Greensand, all together feeding the River Sennell.

   The extensive floodplain thus created, out of all proportion to the current river even in spate, is comprised of banded limestone set amidst rich, arable valley clays; it is upon the Albian Upper Greensand, with its attendant hazel, chestnut, and oak, at the spring-line, and upon the banded limestones, that the settlements stand dry-shod, the clays being given over largely to pastoral farming in rich, if often waterlogged, pasture. The better-drained Upper Greensand hosts the majority of the arable farming, most of it cornland.

Rural settlement is notably mixed, and reflects early enclosure and highly irregular field boundaries.

In the plain, Gault Clays overlie Jurassic Clays of the Kimmeridge series, between bands of limestone; in some areas, Portland Stone, Purbeck and Wealden Group strata, and Lower Greensand intervene. Above these, the Albian Upper Greensand and Gault Clay strata were deposited; atop which is the transition to Downlands chalk.

Characteristic floodplain and meadow landscapes of the Vale and its terraces and river notably support otter and dormouse, primrose and bugle, dog-violet, nuthatch, warbler and tawny owl. Woodland is associated with a faunal community including badger, roe deer, tree-creeper, tawny owl, and woodpecker.

Woodland outwith Senwood, where preserved as ASNW (*see* below), is generally (as is Senwood) upon the more elevated and more freely draining land, including low Greensand terraces; of the oak-ash-and-hazel series, these woods, many of them ‘bluebell woods’, show what Senwood once was and is being restored to. Small-leaved lime coppices also appear. Scarp-sited woodland and woods on the Upper Greensand in transitional areas often possess pignut, wood sorrel, and yellow archangel as understory cover.

Hedging is in the traditional South of England style rather than the Dorset, even in the Dorset reaches of the Vale, as the Vale’s hedges are primarily alongside roads and lanes, and not used as fences for stock animals. This is owing to the arable character of the area and its pastoral being rather dairy (and pigs) than sheep, such that fencing, as such, has been long preferred. The hedges support ancient and veteran hedgerow trees to a marked extent.

### **Senwood**

Like Wodewough Wood upon the Downlands, Senwood is a severed outlier of Coytmoor Wood – the Great Wood, *coed mawr* – which once extended to encompass both.

Unlike Wodewough Wood, Senwood and its environs were considerably degraded and abused in the Late Mediaeval and Early Modern periods, and it became a dark, ill-kempt, ill-managed, tangled place, and haunt of no little crime, with precisely – and deservedly – the reputation encapsulated in its attaining the local bye-name of ‘Sin Wood’.

As a wood upon Upper Greensand terraces, clays, and a few calcareous slopes, Senwood was before its ruin an Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland (ASNW). Remnant disjunct woods associated with Senwood and once a part of it, on wet clays nearby, are classified as W7 (NVC classification) *Alnus glutinosa – Fraxinus excelsior – Lysimachia nemorum* wet woodlands. Other disjunct stands upon the calcareous slopes beneath the chalk escarpment of the Downlands are mostly classified W8 *Fraxinus excelsior – Acer campestre – Mercurialis perennis* woodland, of the W8f *Allium ursinum* sub-community.

Senwood is currently being brought back into restorative management in keeping with its character as ancient woodland.

## **History**

The history, and particularly the pre- and proto-history, of the Vale is complex, not fully understood, and currently under scholarly investigation which is already leading to considerable reassessment. The following ought therefore to be taken as a picture only of what is known as of the Autumn of 2017.

The Aboriginalls of the *Vale* in So. Wilts are of two severall kindes, as they live vpon the terrasses of *Green-sand* or in the clay & mire, yet alike partake in degrees-correspondent of the charackter of the soille & of the *Cheese* beneath the *Chalke*. They condvct dayries & feed vpon milke & chease, & are stollid & fixt in their waies, with many recusants tyme ovt of minde, and no few Innovators in religion, vnconforming to the *Church* of *England.* They are not soo mvche vnder the *Saturnyne* inﬂuense as are those of the North-partes, thro’ being so near vnto the Chalke; yet speciallie in the clayes of the Vale beneath the *Green-Sand* are they subiect to *Satvrn* & the *Moone,* as witness the mannie *Ewe-Trees* in their soile even vpon the nearest Highe-*Downs.* The *Oakes* doe temper this, as trees of the *Svnne,* & so also the *Brick-Yardes* (for they make & use much brickes, being deficient in *Stone* there) & the *Forge,* which be vnder the government of *Mars,* & the aire is the less subtile in the Vale from the presense of *Watters,* yet the *Vale-Folk* be e’en so vnlike to the *Shepherdes* of the ye *Downe-Landes,* & more *Bovine*. (This being invidicall & sarcasticall, let it also be kept *in arcanum*.)

– Unpublished MS notes to ‘Chorographia’, *The Naturall Historie of Wiltshire,* John Aubrey

Aubrey was doubtless wise to suppress this character sketch, which in any case was based upon the pseudoscience of his day and libellously inaccurate accordingly; but he hit the landscapes – and the economics – of the Vale off very well; and surprisingly little has changed since.

The Vale of Sennell has always, clearly and inevitably, been a prize: a place for settlement; a place where arable farming can readily be carried on.

### **Etymology and Toponymy**

The common place-name elements, the toponymic generic forms, in the region are largely obvious: variations upon ‘Malet’, the surname of the manorial lords of whom the Dukes of Taunton maternally derive; references to their kinsmen the FitzWarins; and dedications to S Aldhelm.

Only just less obvious are such elements as ‘yarn’, ‘wool’, and ‘staple’, which signify that, although the rearing of sheep was carried on upon the Downs, it was in the Vale villages that much of the spinning and cloth-making was done. Similarly, wells – here referring in fact to springs –, fords, and bournes, some of these seasonal (‘Winterbourne’), gave their names to the settlements by or upon them. ‘Stoke’ and ‘stoke’ refer to secondary or dependant farms or small settlements, from the Old English *stoc;* and ‘co(o)mb(e)’ in its variants of course refers to small valleys, from the Brythonic term yet persisting in modern Welsh as *cwm.* ‘Abbas’ and ‘Bishops’ designate manorial possession.

Both ‘Sem’ and ‘Sen’ refer to the River Sennell, and not the nearby River Sem; thus, ‘Semelford’ is a ford upon the River Sennell. ‘Wick’ means *place,* from the Old English adaptation of the Latin *vicus.*

Somewhat less obvious may be ‘Horsingford’, ‘Yenstock’, and ‘Constable’, this last not an affix of possession based upon the surname ‘Constable’ but rather upon the mediaeval office: the *comes stabuli,* Count of the Stables, who was not a policeman but was rather a military officer, comparable to the marshal (which word has the same derivation, in Germanic rather than Romance etymology). A quick recollection of Hengist and Horsa may reveal the connexion: *horsing-* and *yen-,* like *constable,* preserve the memory of times when the horses generally (Old High German *hros,* Old English ‘hors’) and the stallions (in German, *Hengste,* whence ‘Yen’) were bred and trained and kept for the Count of the Stables in these places. This is certainly the derivation for Horsingford Constable; Blackmore Constable; Yenstock S Aldhelm; Yenstock Melly (‘Malet’); and Yenstock Parva; there is no little disagreement, does this also furnish the derivation for ‘*Winstock* Mally’, some distance away. (The repetition is in itself no argument against: there are two Grimsbarrows within the ducal holdings alone, and Wiltshire as a whole contains multiple Allingtons, Bishopstones, Fyfields, Coombes, Whaddons, Starvealls, Wilsfords, and indeed Wiltons.)

Wadhay is of uncertain derivation. The *-hay* element is surely, ‘hedge’ or ‘enclosure’; but whether it is named for the mythical Wade the father of Wayland the Smith, as Wadpool upon the Downlands is named, or from, perhaps, wood, woodland, is unclear.

Yarncombe Mitton and Stoke Yarncombe are of course so named for their topography and woollen industry; however, the affix, *Mitton,* is the centre of some controversy, being claimed by some scholars as a *mythtun,* a sacred confluence of waters and/or ways, and by others as an abraded form of *Middleton.*

Wick S Aldhelm’s older countryside, demotic form of ‘Wick Almstey’ suggests that there was once a hay or hedge there, or that, in times of flood, it became an *-ey,* an island. Somewhat counter-intuitively, ‘Almstone Bishops’ is not the town of episcopal alms, but the bishop’s town of S Aldhelm.

Senfield Mallett is of course named for the River Sennell, but only at a remove, via Senwood. The devastation of Senwood and its surrounds is the derivation of Senfield’s Stinchy Common; Stovers Wood; Mazewood Copse; Pannidge Holt; Tourbery Heath; and Torvery Pits. These once provided estovers, mast and pannage, and turbary: the common rights to wood, to graze swine in the forets, and to cut turf; but mismanagement resulted in the ‘stinting’ of these rights after a period of economic degradation: whence ‘Stinchy’ or ‘Stingy’ Common.

Shallwell Mallet and Sheerford Mallet are not altogether satisfactorily accounted for, in the view of some scholars. Shallwell being a spring, not a well, the suggestion that *Shall-* derives from ‘shallow’ is contested; and there is some debate as to whether *Sheer-* is, as it seems on its face to be, derived from wool-shearing.

Akeford Edlington and Akeford Fitzwarne both take ‘Akeford’ from ‘Oak Ford’; the affix of ‘Edlington’, and the element in ‘Eddlingford’, however, alike derive from *atheling,* the Anglo-Saxon term for a member of the Royal House competent to be chosen by the Witan as king.

Beechbury Mallet has never been, even in Alfredian times, a *burh,* nor does it boast a hillfort or anything comparable in the way of defences. It is remotely possible that it was at one time a monastic enclosure, for a small cell.

Tenterton Belbourne, Blackmore Mallet, and Blackmore Constable reflect their liminal positions at the edges of the Vale, where it butts up upon Tenter Down (so named from the tenting of cloth on tenterhooks to dry without shrinking after fulling) and the Blackmore Vale.

Sparverham is the real Pig Country amidst the Butter Country and Cornlands of the Vale, being, in fact, better suited to that than to fat arable and butterfat milch-cows: as the name suggests, the countryside immediately surrounding Sparverham being in English nowadays just what it had been in the rather doggy Latin of Domesday Book: *asper arvum,* Rough Heath.

Drumheel Bottom and Scratchling Bottom, like Maidensigh Corner, have, as ‘rude’ place-names, been the subject of dirty-minded, rather schoolboyish, sniggering since the memory of man runs not to the contrary; the etymology is rather more sophisticated and complex a topic.

‘Maidensigh’ is not particularly inobvious: in times of ﬂood, the place became an island, wherefore ‘-ey’ degraded to ‘-igh’: as at Athelney, and Swansea and Romney and Lundy and All Sorts, and the eyots of the Thames; and it had once been farmed to Shaftesbury Abbey’s nuns, the maidens of the name.

‘Scratchling’ in its turn – which had been, as late as the middle of the Eighteenth Century, an alternative form of ‘scratching’ – is generally conceded by toponymists to derive from the local landscape: the place might as well have been named, for its briers and brambles, as, ‘Thorny’ or ‘Prickly’ Bottom (which should also have led to generations untold of adolescent sniggers). There remains, all the same, a low-intensity, brushfire scholarly debate in which the partisans of the obvious contend with other scholars who hold to the assertion that the ‘-ing’ was for ‘-ingas’ (and who are presently stymied by an inability to find a Saxon chieftain with any name which could possibly have been abraded into ‘Scratchel-’), and by the more plausible dissentients who were willing to accept the thorniness but who insisted that the ‘-ing’ was afixed to signify, from the Old English, a small stream: for of course there is a winterbourne at the bottom of Scratchling Bottom.

‘Drumheel Bottom’, however, remains a mystery. The obvious explanation is that it runs down from Drum Hill Down’s scarp; but there is no agreed explanation for the name of Drum Hill – a name which certainly antedated the entry into English of even the earliest Middle Dutch or Middle Saxon terms for a Certain Percussion Instrument; and there is no scholarly agreement, let alone any consensus, as to whether Drum Hill or Drumheel had priority of naming.

Nor can it with any real likelihood be derived from the Old Irish *druimm* for a ridge: not in the West of England, and not even in pre-Saxon times. It is not, surely, of the same derivation as are the names of Drumnadrochit and Drumchapel in Scotland, and in Ireland’s Dundrum and Drumnacanvy; and it is no drumlin, there upon the ancient chalk above the vale. Nor can scholars evolve a plausible explanation for the intrusion of an ‘r’ into a dun, and a consequent d(\*r)un-ham eliding to ‘Drum’m’, even had there ever been a hill-fort upon Drum Hill: which there has not been. Drum Hill and Drumheel, consequently, remain by name mysterious in their origins, hill and bottom alike; far more so even than Cold Kitchen Hill, the Hill of the Wizard, *Col Cruachen,* in the Deverills.

Assbutt Hill Lane, passing by Maidensigh and through Drumhill and Scratchling Bottoms, between Senfield and Wick and Shallwell Mallet, is named by and for a barely perceptible rise of land, which in wet weather had so vexed drovers and jaggers and packmen with butts and panniers, and caused their packhorses and asses to refuse the road, to have given it its innocent, if unfortunate, name.

### **Economic and social history; vernacular architecture**

The vernacular architecture of the Downlands reflects the use of local materials: rubble; ashlar; clunch; and cob and render. So too are distinctive local materials the rule in the Vale, and mark an evident separation of the two regions, reflecting their underlying geology. In the Vale, houses, industrial buildings such as old mills and forges, and farm buildings are built of brick and clunch and the two together banded, or flint banded with brick, with curious quoinings; and some timber, too, and less thatch and slate and much more baked tile. There tend also to be decorative rooflines upon these, with hoops or geometric figures like the simpler heraldic ordinaries rising from the roofs’ ridges to cut patterns upon the sky; stone-built structures, by contrast, are few, and tend strongly to be solely ecclesiastical in purpose.

   The traditional agricultural produce of the Vale has immemorially been carried on at small farms, and centred upon corn – the maltings’ corn –, piggeries, poultry, and the innumerable dairies. Today, due partly to the evangelising zeal of the Duke of Taunton and his acquaintance, even where (as in most of the Vale) the ducal sway is limited and his writ hardly runs, his advice is increasingly heeded (and supplemental payments from Defra seized upon), such that the cattle are, increasingly, native British breeds, and the rarer the better: Gloucesters, Dairy Shorthorns, Jerseys, Guernseys, and the ducal Devons being bred once more to be dual-purpose. Elsewhere in the Vale, Friesians predominate.

Historically, the greater part of the Vale’s trade has drained to Shaftesbury and Gillingham, and very little to the Downlands and the Woolfonts: the majority of Vale trading other than to Shaftesbury-Gillingham was down the Sennell and the Nadder to Pencotmore and Tisbury or on to Wolminster and Wolchester, and Staple Woolton. This has been specially true of the Westernmost portions of the Vale, including the Westernmost parts of the portion of the Vale within Wilts. During the period of operations of the first Woolfonts & Chickmarsh Railway, and its GWR branch line successor, this was partly reversed, but reverted to type after closure; with the current W&CR in operation, the Vale once again trades increasingly with the Woolfonts and the Downlands.

A primary driver of these changes in trade patterns is the Woolfont Brewery, in Woolfont Parva. In addition to its milk and cheese, the Vale has always produced much corn, and has always had maltings; today, its cornlands and maltings are largely dedicated to supplying the Woolfont Brewery, by shipment by the W&CR. Similarly, the restoration of the W&CR has redounded to the benefit of the dairies and of the producers of pork and poultry: the Vale now trades in these not only to the Downlands and the Woolfonts, Shaftesbury, Gillingham, Tisbury, Wolminster, Beechbourne, and Chickmarsh, but along the Wessex Main Line via the W&CR to Warminster and along the West of Englabnd Main Line via Gillingham Peacemarsh for Gillingham.

Tourism, and particularly heritage tourism, is likewise increasing owing to the W&CR.

### **Ecclesiastical history**

Pending the results of the ongoing scholarship in the Vale, it is perhaps safest to concentrate upon the undisputed facts and periods; wherefore one can say with reasonable certainty that the Vale has been notably, as Aubrey observed, and since, a place of considerable recusancy and considerable dissent.

One can also say with reasonable certainty that its mediaeval ecclesiastical history shaped its mediaeval economic and social history owing to the wholly secular and economic rivalry, wherever the Malet lords did not hold in the Vale, between the abbesses of Shaftesbury and the abbots of Wolfdown (or Woolfont Abbas).

And it is unquestioned that the Anglo-Saxon Christian period in the Vale as in the Downlands and Woolfonts was dominated by the missionary zeal of S Aldhem. The Saxon push into the old British lands of the Durotriges, by then Romano-British, was at first an invasion of pagan West Saxons; the Christianisation of Wessex was yet a very new and uncertain thing in the lifetime of SS Birinus and Aldhelm, two and three centuries on. Of the two saints, it was Aldhelm who organised much of what became the See of Sarum (previously Sherborne), of which he became the first bishop; and the Vale, both in Dorset and in Wilts, is part of that Diocese.

As of mid-September 2017, there is a vacancy in the post of Team Vicar for the parishes of S Birinus Semelford Malet, S Anthony Wadhay, S Dunstan Stoke Yarncombe, and S Edward the Martyr Yarncombe Mitton.

Lollardy and anticlericalism broke out early in the Vale, and were never fully suppressed, flourishing particularly in lands held by Shaftesbury Abbey, and much less frequent in lands held by Woolfont Abbey. Lands held directly of the Malets seem, either from conviction or caution, to have – at the least – left no record of dissent and their tenants, whatever their views, kept their heads down. It appears that much of this discord had less to do with religious enthusiasm than with resentment against lords and landlords, and correlated with landlord-tenant relations on the various manors of the Vale.

The Reformation was hotly contested in the Vale, as, once more, was not wholly inexplicable in a region of episcopal and abbatial tenancies and employment; much of the contest fell out along similar economic lines. The eventual Henrician Settlement was deplored by the solidly Catholic and conservative majority, and denounced by the advanced and radical Protestant faction who made up a minority in the Vale.

## **Antiquities and archaeology**

### **Pre-Roman**

Even in Neolithic times, settlers and temporary dwellers alike evinced a clear and persistent preference for lighter soils and higher ground, generally near the spring-line; the farming of the claylands of the Vale perforce waited upon ploughing technology which should not become available until mediaeval times.

All the same, the fertile cornlands were not to remain unoccupied, and there were flourishing farming settlements upon the Greensand terraces from the Iron Age onwards.

    The site already scheduled for excavation at the marches of Downlands and Vale, where *villa rustica* succeeded roundhouse until the Saxons had come and fought there and left their dead, is, as of Summertide 2017, being gridded. It has long been clear that the Yarncombe Mitton Villa Complex has every chance of proving to have been larger and wealthier, crowning a more extensive *latifundium,* even than Chedworth, and more richly adorned even than it or Littlecote, or Woodchester, or Low Ham: and this in a corner of the County which boasts already, in the Shiﬀord Ombres Villa, a far-famed Orpheus mosaic, which may or may not have been a coded Christian reference, and, crafted a few generations after, what time Constantine had legalised the Faith, a unique mosaic, unequivocally Christian, rhyming with and echoing the other, of what later ages should come to call ‘the Harrowing of Hell’. (The Duke of Taunton, naturally, who owns the Shiﬀord Ombres Villa, is wont to say – as an Old Etonian, and commonly to that Old Harrovian Sir Thomas Douty – that Harrow *is* Hell.)

The Mitton Villa in itself, however, is not the grail of the Great Vale Dig’s quest. For the villa has now revealed itself to have overlain, like a palimpsest, the margins and bounds of an Iron Age British settlement which should put Duropolis in the shade.

### **Roman and Romano-British**

The Roman *villa rustica* at Yarncombe Mitton, mentioned above, seems to have been a rich one with an extensive latifundium. That it survived as such well into the Sub-Roman period has suggested, notably to Professor Dennis Farnaby, that it was well-protected; and Professor Farnaby and the Duke of Taunton are tentatively agreed that Wick S Aldhelm, Wick Almstey to the country folk, sited where it is, may once have been a Roman walled town and a crossing of roads, in the Vale. It does not appear in the Antonine Itinerary; it did not, surely, stand beside anything so grand as Ackling Dyke or the Portway, Roman routes of dignity enough to figure in the *Iter Britanniarum*. But there may well have been a Roman B-road there, more than a mere vicinal way, part of the web of connecting *itinera, viæ,* and *aggeres* linking Sorviodunum to Vinocladia to Durnovaria to Isca Dumnoniorum to Aquæ Sulis to Calleva to Moriconium to, ultimately, Londinium; and it is a likely candidate for a Roman military detachment’s station and a Romano-British cantonment afterward.

### **Anglo-Saxon**

The West Saxons were stalled in their advance by the Romano-British in the Vale for several decades. What happened next is as of August 2017 being considerably reconsidered in the light of emerging scholarship; what is certain is that at some point, the Vale became at least in part a West Saxon royal centre, as witness Akeford Edlington and Eddlingford. Parts of the Vale were clearly in the possession of the rival abbeys of Wolfdown and of Shaftesbury, and possession remained unchanged by the Conquest, as shown in *Domesday Book;* a possible nephew of the Cerdicings – Cynricings into whose family the Malets married upon the Conquest, and whose lands they were granted, held those manors which by 1086 are held as part of the Malet Honour: the only manors of the Honour in the Vale.

Markedly few Anglo-Saxon remains have survived in the Vale: in part owing to its being a poor environment for the preservation of what shall certainly have been, in the main, wooden structures. The Great Vale Dig, however, continues to hope as it digs.

### **Norman and Mediaeval**

The Malets, as the only truly secular lords in the Vale holding as tenants-in-chief, erected a keep at Yarncombe, between Stoke and Mitton, by 1120. As the Duke has admitted, in assessing his Malet ancestors’ dealings, ‘... they ... put up keeps and towers at ... Yarncombe to control the Vale, so as to hold the country. Being able to pull the damned things down – in the Fourteenth Cee, mind you – was a still more arrogant assertion: “Oh, look at me, my power is such I want not defence” and All That.’

This is almost certainly true, and specially likely to be so in light of the events of the civil war between Stephen and Maud, which the Malets avoided by their usual expedient of having a foot in both camps. The Vale, in consequence, with its secular lords hunting with the hounds and running with the hare and its other lords being safely ecclesiastical, was able almost to ignore The Anarchy. But the Vale, the lords, and the peasants alike were unable to avoid or evade the Black Death; and the dismantling of the keep at Yarncombe may also reflect the devastation of the Great Plague, which quite substantially knocked the Vale back.

Accordingly, subject to the reassessment of the ongoing Great Vale Dig, at present the only notable antiquities from this period in the Vale are the parish churches of S Birinus Semelford Malet, and S Dunstan Stoke Yarncombe.

## **Religious Sites**

The Church of England parish churches of S Birinus Semelford Malet, S Anthony Wadhay, S Dunstan Stoke Yarncombe, and S Edward the Martyr Yarncombe Mitton were never ‘wool churches’, as those of the Downlands and the Woolfonts were; so far as they rivalled these in sumptuousness, it was owing to abbatial patronage. Mitton church has a 12th Century Norman chancel; the remainder of the fabric was rebuilt during the febrile boom after the Black Death. Wadhay’s parish church, always a small one, was effectively wholly rebuilt in the early 16th Century, just in time to be left bereft and stripped of its few treasures during the Henrician Suppression; Stoke and Semelford churches, both substantially redone in the 15th Century, were almost wholly ‘restored’ out of all recognition by the Victorians.

The Roman Catholic church of SS Peter and Paul was erected to Pugin’s designs in 1847. Unfortunately, it was destroyed in April of 1942 by a Luftwaffe bomber: not by a jettisoned bomb, nor by a mistaken targeting, but through the shooting down of the aircraft by a night fighter of No, 10 Group RAF. It unfortunately crashed full into the church. A ‘temporary’ replacement was run up in 1951, in the most excruciating style of the period; and remains to assault the eye to this day.

There are Dissenting chapels in Semelford and Stoke Yarncombe, the latter of which was originally a Primitive Methodist foundation served by the early Primitive Methodist preacher George Smalley. George Smalley was converted to Primitive Methodism through having worked for a time at the silk-throwing mill in Staple Woolton, some of whose expert threwsters had been brought there from Derby, and brought Midlands Primitive Methodism with them.

## **Notable buildings**

Pending further re-survey in the Vale, there are few other notable buildings in the Vale. However, the King’s Head public house in Wadhay *may* be in origin the site of a monastic guest house; and does possess what may be a priest-hole, or, quite as likely, a secret passage used by smugglers. It was certainly in use during the Interregnum, and again during the Fifteen and the Forty-Five, by Cavaliers and their Jacobite descendants.

### **Pub sign tradition**

There is a rich artistic tradition of pub sign painting in the Vale, notably including the signs of the Garb, the Red Cow, the Trulock Arms, the Wool-Badger, the Duke, the Chalk & Cheese, and the King’s Head. In the latter instance, the current sign, which His Grace, had had Sir Ben repaint and restore, is the old original pub sign: for the King’s Head is an old Jacobite pub, centre of half the loyal plots in the West, and the king in question, the duke’s progenitor, had been the King Over the Water after 1689, James 2d and 7th.

There is, scholars engaged in the Great Vale Dig consider, matter for scholarship in the inns and inn-signs of the Vale: the Garb boasts of the cornlands and their sheaves, and its sign shows a garb, a sheaf, rising from a pint glass; the Red Cow, its sign suitable to it, suggests that the old dual-purpose breeds had ﬂourished there, in days now gone: perhaps Devons, before the North Devon and South Devon had become separate breeds, the descendants of the old Norman red cattle; the Trulock Arms not only attest to the old importance of the Trulocks as knightly tenants of the Malets, but has in its sign a lovely instance of canting arms, with the Trulock quatrefoils; the Wool-Badger, with its amusing sign depicting a badger in woollens leading a packhorse laden with sacks of wool, is suggestive of old trade; the Duke attests to His Grace’ and his forebears’ importance whilst carefully refraining from naming them, its sign showing only a coronet; and the Chalk & Cheese declares the persistence of the old County phrase, with a humorous if modern sign depicting a truckle of the local cheese in what looks for all the world like a chalk pastel drawing.

## **Amenities**

The S George’s Day Pig Fair and Swine Show at Wadhay (Sparverham), since its recent renewal from a moribund condition by His Grace as sponsor and president of the committee, is becoming a major fixture of the British Pig Association Show Calendar, and is very much a local red-letter day.

Plans are in development similarly to resurrect the former Cattle Market in Semelford Malet, the Semelford Dairy Show and Fair, and the Yarncombe (and other local) Cloth Fairs.

There are libraries in Semelford and in Stoke Yarncombe. There are committee-run village halls in Yarncombe Mitton and in Semelford, available for hire.

Yarncombe Mitton is a traditional stop on the historic West Country Carnival circuit.

## **Governance & politics**

In Wilts, the Vale is its own ward; substantially all governmental activity is within the remit of the County as a Unitary Authority.

The ward is staunchly Conservative; there is effectively no Labour presence in the Vale, and the Liberal Democrats uniformly poll behind various local Independents.

## **Demographics**

The two civil parishes of the Vale in Wilts, Semelford Malet with Wadhay and The Yarncombes (Stoke Yarncombe and Yarncombe Mitton), together muster 2,207 souls as of the 2011 Census. Of these, some 96.7 per cent. are White British.

## **Transport**

The primary thrust of transport arteries in the Vale is along an East-West axis.

### **Road**

The primary road through the Vale, although passing under many names as it passes from village, hamlet, and farm to farm, hamlet, and village, is the C road generally called as the Wolminster Road. It has a junction at Tenterton Belbourne with the Woolfont-Pencotmore B road, running to the Downlands and the Woolfonts.

### **Bus**

There are bus links to Tidworth, Wolchester, Salisbury, Blandford Forum, and Shaftesbury on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and limited services on Sundays. The current operator is Wilts & Dorset.

Plans have been mooted for an extension of the Woollybus to serve the Vale.

### **Railways**

    The W&CR, now relaid and reopened, connects the central Vale, to the Woolfonts and Downlands, to Tisbury, to Warminster, and to Gillingham, and thus to the GWR Wessex Mail Line and Bristol – London Waterloo line (via Warminster) and the South Western Railway and is West of England Main Line (via Tisbury Connecting for Tisbury and Gillingham Peacemarsh for Gillingham).

From All Somerfords Station upon the Downlands (reached from Parva via Woolfont Abbas Rural Halt and Agincourt Ducis Station), the W&CR’s lines run to Semelford Malet Station, Wadhay Station, and The Yarncombes (Stoke Yarncombe with Yarncombe Mitton) Station. After The Yarncombes, a branch line runs to Tisbury Connecting and joins the West of England Main Line at Tisbury Station; the main W&CR line proceeds to Gillingham Peacemarsh and there connects by a short line to the West of England Main Line at Gillingham Station.

The up trains to Woolfont Parva and Woolfont Crucis then run down, via Woolfont Magna Station, Chalkhills Halt, Chickmarsh Station, Beechbourne Station, Sharpington Station, and Warminster Kingbarrow Station, to the junction at Warminster Station and the GWR Wessex Main Line and Bristol – London Waterloo service.

Architecturally, Semelford Malet Station, Wadhay Station, and The Yarncombes (Stoke Yarncombe with Yarncombe Mitton) Station are remarkably, having been rebuilt or restored to their original plans, as have all the W&CR stations (Gillingham Peacemarsh, for example, prodigal of Victorian ironwork, has been described as ‘a curious hybrid of Evercreech Junction of old and a cottage orné, in the design of which the influence of Nash and John Adey Repton is evident: as is natural enough, Blore having done the plans’). The Yarncombes constitute simply a Victorian exuberance by Scott at his least restrained; Wadhay, a Brunelian ideal in rubbed brick, crow-stepped and bay-windowed; and Semelford Malet, consequential and proud, its wrought iron scrolled with fantastical ears of corn, its eaves-dagging and fascia imposing, and its Tudor chimneys and chimney-pots riotous against the sky.

### **Canal**

The ducal project of canal reconstruction is intended to join the River Wolfbourne to the Rivers Sennell and Nadder, near to Pencotmore.

## **Commerce**

With the exception of local light industry such as forges and smithies, village shops, a farm equipment dealer’s in Semelford, and the maltings outside Yarncombe Mitton, the area is wholly agricultural.

## **Media and communication**

Considerable parts of the Vale now have high speed broadband capabilities.

### **Media**

BBC Wiltshire is the BBC Local Radio public service station for the whole county; parts of the Vale also receive BBC Solent. Regional television services are provided by BBC West, BBC South, and ITV Meridian.

The local newspaper serving the Vale is the *Vale Echo,* published weekly on Thursdays.

## **Education**

There are C of E VA primaries in the larger villages. Secondary education is currently at state secondaries located in Stoke Yarncombe, Semelford, Stapleton Abbas, and Tenterton Belbourne; the projected independent school in the Downlands is expected to take in some pupils from the Vale.

## **Notable people**

* John of Sennell, friar turned vagrant Lollard, burnt as a heretic 1446
* Revd George Treasure, Church of England martyr, curate, S Anthony Wadhay, executed 1555
* Fr Antony Blandford SJ, Jesuit martyr, executed 1583
* Francis Voss, *fl.* 1602 – 1633, herbalist, physician, alchemist, and astrologer
* John or George Rideout *alias* Northover, Roundhead soldier and murderer, executed 1647
* George Smalley, 1801 – 1877, early Primitive Methodist preacher
* Thomas Treasure, born at Maidensigh, Georgian clothier and mill-owner, Wolminster
* Edward Phippard, Victorian ‘cowman poet’
* Lady Lavinia Horsley, Victorian writer and reformer
* George Hansford, Edwardian cricketer, Hants CCC
* Fr Ambrose Blandford CO VC, 1881 – 1917, Oratorian priest, Roman Catholic chaplain to the BEF in the Great War, killed at Passchendaele (Third Ypres)
* Alec Parham, Chief Steward and Master Forester of the Lordship of the Downs and of the Honour and Feudal Barony of Wolfbourne, Downlands farmer also owning extensive arable and dairy lands in the Vale
* John Treasure Voss, Lewis Carroll scholar
* Lawrence and Martha Partman, maltsters, the Yarncombe Maltings
* Joan Blandford, landlady and proprietress of the King’s Head, Wadhay
* Jack Biddiscombe, reformed character and lay-preacher
* Catherine Wadman (‘Catty the Crone’), local troublemaker, backbiter, and gossip
* George ‘Tubby’ Bascombe, landlord, The Garb
* Dave Hansford, landlord, The Chalk and Cheese
* Mrs Harriet Brickell, purity campaigner
* Luke Revel, cam-boy
* Edith Smalley, widow and arable farmer

## **Sport**

The Yarncombes and Semelford jointly field a non-league football club, Vale United FC. There is also a Yarncombe CC, which plays friendlies on weekends.

## **In popular culture**

The Vale has been mentioned in the writings of John Aubrey; Celia Fiennes; and William Cobbett. Pevsner and Betjeman both wrote of it approvingly; Thomas Hardy disdained it and excised it from his fictionalised Wessex, preferring the Blackmore Vale to it. R Austin Freeman is strongly suspected of having filched part of the history of the King’s Head public house in Wadhay for background in his Dr Freeman novel, *The Cat’s Eye.*

Sir Bennett Salmon painted several Vale scenes; as had Constable before him.

Sparverham was chosen as a potential filming location for an episode of the twenty-seventh season of *Dr Who,* but the programme was cancelled shortly thereafter. Since its return in 2005, the programme and the BBC as a whole have shown no interest in revisiting the issue.

## **See also**

* Alec Parham
* John Treasure Voss
* The Downlands
* The Woolfonts & Chickmarsh Railway
* The Woolfont Brewery
* Sir Ben Salmon RA
* The Great Vale Dig