Place:Fugglestone St. Peter, Wiltshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Fugglestone St. Peter was a small village, manor, and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, lying between the town of Wilton and the city of Salisbury. As a civil parish it came to an end in 1894, when it was divided between the adjoining parishes, but it still exists as a small settlement within the boundaries of Wilton.

The ancient parish of Fugglestone contained 1,778 acres and three rivers, the Nadder and two arms of the Wylye, so that some 40 acres (160,000 m2) of the parish were under water. Fugglestone included the tithing of Quidhampton, the chapelry of Bemerton, and part of the hamlet of Burdens Ball.

Apart from the medieval parish church of St Peter, which dates from the 12th century but may have pre-Norman origins, little remains of the ancient village of Fugglestone, which stood at the western end of the parish near Wilton Abbey, which owned the manor, so that Fugglestone village effectively became a suburb of the borough of Wilton. Bemerton was at the other end of the parish, next to Fisherton Anger, and is recorded in the 11th century. St Andrew's chapel was built at Bemerton in the 14th century.

In the Middle Ages there was a leper hospital at Fugglestone, called the Hospital of St Giles (Giles being, among other things, the patron saint of lepers), which stood on a spot now enclosed within the park of Wilton House. This was founded in about 1135 by Adelicia of Louvain, the queen of King Henry I, and the hospital claimed that Adelicia was entombed in its chapel. In 1645, the Mayor of Wilton petitioned the Wiltshire Quarter Sessions to provide relief for inmates of the hospital suffering from the Bubonic plague. Of some forty poor people who had been admitted to the Hospital of St Giles, ten had died of the plague by 13 July 1645. The Hospital was still in existence in 1814, when it supported a prior and four almspeople, but by then only the chapel was still standing, converted into lodgings for the poor. In 1851 these almshouses were replaced by a new row of cottages on the north side of the Warminster Road, the site of the hamlet of Burdens Ball, which are now known as 'St Giles's Hospital'. They were sited near the new almshouses of the former Hospital of St Mary Magdalene at Wilton, which had been founded before 1271, demolished in 1831, and its almspeople moved in 1832 to Fugglestone.

In 1801 and in 1851 the population of Fugglestone was just over 500, and this had risen to 1,060 by 1894. In the same year, with effect from 30 September, the civil parish was dissolved, being divided between the town of Wilton and the newly formed parish of Bemerton (which had previously been a chapelry of Fugglestone St Peter). (Source: A Vision of Britain through Time) At the time of this division, 16 houses and 46 parishioners were transferred to Wilton, the rest going to Bemerton.

Research Tips

• From this Ancestry page you can browse the Wiltshire parishes which have parish register transcripts online, quite often from very early dates. However, reading the early ones requires skill and patience. Transcriptions should also be in FamilySearch.
• A further collection of online source references will be found on the county page for Wiltshire.